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CJ Replay: Building a Foundation: Interviews with International Exchange Program Conducting Fellows

November 29, 2021 by Amanda Bumgarner Leave a Comment

The May 2021 issue of Choral Journal is online and is a focus on international activities. This issue features an article titled “Building a Foundation: Interviews with
International Exchange Program Conducting Fellows” by T. J. Harper with Jeffery Ames, Jihoon Park, Sara Durkin, Rodrigo Faguaga, Julie Yu, and Ken Wakia.
 You can read it in its entirety at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion from the article.

_________________

What insights have you gained about your country of residence through the ACDA International Conductors Exchange Program?

Jihoon Park: Through my interactions with the American choral conductors, I recognized how valuable and powerful Korea’s music, history, and heritage is. I firmly believe that Korean culture has the ability to bring positivity and light to the world. It is a culture that has depth, and once tapped into, my heritage can provide a non-Korean a special kind of experience. Having cultural interactions between the United States and Korea, I am certain both nations can establish meaningful musical relations.

Jeffery Ames: The country of Korea dealt with several tense occupations (Japanese, Russian, American, and a civil war). The Korean culture knows what it means to experience the joy and pain of the human experience. This can be heard in its music. It’s passionate. It’s filled with emotion. It’s filled with ecstasy. In many ways, I see and hear a correlation between the folk music of Korea and the Negro spiritual. In the same manner of some purely American music, we know how to sing and play about joy and pain. American music is passionate and filled with emotion. It’s amazing to see the connectivity from one culture to others.

Julie Yu: I remember driving by one of the largest slums in Nairobi (the largest urban slum in Africa). My host explained that there are government projects in place to provide support for these people and get them out (some websites estimate the Kibera could have 500,000 to 1 million people living there). I asked why wouldn’t people leave there if they could. He said, they have a complete social structure inside this community. Some don’t want to leave. Many have been born there, raised children, and died there.

I had a major epiphany in that moment. My privilege makes me assume that they would want to leave and are suffering so much, and my god complex makes me immediately want to help and fix. That’s what has stuck with me coming back to the States. I want to make a difference in the world, but it is not my privilege or my wealth that will help me. It is instead understanding that no matter what the circumstances of a community, they will create a social structure to survive, and it is not my job to “fi x it” but to understand it, appreciate it, and learn from it. And through relationships we share musical and artistic experiences that go both ways.

______________

Read the full article in the May 2021 issue of Choral Journal at acda.org/choraljournal

Filed Under: Choral Journal Tagged With: ACDA Membership Benefits, ACDA Publications, Choral Journal, CJ Replay, icep, International Activities, International Initiatives

Kenyan Choral Music, A Recent Historical Perspective

July 30, 2018 by Amanda Bumgarner Leave a Comment

Image via

The following is written by Dale Rieth, 
_________

With all of the recent attention to the International Conductor’s Exchange Program and specifically this year’s pipeline to Kenya, I wanted to share an historical perspective from my own Kenyan research in the 1990’s.  In fact, this article might serve as a “prequel” to today’s musical developments in Kenya and offer an additional perspective by partially filling in the backstory.

Musical Research in Kenya

Musical research in Kenya is a comparatively new phenomenon.  My 1995 doctoral thesis, A Study of Choral Music in Kenya: The Contributions of Its Composers and the Influences of Traditional and Western European Musical Styles , was researched in Kenya under the auspices of a  Fulbright Fellowship. My goal was to research developments in contemporary Kenyan choral music and observe the synthesis of traditional musical styles with Western European compositional processes.  My source material was gathered from the composers themselves, and I compiled their stories via questionnaires as well as gathering examples of their choral compositions.  12 composers were interviewed, and their practical approach to their compositional craft and the writing of music for performance in schools, churches, and festivals, is what has kept their art flourishing.

Their willingness to share their musical and cultural philosophy as well as their music was inspiring, contributing directly to the international community of choral musicians.  These materials were submitted for my doctoral thesis at the University of Cincinnati.  As I now look back, it is unfortunate that there hasn’t been much additional research.  It appears that my paper was one of the first dissertations put on file at the Kenya Information Preservation Society (founded in 1990), which, as their title suggests, is devoted to preserving the cultural heritage of their nation.  The handful of dissertations also on file focus upon specific case studies of acculturation, copyright, text setting, and a history of music/dance competition.  However, there still exists a great need for systematic collection and archiving of the myriad of Kenyan traditional music which admittedly would be an immense undertaking and require coordination by the Kenyan Government.

As a choral musician, I was based in Nairobi where I found the musical scene to be highly energized.  A particularly fertile landscape was that of the Kenya National Music Festival, attended by musical groups from throughout the country.  A logical starting point for this article is to summarize conclusions I had drawn in 1995 about the status of contemporary choral music in Kenya as well as share questions I had posed at the time regarding the future of the choral arts in Kenya.

Research Conclusions

It was determined in 1995 that five distinct genres were being explored by Kenyan choral composers.  Still, the emphasis upon composer training in Kenya has produced a music education system skewed toward Western European influence (as established by British music educators in the 20th century period of colonialism).  However, Kenyan composers have adapted quite readily to syncretic genres (utilization of cross-cultural influences) realizing this may be the only hope for their compositional survival.  For that matter, Kenya has traditionally be open to new ideas, since “Kenya’s strategic location as a migratory pathway has encouraged the process of acceptance and assimilation of cultural traits from outside groups”.1

Traditional musical elements continue to figure prominently in contemporary compositions and although there continues to be traditional categories of music included in the presentations of the annual Kenya Music Festival, Kenyan choral art music (with its traditional elements) is still not included in the National Music Education curriculum.  A key ingredient would be the inclusion of Kenyan choral art music as a formal musical genre at the Kenya Music Festival.  Despite the composers’ embrace of syncretic musical styles, there is a very real danger that Kenya’s indigenous music will be lost by acculturation.

Of special interest is a doctoral dissertation by Duncan Wambugu.  In this document, Dr. Wambugu underscores the importance of inclusion of a music curriculum in the Kenyan National Educational System and specifically, the use of traditional music genres in academic study and performance.  In fact, the incorporation of traditional musical genres could be deemed essential to the health of the nation as music in Kenya is inseparable from life events.  Music is attached to all of life, from birth to rites of passage (adulthood) to death, from planting to harvesting, from times of war to times of peace.  Choral music continues to be ubiquitous in Kenyan society with the formation and continued participation of choral groups in branches of government, private enterprise, music clubs and organizations, churches and other religious organizations, and of course schools.

The Future

Most obvious is the need for a systematic and standardized approach to preservation and analysis of Kenyan choral music.  An ideal project for the future would be the initiation of a “Kenyan National Songbook” in the same manner as the “African Textbook Project” envisioned in 1969 by the International Library of African Music (Roodepoort, South Africa): “Under the ILAM’s supervision, research teams in the field were to initiate and record audio and video performances of music and dance, transfer the recordings to a processing team for transcription and analysis, and publish and archive the results.  Ultimately an anthology was to be distributed to all participants.”2  With or without such a document, the process of recording, transcribing, cataloging, and archiving of indigenous music (the result of field research as well as witnessing performances at the Kenya Music Festival) would prove very fruitful for the composers of Kenyan and to musical life in general.  Duncan Wambugu also argues for a universal format which would be practical and accessible on a global scale, concluding that, “(Kenyan choral) Art music would therefore be an ideal platform”.3

The Kenyan musical scene is energized and continues to display an attitude of optimism.  There is progress in the quantity and quality of musical organizations and performance level, and as Kenyan composers continue to rely on their musical instincts, their output will continue to reflect the depth of their cultural heritage, and their music will truly speak of Africa.

____________

In my intention to turn this subject into an open forum for choral musicians, I welcome submissions to these sample questions for those who have visited Kenya in their quest to learn more:

  • What were you seeking to discover in your travels to Kenya?
  • Did your original mission statement transform upon arrival in the country?
  • Were you able to accomplish your original objectives?
  • Did you encounter barriers to research-gathering?
  • Did you find your local contacts to be supportive of your work?
  • In what way did you apply the results of your research upon your return home?
  • Do you have any future plans to continue your research?

These and more specific inquiries would appear to be useful in charting a future course for research of Kenyan choral music.

* * *
1Dale Rieth, A Study of Choral Music in Kenya: The Contributions of Its Composers and the Influences of Traditional and Western European Musical Styles (Doctoral thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1997): 87.
2Ibid., 162.
3Duncan Wambugu, Kenyan Art Music in Kenya’s High School General Music Curriculum: A Rationale for Folk-Song Based Choral Music (Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, 2012): 131.

 

Filed Under: From Our Readers, International Initiatives Tagged With: icep, international, International Initiatives, Kenya

Using MUSICA to Develop a Themed Program by Jean Sturm and John Warren

April 1, 2017 by T.J. Harper Leave a Comment

The benefits of using a comprehensive database specialized in choral music such as Musica are great when one conceives of a themed concert program. One discovers unexpected jewels and many more options than can be found with other search engines. Musica is a database of only choral music with 172,000 records monitored by choral conductors and music librarians. Records include up to 100 types of information – composer, author, instrumentation, voicing, difficulty, genre, and on and on. And this immense and valuable resource is available and free for all ACDA members.

Members of ACDA go to the “Membership Resources” of the ACDA website (www.acda.org). Once you have logged in, click on the MUSICA logo and benefit from the entire website of Musica, with unrestricted privileges. If one is not an ACDA member, you can still access Musica at www.musicanet.org and create a personal account.

DESIGNING A CHORAL PROGRAM ENTITLED

ALONG THE MYTHICAL RIVERS

A first, let’s search simply for the keyword “river”, by using the field “Keywords, words of title…“ of the “Quick search form” on the homepage. 1485 answers appear, an overwhelming number. But by just looking at the first 10 titles you find interesting answers: “By the Rivers of Babylon” and “Deep River” would certainly be solid candidates for our program.

However, you may only want songs in English.

Therefore, let’s click on the button “More criteria for a more precise search”. Again input the search criterion “river” in the field “Words of title or Keywords or…” and the word “English” in the field “Language (main or adaptation). This search selects 552 answers. In the first few answers, you find “Dream Land starting with the words “Where sunless rivers weep” by Ivo Antognini, perhaps an unexpected or unknown title that could bring some originality to the program. By clicking on “Details”, you find an image of the score, the full text and a video of a good performance.

By going back to the folder of the list of results, one sees other interesting titles like “Way down upon the Swanee River.”

But let’s refine the search by limiting the results to “mixed” choirs. For this, with the “Back” arrow of the browser, one comes back to the search form, in which one can select the “Type of choir” “mixed”. The list ends now with 359 answers, and going until page 3, one finds titles like “Shenandoah” or “Le Pont Mirabeau”, by French Canadian composer Lionel Daunais, with an English adaptation of the poem of Guillaume Apollinaire.

Without being very specific at all, we already have 6 possible titles, with videos, texts, translations, and even pronunciation of the text, if needed.

One could of course have arrived to this state in one single step by putting all the criteria at once in the search form. For instance we could replace the search criterion “river” by the names of given rivers, and find some interesting results:

– Mississipi          many arrangements of Ol’ Man River

– Missouri             Cross the Wide Missouri, Shenandoah

– Volga                     Yo, heave ho, Volga Boatmen, plus many more answers if one removes the language as English

– Rhine                    Loreley (many answers if one removes the language criterion)

– Euphrates          Babylon (and a lot more by searching for “Babylon” and even “Super Flumina Babylonis” without the language criterion

– Jordan                  109 answers including Deep River, On Jordan’s Bank, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

– Danube               On Danube’s Border (Johannes Brahms), plus varying arrangements of the Blue Danube if the language criterion is removed

– Rio Grande        The Rio Grande

– Loire                      C’est la Petit’ Fille Du Prince, by Francis Poulenc (Sus bord de Loire…), with an English adaptation.

You can imagine related searches such as “water” which might yield Eric Whitacre’s Water Night or arrangements of Wade in the Water.

Searching in Musica brings unlimited possibilities, and is so much more specific to what we do and what we need to find.

Here is a sample program created by Musica founder Jean Sturm, which included projected photos of the appropriate rivers.

EN MUSIQUE L’AN NEUF 2007 (Music for the New Year 2007)

le long des fleuves mythiques (Along the Mythical Rivers)

« du Mississipi à la Volga » (from the Mississippi to the Volga)

Mississipi

L’alligator                                          Jean Gauffriau (b. 1931 – France)

Text by Robert Desnos (1900-1945 – France)

Missouri

O Shenandoah                                 James Erb (b. 1926 – USA)

Loire

C’est la petite fille du prince                    Francis Poulenc (1899-1963 – France)

(Sus l’bord de Loire)

Seine

Le pont Mirabeau                            Lionel Daunais (1902-1982 – Canada)

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918 – France)

Rhine

Loreley                                               Friedrich Silcher (1789-1860 – Germany)

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856 – Germany)

Volga

Chant des haleurs de la Volga     Gunter Erdmann (1939-1996 – Germany)

(Russie)

Danube

Le beau Danube bleu                                 Johann Strauss (1825-1899 – Austria)

Tigris and Euphrates

Etant assis aux rives aquatiques            Claude Goudimel (1514-1572 – France)

(Ps. 137)                                             Clément Marot (1496-1544 – France)

An Wasserflüssen Babylon                      Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630 – Germany)

Jordan

Swing Low                                         Matthias Becker (b. 1956 – Germany)

Va pensiero  (Nabucco)                   Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901 – Italy)

Filed Under: International Initiatives Tagged With: ACDA, icep, international, Musica, programming, Repertoire

Reaching a Global Audience – Deke Sharon

February 26, 2017 by T.J. Harper 1 Comment

Reaching a global audience, by Deke Sharon

Since the beginning of recorded history until the advent of recording, music was local, as sound waves could only travel as far as the breeze would carry them. Recordings and radio waves allowed music to travel through space and time, but recording and distribution was an expensive process, and there were only a limited number of radio stations. Only those with a record deal or invitation to perform on a broadcast were able to have their music heard elsewhere.

We live in a brave new musical world in which the effective cost of recording and distribution are so low as to be negligible in most cases. Billboard charting albums are recorded on laptops using digital recording technology that allows for endless number of tracks and takes, and if anything isn’t perfect, notes and rhythms can be nudged and pitched into place. As for distribution, iTunes and YouTube have taken the place of physical recordings, allowing anyone to upload their music at no cost, where it can be seen and heard by anyone on the globe with access to the internet.

The a cappella community in particular has benefitted greatly from these advances. Straight No Chaser were discovered by Atlantic Records after a video of theirs went viral, now they’re international recording and touring stars with two gold records and a fan base most rock bands could only dream about. Collegiate a cappella ensembles now release recordings that are of a quality unimaginable only a decade ago, with fans worldwide eagerly awaiting their newest album and videos. Pentatonix has used technology especially well, graduating from simple iPhone videos to award-winning music videos; they’ve had such success that they have more subscribers on YouTube than Beyonce. Other groups, such as Home Free, have found an audience where one never existed, being the first a cappella country band.

The benefits have reached traditional choral music as well. Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choirs have seen tremendous success online, catapulting him to celebrity status (who was the last choral composer to have that kind of popular recognition?). The PS22 chorus has several viral videos and a significant following, having inspired middle school music teachers around the globe. From gospel choirs to barbershop quartets, the internet is full of vocal harmony, and the results have been a boon to educators who are seeing increased enrollment, and to students who are finding inspiration.

Reading this, you may think “well, what about me and my chorus? How do we benefit?” You can use the internet initially to:

* Find new ideas for your group, from repertoire to look and staging

* Listen to different performances of songs you will be performing, to help hone your vision for your performance

* Use great online performances to excite your singers

* Use less effective performances as an opportunity to learn and critique

…and once your group is performing to your standards

* Capture concert video and upload to the internet for archival purposes

* Take live audio recordings and make them available for sale online (companies like loudr.com can handle clearance)

* Consider making a simple, fun “behind the scenes” video of rehearsals to attract more members

* Create a vlog (video log) of any tours, so your families and fans back home can keep up with you daily

Finally, when you have the right song that sounds great and captures the essence of your group, consider spending some money and making a professional video. The money that in times past you might have put in to making an album is better spent on video nowadays, as it’s a more immediate, compelling record of your group’s creativity and craft. Recordings only present part of your group’s character and charisma, as an audience needs to see singers’ faces to be fully transformed by vocal harmony.

The international scope of our current digital musical landscape need not be daunting. The world’s great choral music has never been closer at hand, for you and your singers. Listen, learn, and in time add your own voices to the rich tapestry of singing online. The benefits to listeners and viewers worldwide – now and in future generations – are greater than ever before. The increase in number of singers, recordings and videos has an impact, as the world over time, slowly but surely, is becoming a more harmonious place.

Deke Sharon is considered “the father of contemporary a cappella.” For more please visit: http://www.dekesharon.com

Filed Under: International Initiatives Tagged With: ACDA, Deke Sharon, icep, International Initiatives

Thinking Beyond Borders – Dr. Joshua Habermann

February 19, 2017 by T.J. Harper 1 Comment

Thinking beyond borders

Every family has its lore- the stories that are told and retold at family gatherings. One of my parents’ favorites is how, when asked what I wanted for my 5th birthday, I told my mother in total earnestness that I wanted a passport and an atlas. To her credit she got me exactly what I asked for, and though the passport lived in a drawer, the atlas was put to immediate use. I loved to open it at random and read the exotic names, imagining future journeys.

Upon reaching sixth grade we had the option to study either Spanish or French, and living in California Spanish seemed the logical choice. I took to the task happily, and discovered an affinity for it. By high school, I had added night classes at the local German cultural center, and attempted broken conversations with the old Italian ladies who were the most colorful residents of my San Francisco neighborhood.

Where this fascination with languages came from was a mystery to everyone. No one in my family had spoken anything but English for generations, but my relatives nonetheless gamely encouraged my obsession. When in 9th grade my school offered an opportunity for Spanish students to participate in a summer exchange program, they weighed the costs with the mounting grocery bills required to keep me fed, and realized that shipping me overseas could be good not only for my education but also for the family budget.

We were to have no control over the country- we were guaranteed only that it would be Spanish-speaking, There was something in the randomness that appealed to me. It reminded me of cracking open my atlas and dreaming, so I rolled the dice and off I went to Santiago, Chile in the summer of 1983.

I was placed with a local family living in a modest area of the city, and had three host brothers around my age for company. Chile was ruled at the time by Augusto Pinochet, who had seized power in a US-backed military coup in 1973. As the tenth anniversary of the coup approached, frustrated protestors took to the streets, erecting barricades of flaming tires and banging pots and pans until the army was sent in to quell the uprising. Classes at the schools were cancelled and a curfew went into effect, enforced by machine gun-wielding teenagers scarcely older than me.

For a kid from California this was all quite new, but my host family took all of it in stride. It was clear that this was part of daily life there, and they courageously managed their jobs and the ordinary tasks of living in an environment that seemed to me to be anything but ordinary. Experiences like this in our tender teenage years can be intense, and in a very short time I felt a part of their lives, and they a part of mine.

A brief month later I was back home, but the experience had broken my world open. So much that had previously been taken for granted in my 14 years was now in question. Where and how I lived, what I could expect from the world- these were no longer a given. There were people, not imagined or studied about but real live people that I knew and loved, living in entirely different circumstances from my own. I had been intellectually aware of this basic truth, but living it, however briefly, was something else altogether.

Though I could not have expressed it then, with the benefit of hindsight it seems that the lesson I was learning was empathy- a sense of solidarity not with my cohorts, but with people whose circumstances differed significantly from my own. By the end of my stay the connection we felt was real, and I cried tears of sorrow to leave them.

With the enthusiasm of youth I embraced the study of international relations, and especially languages. In the following summers I participated in exchanges in Spain, and Sweden, and then I cracked the atlas again and spent my freshman year of college in Switzerland before landing at Georgetown University. I entered GU with the expectation that I’d end up like so many graduates in interpreting or the foreign service. As fate would have it this was not to be.

I had always loved music and singing, and participated enthusiastically until my voice changed and I went from being a soprano to an awkward baritone who had only three notes, but never the same ones from day to day. With my growing interest in languages and the change of schools, I drifted away from music until as a junior in high school my best friend suggested that I join the choir.

By this time I had developed a taste for singer-songwriters, and I was listening to Billy Joel and Simon and Garfunkel on a new technology called compact discs. But also the Beethoven symphonies, which I would play at a volume sufficient to announce my musical tastes to the neighborhood. So when my friend suggested that I try the choir it didn’t seem like such a stretch- after all I loved music and I loved words, and choir had both.

Regular trips to Tower Records led to a broadening music collection, most often whatever was in the bargain cassette bin, but sometimes a splurge like the Strauss Four Last Songs on CD. By college I had listened to that recording a hundred times, and loved the poetry, especially Hermann Hesse’s lines, which helped revive my rusty German skills.

One wintry day during my senior year of college I raced my bicycle to class in half the time it normally took as I pedaled furiously to keep from freezing. All the while I had the Strauss songs playing on my Walkman cassette player, and arriving early for class I settled outside the classroom with an unexpected moment to warm up and wait for class to begin. As I looked out over the landscape and listened something miraculous happened. The music that I knew so well was somehow suddenly entirely new, and the beauty of music grabbed me at a visceral level, announcing itself in feelings too big to be ignored. Something new was afoot, and a seed was planted that would eventually grow into a career in music.

Of course one’s path is much easier to see in hindsight, and though I can track the decision to pursue music to that winter day, things moved in a less than linear way. There was another trip abroad, this time to teach English in Thailand, and one year teaching high school Spanish back in California. All the while, though, I was quietly preparing for a return to school to pursue music. This meant getting into the best choir I could, and upon returning home I auditioned for the San Francisco Symphony Chorus.

As one of the nation’s most active symphony choruses, we used to say that the SFSC sings enough masses and requiems to marry and bury the entire state of California. For me it was the perfect opportunity to learn a craft, and also to make up for lost time as I expected to compete for admittance to grad school programs with students with proper music degrees, which I did not have. From my very first season I was as happy as a pig in a sty, devouring music just as fast as I could with each rehearsal.

In December of my first season, despite my height I was placed, whether by accident or fate, in the front row of the choir. We were singing the Christmas Cantata of Honegger. At a certain moment there is a great gathering of energy, and then the full forces- adult choir, children’s choir, orchestra and organ- all let go in a joyous pealing of carols, and from my position in the front I could hear it all. The sound was enormous, and I remember with absolute clarity an oceanic feeling sweeping through me as the boundaries that seemed to separate us fell away, banished by euphoria. Here again was empathy, in new clothing, but working its magic just as it had some ten years before. I was hooked.

Now, all these years later I am still all in. As with any relationship, over time the giddiness of the new has been replaced with a deep-seated and enduring appreciation. The daily work of coming together to make music with others can be ennobling or frustrating, but on any given day, whether in rehearsal or performance, I know that experience that first hooked me is just around the corner, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. We cannot control it, only invite that it come, and when it does we find ourselves, in C.S. Lewis’ words, surprised by joy.

A wonderful teacher and friend said once that the most basic choice in life is between love and fear. As I’ve reflected on that over the years I’ve come to the idea that it’s true, and that the choice isn’t always obvious. Choosing love might not be easy. It can involve speaking a difficult truth, or having the courage to be who you are without apology. It can involve public and private failure, imperfection, and vulnerability that is not always comfortable. This is no Hallmark card sentiment, but a courageous embracing of life’s challenges and a fierce rejection of all that would shrink and limit us.

For those people who want to be liked (I am one) this can be hard. Playing it safe on the other hand can be very attractive, and is often well-compensated both socially and professionally. Fear, clothing itself in reasonableness, offers an enticing siren song, and we drape it around ourselves more often than we realize. But here’s the problem: fear is incompatible with great music.

It is a basic human need to belong to something bigger than ourselves. That need can be filled in a variety of ways: family, friends, or membership in spiritual communities or civic organizations. Even allegiance to a sports team can open a door to an experience of purpose and meaning. For me and many like me it is music’s power that offers the most direct route.

I am reminded of this fact every Monday night as 200 singers from all over North Texas come together for Dallas Symphony Chorus rehearsals. These are people of differing backgrounds, faiths, ages, and life experiences, yet when we sing together we are one body, united in a common purpose. Every choral musician can describe those moments of grace when everything is open and flowing, paraphrasing Beethoven’s words, from one heart to another. Here again is empathy- the breaking of boundaries and the experience of “we.”

That these ecstatic moments are rare and fleeting does nothing to diminish their power. When we look into another’s eyes and find not “the other,” but ourselves reflected back, the curtain of separateness is drawn back and we catch a glimpse of our true nature, of the joy that is our rightful inheritance. The Persian mystic Hafiz captures this well:

Where does real poetry come from?

From the amorous sighs in this moist dark

When making love with form or spirit.

Where does poetry live?

In the eye that says “Wow wee”

In the overpowering felt splendor

Every sane mind knows

When it realizes – our life dance

Is only for a few magic seconds,

 

From the heart saying, shouting

“I am so damn alive.”

It is our human nature to live this love and fear battle anew every day. Both will enter our lives whether we invite them or not, and external and societal forces will play out this same drama. We should expect not a linear progression, but a cycle of steps forward and reversals that will frustrate even the most steadfast among us.

In these moments we have a choice to make. Fear will beckon seductively, inviting us to wall ourselves in communities of the like-minded, demonizing “the other.” Clothed in righteousness we can rain down intolerance on the intolerant, and the cycle of fear will continue. Or we can walk the narrow path of love, and do the hard work of finding common cause, even with those in the thrall of fear.

If choral music has taught me anything, it is that empathy beyond all borders is the only way forward. Let’s get to work.

Joshua Habermann

Conductor, Dallas Symphony Chorus

Music Director, Santa Fe Desert Chorale

Filed Under: International Initiatives, Others Tagged With: ACDA, Beyond Borders, icep, international, Joshua Habermann

ICEP of the Americas – Inspiración y Colaboración

January 22, 2017 by T.J. Harper Leave a Comment

2017 ICEP OF THE AMERICAS: 

30 Conductors, 7 Countries, Limitless Possibilities

The February 2017 ACDA Choral Journal features the current ICEP Conducting Fellows from the United States and South America. These conductors represent not only the future of choral music in their respective countries, they are the standard-bearers for the next generation of choral musicians. A new generation of trailblazers who value scholarship, education, mentorship, and service as cornerstones of our ever-evolving profession.

At the heart of any exchange are the amazing individuals who donate countless hours of service to administer these programs. For the 2017 ICEP of the Americas, ACDA has been fortunate to collaborate with outstanding choral leaders from South America who have supervised all aspects of this year’s ICEP exchange in their own respective countries. ACDA recognizes our partners from South America who continue to champion the choral music profession as they create opportunities for the next generation of leaders from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, and Uruguay.

Eduardo Lakshevitz – ICEP Coordinator for Brazil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oscar Escalada – ICEP Coordinator for Argentina and Uruguay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Ramirez & Dr. Bill Belan – ICEP Coordinator for Costa Rica and Guatemala

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jorge Cózatl – ICEP Coordinator for Mexico

 

 

 

 

 

 

And just in case you missed article in the February 2017 Choral Journal or the recent postings on the ICEP Facebook Page, here is the list of outstanding group of 2017 ICEP Conducting Fellows:

UNITED STATES

Dr. Alan Stevens, Dr. Arian Khaefi, Dr. Bradley Miller, Dr. Caron Daley, Dr. Jose ‘Peppie’ Calvar, Joseph Osowski, Dr. Matthew Erpelding, Dr. Nicholaus Cummins, Dr. Nicolas Dosman, Dr. Paul Hondorp, Dr. Phillip Shoultz, Sara Durkin, Dr. Sherrill Blodget, Dr. Trent Brown, Dr. Wendy Moy

SOUTH AMERICA

Ana Laura Rey (Uruguay), Camilo Santostefano (Argentina), Emiliano Linares (Argentina), Rodrigo Faguaga (Uruguay), Santiago Serna (Argentina), Virginia Bono (Argentina), Bianca Malafaia (Brazil), Eduardo Nobrega (Brazil), Jose Alberto Corulli (Brazi), Tarik Bispo (Brazil), Abraham Tinoco (Mexico), Julio Morales (Mexico), Fabian Vargas Castillo (Costa Rica), Susan Hernandez Oses (Costa Rica), Dulce Maria Santos (Guatemala)

If you are interested in learning more about the International Conductors Exchange Program or how to become involved with the conductor exchange in 2017, please contact Dr. T. J. Harper, Chair of the ACDA Standing Committee on International Activities: . Please consider joining our ICEP group on Facebook or the ICEP Choralnet Community (choralnet.org/home/280632) for the latest news and information about the upcoming exchanges.

Filed Under: International Initiatives Tagged With: ACDA, ACDA4LIFE, icep, ICEP of the Americas, South America, tim sharp, tj harper

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