Latest Blog Posts

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.” Pope John Paul II It’s another Pandemic Holy Week. A little better than last year’s, because things are a little bit better. At least we’re prepared to worship differently if need be during this strange time. We might be […]

By David L. Mennicke At Concordia University, St. Paul, we’ve been fortunate to have been able to meet face-to-face, with distancing, masks, and 30-minute rehearsal times. This has led us to working on less literature and more focus on skill-building. Unable to do live concerts, we’ve engaged in sharing recorded videos of our music. The […]

Sthira Sukham Asanam “Postures should be stable and comfortable” Yoga Sutra 2.46, Sage Patanjali One of the great things about a yoga practice is bringing what we learn on the mat to the rest of our life.  But even if you don’t practice (physical) yoga, you can still benefit from its wisdom. From Patanjali’s ancient […]

The December 2020 issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “An American Mass: Celebrating Our Shared Music In An Ancient Form” by Carlton E. Kilpatrick III. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the introduction ___________________ The Mass is a treasured form in the Western canon […]

Featuring Laura Ritter and her Walters State Chamber Choir In this episode, I feature Laura Ritter and her Walters State Chamber Choir. I asked students to reflect on why they NEED choir, what it has meant to them to return to singing in our current troubled time, what has created a sense of safety and […]

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart One of our sons is also a musician and when he was quite young and had started lessons, we played a game. It was a game […]

By Hilary Morton Everyone has had a hard year. I think choral directors might have had it a bit worse. We will be dealing with the fallout from this pandemic for the next few years at least, rebuilding our programs from the ground up. We haven’t been teaching “choir” as we have known it to […]

By Tracy Wong “Shared joy is a double joy. Shared sorrow is half a sorrow.” This Swedish proverb rings true as we reach the one-year mark of this pandemic and reflect on how COVID-19 continues to impact the global choral community. In Canada, the changing restrictions for this evolving pandemic have prompted choral leaders to […]

ChorTeach is ACDA’s quarterly online publication, designed for those who work with singers of all levels. A full annotated ChorTeach index is available online at acda.org/publications/chorteach. Over 160 articles are organized into seventeen categories. For submission information, to view the index, or to read the latest issue, visit acda.org/chorteach. Following is an excerpt from an article in the Fall 2019 […]

Is using choral rehearsal tracks cheating? The better question may be: Are you cheating your singers by giving them choral rehearsal tracks? Well the answer to both questions depends on how you answer my 3 question quiz.   Here is: Is Using Choral Rehearsal Tracks Cheating?