Latest Blog Posts

The announcement for the next NCCO Conference came out and I must say that it looks incredible.   Bravo, NCCO!  Take a look at these outstanding offerings:   The conference will be hosted by Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado from November 3 – 5 and will feature: Sessions by Headliners Helmuth Rilling (Inside […]

If this came on last Thursday night, I missed it.  Did anyone see it?  The Choir That Rocks   Described here on A Cappella News:   A recent phenomenon in England is the emergence of the Rock Choir. Created in 2005 by director Caroline Redman Lusher, Rock Choir is the first choir to offer a very […]

In yesterday’s blog, I featured Alex Ross’s great post about the new movie “The Tree of Life”.   At the end of his post, he talked about his ideas relating the great choral motet “Warum?” to Brahms’ Fourth Symphony: By the way, Brahms’s great motet “Warum?” is a setting of the anguished question from the […]

Alex Ross has done a splendid classical music preview of a new movie directed by Terrence Malick, that features Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain.   The film is full of great classical music and much of it is choral or choral related, including: Berlioz: 10. Agnus Dei [Requiem, Op. 5 (Grande Messe des […]

A remarkable interview with Sir Colin Davis in the Guardian, a portion of it here: Davis tells me he has spent a lifetime fighting a battle. Not against orchestras, managers, or musicians, but against his ego. "One's ego becomes less and less interesting as you get older, to oneself and to everyone else. I have […]

A great story I found on A Cappella News: STOCKHOLM — Quick action by the head of a Canadian choir touring Sweden narrowly averted an accident when the driver of their tour bus suffered a heart attack at full speed, Swedish media reported Monday. About five minutes into the University of Manitoba choir’s journey from […]

Article submissions are now being accepted for a “Special Focus Issue” devoted to technology for ACDA’s “Choral Journal” for publication in or around May 2012.  I’ve been asked to put together an issue devoted to technology for the choral musician and I am reaching out to the broader choral community for help.   For this […]

An astounding factoid if true: “And while the proportion of tenure-track teaching faculty has dwindled, the number of managers has skyrocketed in both relative and absolute terms. If current trends continue, the Department of Education estimates that by 2014 there will be more administrators than instructors at American four-year nonprofit colleges. A bigger administration also […]

Paul Carey has a great blog post up containing rehearsal insights from Rick Bjella, Randal Swiggum, Nick Page, Larry Doebler, Lucy Thayer, Tim Bruneau, and Patty O’Toole.   Really great stuff: Student investment and ownership: have students develop their own text interpretations use story telling (composers, personal experiences relating to the text, communing with nature, […]

The American Choral Directors Association will sponsor a record twelve conferences in 2012, featuring the Association’s signature Divisonal conferences, along with five additional intensive events for specific repertoire and interest areas including Children’s Directors, Middle School/Junior High Directors, Composers, American Choral Research, and International Choirs. The seven ACDA Division conferences feature the best of choral […]