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Choral Journal Preview

Inspiring a Growth Mind-Set in the Choral Classroom

May 20, 2019 by Amanda Bumgarner Leave a Comment

The May issue of Choral Journal is now available online! The Rehearsal Break column features an article written by Matthew Potterton titled “Inspiring a Growth Mind-Set in the Choral Classroom.” Below is an excerpt of the article, and you can read it in its entirety in the May 2019 issue! Go to acda.org/choraljournal and click “Search Archives.”
Choose May 2019 from the dropdown menu.
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Mind-Set Philosophy

Last year I read a book that completely changed my thinking about my students, my program, and even my personal life. As I was preparing for the upcoming year and reflecting on the previous one, I realized how much I had been influenced by the ground-breaking research in the book Mindset: A New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck.

I became convinced that her thought-provoking discoveries had great relevance to our music programs and could both strengthen our teaching and enhance our relationships with students. In her book, as well as in her TED Talk presentation, Dweck discusses two ways people approach learning.

She labels these two attitudes fixed mind-set and growth mind-set. She describes students with a fixed mind-set as those who believe that talent and intelligence are inherent and that hard work or effort have little impact on success. Fixed mind-set individuals are prone to believing they were born a cut above the rest, or, conversely, that they have no talent and nothing will fix that fact. Students with a growth mind-set, however, believe that their own effort will influence their achievement. Regardless of their inherent skills or talent, they believe that they can influence outcomes through practice and hard work.

I recently had a student (whom we’ll call John) who came to our university with a great deal of natural talent. In fact, we gave him a large scholarship and accepted him as a music major. John came from a rural school where he often got the solo and his teachers and parents enjoyed telling others how talented he was. I felt fortunate to have him as my voice student as he was the best tenor I had heard in some time. However, it quickly became clear that he was not progressing. He came into each lesson sounding about the same as at the previous one. As I gave him more challenging literature, he had excuse after excuse as to why he couldn’t do it. Rarely did he admit that he just didn’t work at it. The excuse was usually that someone or something else had caused his lack of progress.

John had gotten through high school because of his innate capabilities, but when he got to college and was challenged, he froze. He didn’t know what to do. Teachers were upset with his work ethic and wrote him off as a failure. He knew he was talented but he was failing school and was afraid to work to try to fix the issue. Instead, he decided that music just wasn’t for him and he ended up dropping out of school all together.

I had another student whom I will call Anna. Anna was moderately talented. We gave her a scholarship but not as much as John’s. Anna came from a strong music program and she had to work very hard to learn her music. If she didn’t get the solo that she auditioned for, she worked hard the next time with the goal of earning that honor.

Anna was also one of my voice students. She came in every week with her assignment learned and I could hear some growth in her technique. While not as naturally gifted as John, she made steady progress. If something was hard for Anna, she took the steps needed to overcome the challenge.
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Read the rest of this article (and more!) in the May issue of Choral Journal, available online at acda.org.

Filed Under: Choral Journal Tagged With: ACDA Membership Benefits, ACDA Publications, Choral Classroom, Choral Journal, Choral Journal Preview

June/July Choral Journal Preview

May 6, 2019 by Amanda Bumgarner Leave a Comment

The newest issue of Choral Journal is available online. No foolin’! Following is a list of the articles you will find in this issue.

ACDA members can log in with their username and password to view and download the newest edition. You can also read our electronic version. Below is a preview of the articles you will find in this issue. If you are not already a member of ACDA, join today to start receiving your monthly Choral Journal! Associate members can join for only $45 a year.
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Concert Programs as Storytelling by Emily Ellsworth

Honor Choirs: Are They Worth Your Time and Trouble? by Barbara S. Walker

Uncovering Meaning and Identity through Voice Change by Craig and Maria Denison

The Care and Feeding of Choir Parents by Pamela Burns

Children’s and Youth Community Choirs: Shifting the Paradigm by Deborah Mello

Online Instruction for Choral Ensembles: One University Choir’s Experience with Blended Learning by Emily Pulham

Reflective Practice and the Choral Director by Emily Mason

2019 International Conductors Exchange Program South Africa by Michael J. Barrett and T. J. Harper

ACDA Celebrates 20th Anniversary in 1979—Observations from Six Choral Conductors (Reprint)

Student Chapter Update

Book Reviews

Choral Journal Index for Volume 59

Filed Under: Choral Journal Tagged With: ACDA Membership Benefits, ACDA Publications, Choral Journal Preview

May Choral Journal Preview

April 1, 2019 by Amanda Bumgarner Leave a Comment

The newest issue of Choral Journal is available online. No foolin’! Following is a list of the articles you will find in this issue.

ACDA members can log in with their username and password to view and download the newest edition. You can also read our electronic version. Below is a preview of the articles you will find in this issue. If you are not already a member of ACDA, join today to start receiving your monthly Choral Journal! Associate members can join for only $45 a year.
___________________________

Choral Music Composed by Women: A Brief History by Matthew Hoch and Linda Lister

William Levi Dawson: Reexamination of a Legacy by Vernon Huff

“Put Me In, Coach!”
Rethinking the Needs of the Vocal Athletes on Your Team
by Noël Archambeault and Blake Smith

Inspiring a Growth Mind-Set in the Choral Classroom by Matthew Potterton

A Conversation with Emma Lou Diemer
by Amanda Bumgarner with Hilary Apfelstadt

Gunnar Reynir Sveinsson: Jazz-Inflfluenced Choral Music
by Sarin Williams

Sacred Music Publication in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
by Tim Sharp

Recorded Sound Reviews

Sacred Music Choral Reviews

Filed Under: Choral Journal Tagged With: ACDA Membership Benefits, ACDA Publications, Choral Journal, Choral Journal Preview, women's history

Choral Village: An Immersive Experience to Build Cultural Sensitivity and Empathy

March 25, 2019 by Amanda Bumgarner 1 Comment

The April issue of Choral Journal is now available online! The cover article for this issue was written by Joy Hirokawa and titled “Choral Village: An Immersive Experience to Build Cultural Sensitivity and Empathy.” Below is an excerpt of the article, and you can read it in its entirety in the April 2019 issue! Go to acda.org/choraljournal and click “Search Archives.”
Choose April 2019 from the dropdown menu.
__________________________

We are today witnessing polarization and fracturing of our societal norms unlike anything in recent history. The year 2014 marked heightened public awareness of violence at the hands of police, particularly in our communities of color. Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner all lost their lives, along with many others. How should we, as choral musicians and teachers, respond to this?

What can we do to make a difference in our communities to address the divisiveness and violence we are seeing around us? How might we create in our rehearsals and classrooms “a musically democratic path of learning to live together and of coping more effectively with the complexities and diversities of our contemporary world”?1

As choral musicians, often our first response is to sing with others as a means to manage our grief and express our solidarity. Singing was integral to unifying people during the Civil Rights Movement and the early twentieth-century labor movement, for example. On 9/11, the United States Congress spontaneously broke into song on the steps of the Capitol building, singing “God Bless America.” How might we translate the strong feelings associated with singing in these situations into building empathy and cultural sensitivity that has lasting impact?

Young people in particular may have a chance of carrying this message further and longer. Could choral music teach them empathy and cultural understanding? How would we know if our efforts actually made a difference?

Against this backdrop, I endeavored to identify best practices and assessment that would provide evidence that what we do can make a positive difference in the attitudes of students outside the rehearsal room and performance hall. This research ultimately led to what became Choral Village. The purpose of Choral Village was to intentionally bring together middle school-aged youth from diverse backgrounds to develop cross-cultural understanding and empathy through activities including choral singing, theatrical games, drum circles, shared meals, and guest artist presentations in a weeklong summer program. This article will discuss the rationale, development, and structure of the program before taking a closer look at the resulting research.
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1 Marja Heimonen, “Music Education and Global Ethics: Educating Citizens for the World,” Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education 11, no.1 (2012), 74-75.

Filed Under: Choral Culture, Choral Journal Tagged With: ACDA Membership Benefits, ACDA Publications, Choral Journal, Choral Journal Preview, community

A Focus on Relevance

March 11, 2019 by Amanda Bumgarner Leave a Comment

The April 2019 issue of Choral Journal is a focus on Relevance. The four main feature articles are based on presentations from the 2018 North Dakota State University Choral Symposium. The theme was Relevance–“creating programming that fosters connections between singers, audience, and the community with the purpose of exploring issues of social significance.” Jo Ann Miller, Michael Weber, Charlette Moe, and Tesfa Wondemagegnehu were symposium program chairs.

Following is a preview of each article:

“Choral Village: An Immersive Experience to Build Cultural Sensitivity and Empathy” by Joy Hirokawa

We are today witnessing polarization and fracturing of our societal norms unlike anything in recent history. The year 2014 marked heightened public awareness of violence at the hands of police, particularly in our communities of color. Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner all lost their lives, along with many others. How should we, as choral musicians and teachers, respond to this? What can we do to make a difference in our communities to address the divisiveness and violence we are seeing around us?

Against this backdrop, I endeavored to identify best practices and assessment that would provide evidence that what we do can make a positive difference in the attitudes of students outside the rehearsal room and performance hall. This research ultimately led to what became Choral Village. The purpose of Choral Village was to intentionally bring together middle school-aged youth from diverse backgrounds to develop cross-cultural understanding and empathy through activities including choral singing, theatrical games, drum circles, shared meals, and guest artist presentations in a weeklong summer program. This article will discuss the rationale, development, and structure of the program before taking a closer look at the resulting research.

“A Rubric for Choral Relevance” by Jennifer Rodgers

Those of us gathered in Fargo for the North Dakota State University Symposium on Choral Relevance in October 2018 witnessed a tipping point. What had been a groundswell of concerted efforts to raise the bar for impactful and relevant work in the field of choral music gained the momentum needed to become a powerful movement of change. Honoring the spirit of lively discourse in the centuries-old symposia tradition, speakers shared powerful examples of new organizations, creative programming approaches, and performance events, and described how they advocate for social justice issues, engage with marginalized populations, and expand partnerships between music organizations and their communities. Some were examples of choruses with a mission entirely based on serving a specific population, and some were the result of special projects built into the concert seasons of more traditional groups. All were designed to connect with the specific needs, cares, and demographics in the communities that the choruses serve.

My own presentation, born of having planned many such projects myself, focused on the process of programming for social change and community impact beyond any specific repertoire. Could I describe a methodology of relevancy that could help shift the immense work of special projects into a lens that choruses with a more traditional model could build into the foundation of their operations? I wrote down the thought process that I’ve come to follow in my own work and crafted a rubric to describe it. It was galvanizing to look at that process in a broader sense, and I was curious to learn how it would pair with the presentations of my fellow symposia colleagues.

“Exploring Cultures through Song” by Mary Ellen Junda

One of the ways that stories, events, and beliefs that define a culture are preserved is through its songs. “Folk songs” typically originate among the people of a country, area, or period and are passed along by oral tradition, with variants occurring over time as circumstances change. They often contain (and release) strong feelings about the experience of living in community, especially when that community is a cultural minority. Singing folk songs associated with a specific event or purpose provides singers an artistic means to discover new cultures, traditions, and beliefs, and to experience the worldviews and emotions embedded in the songs. This article features the Earthtones Vocal Ensemble as a model for developing university and secondary ensembles that address cultural diversity through song, and describes the joys and challenges faced in expanding the choral program in new directions.

“Hope: Refocusing the Legacy of Spirituals” by Jeff Stone

Hope, spirituals, and social change share a deeply connected bond. W. E. B. DuBois, famed scholar and early advocate for civil rights, published the first scientific study of this bond in 1903 with his book The Souls of Black Folk. In this study, DuBois relates hope and spirituals in the context of social change. DuBois suggests that this relationship originated in slavery—a period of great “sorrow.”

The unfortunate souls who endured centuries of sorrow were never completely defeated by their circumstances. Their music, crafted across the experiences of their suffering, is evidence of a will that could not be extinguished. Music offered familiarity with a past existence and provided solidarity throughout the centuries of sorrow. Enslaved and encompassed by despair, a community of voices found strength as they sung and believed together. Though these songs were inspired by faith, it was hope that allowed the enslaved to imagine and to believe in a better future. It was music that allowed them to dream again…

In order to refocus the legacy of spirituals, we should begin to reflect more deeply about the music. We may also be tasked with rethinking the way in which we present spirituals to our singers and audiences. When both occur, we align more closely to the original intent and ultimate power of this music. The significance of spirituals is not its ability to entertain but rather its ability to speak to the world we live in. It is this ability—this legacy—that must be refocused for each of us.
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You can find these and more articles in the April 2019 issue of Choral Journal! Visit acda.org/choraljournal and log in with your ACDA member account.

Filed Under: Choral Culture, Choral Journal Tagged With: ACDA Membership Benefits, ACDA Publications, Choral Journal, Choral Journal Preview, spiritual

April Choral Journal Preview

March 4, 2019 by Amanda Bumgarner Leave a Comment

The newest issue of Choral Journal will be available online by the end of the day today (Monday 3/4)! Following is a preview of the articles you will find in this issue. Read it now at acda.org/choraljournal.

ACDA members can log in with their username and password to view and download the newest edition. You can also read our electronic version. Below is a preview of the articles you will find in this issue. If you are not already a member of ACDA, join today to start receiving your monthly Choral Journal! Associate members can join for only $45 a year.
__________________________________________

  • Choral Village: An Immersive Experience to Build Cultural Sensitivity and Empathy by Joy Hirokawa
  • A Rubric for Choral Relevance by Jennifer Rodgers
  • Earthtones Vocal Ensemble: Exploring Cultures through Song by Mary Ellen Junda
  • Hope: Refocusing the Legacy of Spirituals by Jeff Stone
  • A Guide to The International Phonetic Alphabet and its Application by Stephanie R. Thorpe
  • An Interview with Eric Alatorre: The Master of Basso Profundo by Michael Murphy
  • “What Do You Do With a General…?” Reinventing Oneself in Retirement by Timothy Paul Banks
  • 2019 Summer Festivals and Workshops Listing


Filed Under: Choral Journal Tagged With: ACDA Membership Benefits, ACDA Publications, Choral Journal, Choral Journal Preview

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