Latest Community Posts

 Hi!   We are doing a concert on Thanksgiving day and are looking for suggestions on sacred masterpieces from American composers for mixed choir, tenor solo and brass and percussion accompaniment.  Should be no more than eight minutes (< 8 min.) long.  We want it to be the closing piece for the first part of […]

When the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus embarked on its Freedom Tour into the heart of Proposition 8 territory over the weekend, there were concerns. Would red-state towns like Redding and Chico turn out to see gay men in tuxedos singing “Over the Rainbow”? Would there be protests, threats or fear-mongering from Shasta County’s fundamentalist […]

Cincinnati, OH – Stanard Design Partners has developed and launched the online home – http://2012worldchoirgames.com/ – for the 2012 World Choir Games. The games will be hosted in Cincinnati USA, spanning eleven days in July 2012. Referred to as the “Olympics” of choir competitions, the event draws more than 20,000 participants and hundreds of thousands of visitors […]

Congratulations to the choral Grammy winners 2010: Best Classical Album: Mahler’s 8th (Pacific Boychoir, San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco Symphony Chorus) Best Choral Performance: Mahler’s 8th (same) Best Orchestral Performance: Ravel Daphnis & Chloe (Tanglewood Festival Chorus) Best Opera Recording: Billy Budd (Gentlemen of the London Symphony Chorus) Other winners involving choral albums: Producer […]

 Dear Dan and others,   This is an interesting topic. I just recently conducted the Dvorak Mass in D and used a Germanic approach to the Latin. I am not sure if that was justified, but I actually think the chorus sounded better singing it that way, though some of my members worked hard to […]

Some of you have been having problems over the last few days logging in (and staying logged in), as well as creating or updating your user profile and subscriptions. We’ve been working diligently to take care of these issues, and everything should be back to normal now.   If you’re having problems, try clicking the […]

Point for discussion: Choral music has been around for five centuries (give or take), why is it that modern choir directors (with few exceptions) tend to ignore any repertoire earlier than Bach?  If they do go earlier than 1700, it’s either a madrigal (not choral music) or one of the 10 Renaissance octavos that appear […]

Hi all,   I’m familiar with the variants of Austrian-German Latin (as compared to liturgical Latin), especially the “o” vowel and and the consonants “g” and “c” (and the vowel sound for “oe” and “ae”) as defined by Jeffers.   My question: is it universally accepted that these German pronunciation variants should be used for […]

Colleagues:  Several recent concert announcements prompt this question, directed toward my college-level colleagues, but probably equally applicable to K-12 choral programs as well.   How many of you–on a regular basis and not just for “special” events–program your concerts with more than one choir participating?  As a “Choral Concert” or a “Choral Department Concert,” in […]

Need an accurate translation of a brief Italian quote. Anyone willing to help, please contact me off-forum at the email address below.   Lee G. Barrow