Latest Blog Posts

ChoralNet member Dan Kreider talks here about “listening.”   What’s the most powerful piece of music you’ve heard only once? I’ve begun devoting a significant portion of class time to listening. By now my students know the drill: no talking, no noise, focus on evaluating what you hear… and (often) close your eyes. Then I tell […]

To follow up on Philip’s post yesterday about common sense, I found myself kind of disappointed with the use of the term "common sense" in Liz’s post. She’s postulating a kind of left-brain/right-brain dichotomy and discussing how important left-brain considerations like rehearsal planning and musical analysis are, but that’s not quite the same thing as "common […]

From the 2009 ACDA National Conference:  

A great post from Liz at Helping you Harmonise: And common sense is what stops conductors getting too self-obsessed. Yes, conducting requires depth of knowledge, and insight, and interpersonal magic and a well-honed technique, yada yada yada. But none of that has any point unless the music sounds good. It doesn’t matter who you studied […]

ACDA Tech Committee Member Julie Parsons recently delivered a technology presentation at the NW ACDA Conference.   Great ideas, Julie!    Here is a bit of it, uploaded for everyone on SlideShare:     Build A Blog Online View more presentations from conductress.

A guest blogger continues the ACDA Conference Review: In a nutshell, the performance content of ACDA’s North Central Division Convention in Minneapolis rivaled the programs of every National Convention I have attended in the last ten years. For this blogger, concerts had the strongest impact during the four-day celebration of the choral arts. There were simply […]

I’m fairly sure I heard this group in Miami but I don’t remember it like I should – very beautiful:  

Maureen Dowdell of the Vocal Area Network promotes Project Encore, a project of Schola Cantorum on Hudson dedicated to promoting second performances of choral works which have already been premiered: Where gaining a second performance traditionally depended on a composer’s ability to “shop” a score, Project Encore offers a cost-effective, one-stop solution to increasing visibility […]

Paul Carey has performed quite a service for ACDA and has submitted reviews for several division conferences over the past few weeks.  He even brought in a guest blogger to help when he wasn’t able to attend in person!  Thirteen blog posts in all!   Here is the collection:   Central Division – Cincinnati: Thursday […]

Jonathan Miller posted two articles awhile back about spirituals . . . check them out here and here.   Here is a little from part one: It seems to me that, for many of us, the spiritual has at its essence the quality of a gift.  There is a sense that we have been given […]