Latest Blog Posts

ACDA is on the hunt for a person to develop the membership.   From the website:   The American Choral Directors Association announces an opening for the new position Director of Membership Development. This added position will join the current ACDA Membership Coordinator position, specifically targeting membership growth and retention.   Position Description: The ACDA […]

The inaugural tour of the ACDA National Youth Honor Choir was a smashing success and the ensemble has now returned safely from England!    You can now share in the excitement with commentary from singers as well as a bevy of photographs taken during their ten-day adventure in the UK at the Choir's Facebook site.

The American Choral Directors Association announces an opening for the new position Director of Membership Development. This added position will join the current ACDA Membership Coordinator position, specifically targeting membership growth and retention.   POSITION DESCRIPTION The ACDA Director of Membership Development is a full time position, working directly with the Executive Director on location […]

Standardized testing in the arts?   I haven't heard anything about it, but this Nancy Flanagan has.   Here is a little bit of her blog post – read the whole thing here. Why would we deliberately advance a worthless (and expensive-to-develop) mode of assessment for something as crucial to kids' well-being and our own […]

This is a compelling presentation about integrating social media.  It looks like everything is linked so that the teacher has to do only minimal work – worth a look!     Gluing together Blackboard, Facebook, and Twitter View more presentations from Matthew Leingang

I didn’t get to go to Chorus America last week, but Frank Oteri did, and he blogged about it:   Directors of choruses are frequently composers themselves, and composers and new music—even when not front and center—has played a role in about every session of this conference I had ever attended. But ACF’s construction of […]

We don’t know how to control our “vocal muscles.”   That is from Scientific American and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: In a series of pitch-matching experiments, nonmusicians were pretty good at adjusting an instrument to match a specific note, suggesting that they could hear it just fine. They had much more trouble, however, imitating […]

We talked about the high percentage of caucasians at the recent ACDA leadership conference in Dallas and I blogged about it here the other day.   The general feeling was that we better start paying attention to the cultural diversity of the United States and especially the Latino population.   But what about the Asian […]

Minnesota Public Radio has posted a streaming version of the opening concert of the Chorus America conference from last week.   The program includes Cantus Choral Arts Ensemble Magnum Chorum Minnesota Chorale National Lutheran Choir One Voice Mixed Chorus The Singers VocalEssence Minnesota Youth Choir Consortium Click on the links in the middle of the […]

As part of the preparation for this summer’s General Convention, the Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music of the Episcopal Church commissioned a report on a possible revision of the Hymnal 1982.  According to Robert Hendrickson, program director of the St. Hilda’s House and Ascension House residential internship programs for young adults and new clergy curate and […]