Today I am concluding my four weeks of Saturday blogposts on ChoralNet- thanks to Scott Dorsey and Tim Sharp for this opportunity. I've been recapping my personal memories of recent ACDA national conferences in hopes that my stories will help you decide to get in on the national ACDA experience and join us in Dallas. It's still not too late to join us at this amazing conference! Click here to get in on the action. And by the way, the weather forecast right now is for mid-sixties Tuesday and then sunny and mid-seventies the rest of the conference week!
Over the last three Saturdays I have shared my personal memories of ACDA LA (2005), Miami (2007), and Oklahoma City (2009). I hope you have enjoyed them in all their personal, odd, and anecdotal glory. Today I am recounting ACDA 2011 which was held in my hometown of Chicago.
Well yes, this one felt weird-to be home for a national ACDA and be about 15 minutes away via the "El". I certainly had some fun a few weeks before the conference when Tim Sharp and Mike Scheibe asked me to blog about why folks should come to Chicago ACDA, and I will take full credit for the massive influx of people deciding at the last last moment to join us! In a town which lacks a central arts district such as Dallas has, Tim, Mike, and their committees still found ways to keep the Chicago conference venues navigable; no small achievement.
Amidst all the amazing music-making two things made this conference personally memorable to me. The first was the opportunity to meet someone I guess you could call an outsider; someone totally outside of our ACDA American (and sometime Canadian) realm – I am speaking of Irishman Michael McGlynn, the founder of Anúna, the amazing Irish ensemble. Michael was here to promote his Anúna International Choir School and also scope out the lay of the land in regard to our U.S. choral world. Much of what we do left him quizzical, yet all along he had amazing commentary as an outsider looking in on our process. Michael is very intelligent, cuts quickly to the chase, and is very witty. Over the days of the conference he and I and many fellow composers such as Sydney Guillaume and Reg Unterseher (at times joined by conductors such as Phillip Copeland and Nick Cummins) shared a lot of amazing meals, stories, and ideas for the future of what we do. Michael blogs, and here is his droll take on what happens when an ACDA conference main hotel is invaded on its final day by the organizers of a gigantic St Paddy's Day parade (yes, we are big on the St. Paddy's here in Chicago, and we do dye our river so bright green that you might think isotopes are involved):
My experiences to date in the USA have been pretty limited or unrealistic. They usually involve moving daily from place to place on tour with my choir Anúna, or attending business meetings that don’t allow you to get a sense of a city or town except in the most superficial way. This was one of the reasons why I was very happy to stay in Chicago for a week, although it hadn’t struck me that it was also St. Patrick’s week, and that the city has a huge Irish-American community, ably represented by my friend and local guide Eamonn Cummins.
My non-choral moments included an architectural boat trip in sub-zero temperatures that was pretty thrilling, a sublime and unexpectedly joyful visit to Old St Patrick’s Church and a silent rugby match being beamed into a bar full of people dressed in green that were oblivious to the unfolding tragic Irish drama on the screen. There was a green river, plastic shamrocks, and hopeful tee-shirts with various slogans on them indicating that the wearer needed some form of close physical congress with you because they were pretending to be Irish for one day only. Maybe they weren’t pretending … having left a country soaking in a mire of negativity, these good-humoured and well-behaved revellers have redefined what it means to be Irish. Ireland isn’t just a place anymore. It’s a state of mind.
Michael will be at Dallas to meet more American folk and promote his Anúna International Choral Singing School which will be held this June. Maybe you will run into him.
Because we had so many folks at Chicago ACDA you needed to grab a seat fast for certain events. I remember being only "on time" for James Jordan's interest session, only to be told by a very firm Edie Copley that the room was full, and don't even think of entering. Edie is awesome and that day she was channeling her inner Chicago cop persona – very funny.
So I learned to be early, really early for some sessions. One that was truly amazing was the Weston Noble session moderated by Geoffrey Boers. I had heard Weston give an absolutely amazing address to ACDA Western Division in Tucson not long ago and knew that I wanted to be in on this Chicago session (if you'd like to read Weston's ACDA Tucson ACDA session, he shared it on my personal blog, much of it virtually verbatim awhile back.)
People were floored by the wisdom and sincerity of Weston as he gave what seemed like a TEDTalk about mirror neurons and their effect on interpersonal communications as well as what we should know about them while guiding our rehearsals and performances. Boers' was brilliant in guiding the session. This was truly memorable!
Let me leave you with something far more humble. On the last night or next to last night (memory fails) I wound up NOT doing anything "big", and not networking with folks from across the land. In a very random way I wound up at a cheap little Chinese restaurant with two Illinois buddies, Sarah Graham and Paul Laprade (Paul, by the way, has a great new group called Elysian Voices, they have a bright future). We spent two or three hours just enjoying some very average food but great conversation and fellowship that evening. I will remember that evening with Sarah and Paul just as much as I will remember the "big" events of Chicago ACDA 2011. And this is another reason you should come to Dallas. There are big moments and, seemingly, little ones awaiting you, what they are and when they happen we don't always know. But staying at home is the worst thing, we can't position ourselves for amazing things unless we get ourselves out there into the great unknown. I hope you have enjoyed these sometimes quirky anecdotes of mine, and that in reading them, you might be enticed to come to Dallas ACDA 2013!
Hope to see you there,
Paul
P.S. Ahem. Please consider attending my panel session on new things really groovy conductors and composers are doing these days. It's Thursday 10:30 AM at the Sheraton San Antonio Ballroom. My panel members are Buddy James, Deborah Simpkin King, Reg Unterseher, Abbie Betinis, and Joan Szymko- very cool people!