CHORAL/ VOCAL PROGRAM
Dr. Robert Istad Director of Choral Studies
Dr. Christopher Peterson Choral Music Education/ Choirs
Recent performances and recordings include: 2018 Performance at ACDA Western Division Conference, 2018 Performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, and with Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 2017 recording with Yarlung Records, 2016 Recording with John Williams for Sony Classical, 2016 Performance with Kathleen Battle, 2015 ChoralOrchestral Performances in Paris, France. Recent repertoire highlights: Mahler Eighth Symphony, Lang The Little Match Girl Passion, Mendelssohn Elijah, Bernstein Chichester Psalms, Howells Requiem, Bach St. John Passion, Händel Israel in Egypt, Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms, Lauridsen Lux Aeterna. Annual performances: the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, and Andrea Bocelli at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and major arenas. Annual performance tours: including, Spain, Scandinavia, the Baltics, Russia, New York City, Paris/ Northern France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Australia. Annual, fully-staged operatic productions with orchestra. Distinguished alumni: Deborah Voigt, Rod Gilfry, Charles Castronovo, Rene Tatum, Jubilant Sykes, and Christopher Job. Graduates from our Master of Music in Choral Conducting program are successfully conducting performances with collegiate ensembles, professional choruses and orchestras, and opera companies throughout the world. M.M. Choral Conducting graduates gain real-world experience leading performances with CSUF’s awardwinning choirs, orchestra, and opera theater program. 100% employment rate for choral music education graduates. Students perform, rehearse, and record in the superb, astonishing acoustics of Meng Concert Hall.
music.fullerton.edu 2 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
California Choral Directors Association
5 | A FRESH START from the president’s pen · by rob istad 8 | A CHOIR ROOM OF ONE’S OWN thoughts on women in choral music · by eliza rubenstein 17 | WHAT ARE WE TEACHING? the composer’s voice · by dale trumbore 18 | REMEMBERING AL TALBERG by jonathan talberg
19 | ACDA NATIONAL CONFERENCE 20 | PHOTOS FROM ECCO 2018 22 | 2019 CCDA STATE CONFERENCE 24 | VISION FOR THE FUTURE scholarship fund donors
26 | TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE honor choir updates · by molly peters 28 | NEWS AND NOTES happenings from around the state
31 | TOP FIVE: CHILDREN’S CHOIRS by kim nason
32 | TOP FIVE: WOMEN’S CHOIRS by tina peterson
35 | TOP FIVE: TWO-YEAR COLLEGES by arlie langager
School’s back in session, and you know what that means: More caffeine required, and more GREAT CCDA and ACDA opportunities ahead!
36 | TOP FIVE: VOCAL JAZZ by michelle hawkins
38 | CALIFORNIA ACDA DIRECTORY
Leading the Way
Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 3
CANTATE Volume 31, Number 1
Official publication of the California Choral Directors Association, an Affiliate of the American Choral Directors Association Eliza Rubenstein, editor cantate.editor@gmail.com GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS We welcome and encourage CCDA members to contribute articles, announcements, music and book reviews, job vacancy listings, photographs, and other items of interest to Cantate! Please send queries and article ideas to You are also welcome to submit completed articles, but please note that not all articles received will be published. cantate.editor@gmail.com.
Deadlines for publication are as follows: August 15 (Fall issue); November 1 (Winter issue); March 1 (Spring issue).
Our vision connecting and enriching all Californians through choral music Our mission California Choral Directors Association empowers choral musicians to create transformative experiences for California’s diverse communities. Our values Artistry Advocacy Connectedness Music Education Inclusivity & Diversity Professional Development & Lifelong Learning
CCDA is a 501(c)3 non-profit, tax-exempt corporation and an affiliate of the American Choral Directors Association.
The editor reserves the right to edit all submissions.
UPCOMING EVENTS ADVERTISING IN CANTATE Please visit our website (www.acdacal.org) or e-mail us at cantate.ads@gmail.com for complete information on advertising in Cantate, including rates, deadlines, and graphics specifications. Advertisements are subject to editorial approval. On the cover: Andrew Ball, Sarah Hughes, and Scot Hanna-Weir are all smiles at the Greekthemed party at the 2018 Summer Conference at ECCO. Photo by Eliza Rubenstein.
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ACDA National Conference February 27-March 2, 2019 (Kansas City, MO) CCDA State Conference March 14-16, 2019 (San Jose) CCDA Summer Conference at ECCO July 21-14, 2019 (Oakhurst)
California Choral Directors Association
From The president’s pen:
A FRESH START he beginning of the year is upon us! I cherish this annual opportunity to T improve, organize myself in new ways, and
Robert Istad is the Artistic Director of Pacific Chorale. Istad is also
Professor of
Music and Director of Choral Studies at California
State University,
Fullerton, where he was recognized as
CSUF’s
2016 Outstanding Professor of the Year. He is Dean of Chorus America’s Academy for Conductors, and has prepared choruses for a number of
America’s
finest conductors and orchestras.
better inspire the people who choose to make music with me. This year, I am more cognizant of my role as a connector in my community. I dream of a day when my entire community sings together. Music has an ability to bring people together in spite of their differences, and I am keenly aware of my responsibility to create connected experiences for them. In Southern California, our community includes millions of people living in hundreds of cities and townships. The population is one of the most diverse in the world, yet our choruses and audiences trend otherwise. How do we open choral music to embrace this radical diversity? How can we address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in our communities in a meaningful way? I currently serve on the board of directors of Chorus America, and we are working diligently to address this challenge. In a letter this summer, Chorus America’s President and CEO Catherine Dehoney stated, “In order to truly serve our communities, we must make progress in addressing the underrepresentation of people of color in our organizations and audiences....The moral imperative to address the effects of historical and systemic racism intersects with the rapid change in demographics of our communities, which intersects with issues of choral music’s cultural relevance, which intersects with how we engage audiences and grow our organizations for the future.” If we lose relevance, we also lose our ability to reach people.
s CCDA members, we understand choral music’s power to unify, educate, A and edify, but we must show all Californians
the positive impact it can have on their lives and the lives of their children. I believe that singing and choral music in particular is more uniquely positioned to embrace radical diversity than any other classical art form. Singing lives in the cultural core of every ethnic community, and we can connect with those powerful singing traditions to invigorate choral music for the next generation. I saw this spirit firsthand at the 2018
Leading the Way
Chorus America conference, hosted by the awesomely inspiring Chicago Children’s Choir. CCC is a massively successful organization that serves over 4,800 youth in all 57 Chicago zip codes. (Chicago is one of our nation’s most racially segregated cities.) They support choirs in 85 schools and 10 neighborhood community centers in addition to a graded program of auditioned ensembles downtown Chicago. I wept with joy to see that incredibly diverse body of young people perform John Legend’s “Glory” immediately following a perfect performance of Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria.” CCC understands that reaching out means more than teaching young people musicianship skill and repertoire from the “canon” of Western European music (which they also do incredibly well). CCC connects with youth using familiar musical language first, and connects that style to other music and musicianship training via a collage approach. The result: CCC singers become exemplary musicians with a deep understanding of their important role as global citizens. It is a model that should inspire us all. This year, I will choose to make my season renewal effort one of openness and welcome. I will select repertoire that better reflects my community, and strive to make the Western European Music I love more relatable to all. I will actively advertise ensemble auditions to lesser-served areas of my community, and I will create an audition process that honors a commitment to increased DEI. My colleagues and I will find ways to move outside of our comfort zones—and concert halls—to bring choral music’s powerful message of unity to a broader swath of the cities we call home. I hope that you’ll join me in this effort, and I hope to see you at our CCDA events this year. Your board of directors has been working hard to more clearly reflect the incredible diversity of California in our programs. Come be refreshed at our annual conferences, encourage your students to apply for our honor choirs, invite colleagues to join CCDA during our fall member drive, and use our network to connect with conductor-educators in your city to share ideas and support one another. May you have an inspiring, successful year making music with people you love. Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 5
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California Choral Directors Association
Leading the Way
Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 7
r i o h C
A Room
of
O
V
Adapted from a keynote address given at CSU-L 8 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
California Choral Directors Association
One’s Own by Eliza Rubenstein
“B
ut, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what has that got to do with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain.” Do you recognize the quotation? It’s the first line of Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own, a book that has transcended paper and ink to become a living presence in my life since I first read it at age 15. It’s a small book—a hundred or so pages long, with large type and wide margins—assembled from a series of lectures that Woolf was invited to give at two women’s colleges in England in 1928. Three summers ago, on a choir tour with my women’s chorus, a group of us visited one of those colleges and stood in the room where Woolf gave one of her talks, and in the hall where she ate one of the lunches she wrote about in them; it was a pilgrimage for me, and as I prepared to give my own talk (not about women and fiction, but about women and music) this past July to the summertime graduate students at CSU-LA, I turned first to Virginia for inspiration. Frankly, that was a dumb move. She was a thinker and writer of intimidating brilliance, so I briefly considered whether I could conscientiously collect my paycheck if I just stood and read her entire book to the grad-student audience instead of writing an obviously and dramatically inferior version of my own. That seemed unsporting, though, so I decided I’d settle for standing on Virginia’s shoulders, as I’d done so often before, and delivering a talk on the topic of “women and music” that perhaps had less than expected to do, ostensibly, with music.
LA’s 2018 “Elevating Women in Music” Festival Leading the Way
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For those who haven’t read A Room of One’s Own, it follows the author’s thoughts and perambulations as she visits a men’s college and a women’s college, musing about what to say on the topic of women and fiction-writing, only to be turned away from library after library by regretful attendants who explain that women aren’t allowed inside without a man accompanying them, or to enjoy a sumptuous lunch at the men’s college followed by a lousy one at the women’s college thanks to its lack of funding. She cannot speak about women and fiction, she concludes, if she cannot speak about women and independence, women and money, women and free time. Women will never regularly write fiction, she says, until they have rooms of their own and 500 pounds a year. If you calculate the inflation and the exchange rate, that’s about $40,000 in today’s money. She wasn’t asking for wealth—just for security. She wasn’t asking for an estate—just a room. When Woolf gave her lectures, women in England had been legally allowed to have financial assets of their own for less than half a century. Most had no opportunity to earn money to begin with, because a woman’s job was generally to birth and raise children, and to manage the affairs of a home in which she almost certainly had no room of her own. If she did earn any sort of pay, it was, by law, up to her husband to decide on its dispensation. Women had no money to start businesses, or to leave to their daughters, or to build libraries and endow scholarships at women’s colleges, or to invest in any consequential way in the affairs of the world.
B
ut what does that have to do with novels, or music, for that matter? “Fiction,” Woolf writes, “imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners….these webs are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.” Essentially, she’s saying that the “pure artist’s life” is, itself, a fiction. We know this all too well, even though it’s still tempting to think of music and the other creative arts as passions that exist outside the mundane world of paychecks and phone bills and rent. But let’s be honest: The history of the Classical Era would read very differently if Haydn hadn’t been so amenable to working for the Esterhazys or if Mozart had been better suited to taking orders. Charles Ives wouldn’t
10 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
have been free to write some of the most interesting and iconoclastic music of the 20th century if he hadn’t been making a comfortable living as an insurance agent by day. The conversations we have with our students would be much different if we could tell them to follow their dreams blithely without worrying about paying off their student loans. Financial stability buys survival; it buys the ability to take risks; it leaves more of our attention available for creativity because less of it is lost to anxiety. The starving-artist stereotype is durable and romantic, but in the end it’s often just sad. The ravages of poverty and poor health gave us a great story about the final years of Mozart’s life, but wouldn’t we rather have had thirty or forty more years’ worth of his music? And we don’t—can’t—know how many Mozarts, or almost-Mozarts, we’ve lost to history because their circumstances never allowed them the space and security in which creativity can flourish. One of the most famous passages of A Room of One’s Own is the one in which Woolf imagines a sister for William Shakespeare. She names her Judith, and she asks us to suppose that Judith was born with the same raw talent as her brother, but that while he went to school and began shaping the rich and varied world around him into words, she stayed home and was interrupted each time she tried to read a book, because there were stockings to mend or stew to stir. Woolf imagines Judith married off by her father to a man she doesn’t love, and laughed out of the local theater when she shows up and says she wants to act. In the end, she imagines her dead of suicide out of frustration and shame, buried in a spot no one recognizes or visits. There never was a Judith Shakespeare. She’s an imaginary though completely plausible character Virginia Woolf created to demonstrate that talent without resources and support is a near-useless commodity, a seed without soil or water or sun. In the music world, though, we don’t need to create a fictional sister for a historic genius; we already have a real-life Judith Shakespeare. We know her name: Fanny Mendelssohn. Most musicians know Fanny today as an adjunct to her much more famous brother, but most probably don’t know that when Fanny and Felix were both music students, at least one of their teachers identified her as the more gifted of the two. Carl Friedrich Zelter, their composition instructor in Berlin, wrote in a letter that their father, Abraham Mendelssohn, had “adorable children, and his oldest daughter could give you some-
California Choral Directors Association
thing of Sebastian Bach. This child is really something special.” Speaking of her accomplishment as a pianist, he paid her what must have been a very high compliment indeed: “She plays like a man.” No one doubted Fanny’s talent, but the two men closest to her—her father and her brother—both discouraged her from pursuing music as anything but a hobby. Abraham Mendelssohn reminded her more than once that while Felix had the option of making music his career, it could never be anything more than an “ornament” for Fanny. Felix adored his sister and supported her passion for composition, but he doesn’t seem to have questioned the conventional wisdom that said that it was a job for men. “From my knowledge of Fanny,” he wrote, “I should say that she has neither inclination nor vocation for authorship. She is too much all that a woman ought to be for this. She regulates her house, and thinks neither of the public nor of the musical world, nor even of music at all, until her first duties are fulfilled.” Fanny wrote more than 400 musical works in her brief career, but the ones that got the most attention in her lifetime were published under her brother’s name. She didn’t kill herself like Judith Shakespeare, but she did die young, while rehearsing one of her brother’s oratorios. It’s a tragic story, but there are no villains in it; that’s part of the tragedy. Fanny Mendelssohn wasn’t held back by men who hated her. She was held back by men who loved her dearly. It’s difficult to hold too much of a grudge against Felix or Abraham Mendelssohn when their only crime was not being significantly more enlightened than just about every other man living in their era. By the standards of the time, they were probably considerably less sexist than average— remember, Fanny got to go to music school alongside her brother, which is surely more than she’d have been allowed in many families. But this is where Virginia Woolf ’s voice comes back to us to say what Abraham and Felix didn’t understand, and what we still sometimes resist today: “Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for.” Passion is a beautiful thing, hobbies are liberating in their own ways, and I’d certainly never suggest that it’s impossible to create great art on a volunteer basis. But large-scale change doesn’t happen without the legitimacy that economic power and professional respect confer. Individual geniuses working in isolated obscurity are important to history and art. But they are not, sadly, indicators of progress.
Leading the Way
hen what, exactly, does progress look like, and T what is our responsibility to it? What do we do with the Fanny Mendelssohns in our history, and the
potential Judith Shakespeares in our present? How do we reckon with our past and shape our future, and why does it matter that we do so? We ought to acknowledge, first, that we’ve come a long way. Today, parents who tell their daughters that composing or conducting is a man’s job are a minority, even if they’re not entirely extinct, and being a woman almost certainly won’t keep you out of music school or disqualify you for a job. All of us can name outstanding female composers and conductors, and most of us have probably programmed music by the former and worked alongside the latter. Let’s give ourselves and our field some credit for the progress we’ve already made, and let’s talk about where we go from here. How many of us can say that the majority of our (non-major-work) programs include the music of at least one female composer? Most of us, probably, and that wouldn’t have been the case even twenty years ago. How many of us have programmed a concert of works exclusively by female composers? Many, surely. How about a program that just happened to have more works by women than by men, without calling attention to that fact? Perhaps that’s the next frontier. As a professional, we’ve gradually grown accustomed to including one or two pieces by women (or people of color) on a typical choral program, but if the scale tips much farther than that, some of us get uneasy. I’m reminded of the work of Nikole Hannah-Jones, who studies the demographics of public education, and who found through her rather startling research that when white parents in Brooklyn said they wanted “diversity” in their children’s schools, what they really meant was that they wanted 85 to 90 percent of their child’s class to be white, with the remaining 10 to 15 percent being children of other races. Once the nonwhite children composed more than 15 percent of the class, the average white parent grew anxious, because the “diversity” that had previously reinforced their own open-mindedness and provided an extra educational benefit to their children suddenly began to feel like a threat to their sovereignty. I suspect there’s a bit of that attitude in our own field, too: Yes, of course we want to see a variety of genders and ethnicities represented in our repertoire!— but chiefly for flavor; we don’t want them taking over. In the educational setting, Hannah-Jones calls this “curated diversity.” Naturally, in our world, “curat-
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ing” isn’t a bad thing (except insofar as the word has become overused and trite), and we’re centuries away from having any sort of quantitative parity in the repertoire available to us, but the inclination to keep the music of marginalized people safely in its approved containers—the once-every-three-years concert of women’s music with a clever title, or the “multicultural” set to end the show—is one we ought to practice rejecting. I want to say a word about equality and quality. Here’s a fun thing to do: Jump onto one of the big Facebook pages for choral directors and post that you’re looking for a piece for the voicing of your choice, on the topic of your choice....and that you’d like it to be a piece written by a woman. Wait an hour, then come back and see how many people have arrived to tell you that the gender of the composer shouldn’t matter, and that they program based only on quality. It never fails, and the same folks show up to make the same comments so reliably that I’m convinced they’ve set up a keyword alert on their smartphones. So let’s remind ourselves (and the “quality” police) of a couple of things: First, “quality” is a mostly subjective term based on a several-hundred-year tradition in which white men set all the standards and controlled most of the access to education and experience; and second, representation and diversity matter enormously, in our programming and our lives. No one’s suggesting that we can’t be profoundly inspired by music that represents a different culture or tradition from our own; indeed, that’s one of the enduring gifts of singing choral music together. But it’s tough to imagine yourself as a future composer or conductor, or to feel like a full and authentic member of the choral community at all, when you never hear a voice that sounds like yours or see a face that looks like yours. Does that mean throwing out the canon of choral music by men of the past? Heavens, no. I firmly believe that we can be passionate advocates for female composers while also acknowledging that no woman, as far as we know, has yet written anything as magnificent as the B Minor Mass or the Brahms Requiem. Not many men have, either, and men have had a lot more chances. We don’t need to apologize for continuing to perform and teach the great masterworks, small- and large-scale, of centuries past; we do need to educate our students, singers, and audience members about the reasons we have so few masterworks by women of those eras. We owe it to ourselves to learn about the women in our history who defied tradition to write terrific music, to acquaint ourselves with their work even if it requires some extra effort to do so, and to make a 12 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
point of including their compositions on our programs as we’re able. We owe it to the long-dead women who overcame enormous odds to become composers not to speak dismissively of their work when we can choose instead to speak honestly about the obstacles that kept them from achieving more, and we owe it to the women and girls of today to work hard to keep removing those obstacles. Frankly, I’m less bothered by the fact that there’s no female Bach or Brahms than I am by the fact that there aren’t more female Eric Whitacres or Morten Lauridsens….or Eriks Esenvalds or Sydney Guillaumes or Ola Gjeilos or Jake Runestads or Stacey Gibbs. We know why Fanny Mendelssohn didn’t become as famous as her brother, but it’s less clear why women today are far less likely than men to become trendy composers. One reason, of course, is that popularity breeds popularity. Many living composers, and thus many female composers, opt to self-publish or to participate in a publishing collective, which on one hand gives them more control over their own work and a higher percentage of proceeds from its sales, but on the other hand means their music will never show up in a publisher-sponsored reading session or repertoire packet, so it takes a bit more effort to find their pieces. Do it anyway. Find their websites. Share their work with your colleagues in the field. Program their music—the weird and jarring and raucous pieces along with the gentle and pretty ones. Buy their music, and don’t pay for twelve copies if you’re really going to make thirty. Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for. peaking of money: Most choruses, whether they S realize it or not, can also help chip away at the gender imbalance in choral music by commissioning
new works by women. The process of working with a composer will engage your singers in a distinctively valuable way, it’s a great opportunity to engage donors or boosters, it’s a thrill to know that you’ve helped bring a new piece of music into the world, and it’s probably more affordable than many conductors expect. Commissioning can help you out of a programming jam, too: About a dozen years ago, I was working on a program called “Shakespeare’s Sisters” for the Orange County Women’s Chorus, consisting of settings of texts by Shakespeare and by some of the (literally) unsung female poets of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Shakespeare pieces were easy to find; the others were not, so we commissioned a wonderful Bay-Area composer, Ruth Huber, to write us someCalifornia Choral Directors Association
thing that fit the bill. We settled on a poem written by Katherine Phillips to her closest female friend, and we ended up with a beautiful piece; it’s still one of the few choral works I know about friendship in a world of music about romantic love. You don’t need a huge budget to undertake a commissioning project, though you do have to pay a composer what she’s worth; if your preferred composer’s asking price is too high, consider collaborating with another chorus or joining a consortium to fund a new work together. By all means, seek out and encourage young and emerging composers, but don’t forget the middle-aged and senior ones, either—and if you can, include some travel funds in your commissioning budget, so that your singers can meet the composer and work with her in person to bring her music to life. Consider, too, that there are other ways to make our programming more inclusive besides simply featuring music written by women. Half of choral music is text, and that’s a great place to start as we strive for representation and inclusiveness. We can look for texts written by a wide variety of women, because—good news—Emily Dickinson and Sara Teasdale are not the only women whose words can be set to music. We can seek out lyrics in which women are more than the passive objects or unfortunate casualties of men’s attraction or contempt. We can let the treble choir be silly and swaggering sometimes, and we can let the bass choir be sensitive and thoughtful. We can skip the extra-sexist madrigals and the opera choruses about men beating their wives (some may disagree, but I don’t find Offenbach’s “Neighbors’ Chorus” so ingenious that it’s worth making a joke of something that more than a few of our students have probably experienced in their own homes), and we can talk honestly and intelligently with our singers and listeners about the inherent gender inequity of a great many texts and lyrics throughout music’s history. When we can’t work around the problem, the next best thing is to name it. Perhaps your students can collaborate on writing some lyrics of their own, update an old madrigal with 21st-century words, or find some texts online that they’d like to see set to music. Equality-minded, inclusive programming doesn’t have to limit our possibilities; it’s a wonderful way to multiply them.
W
hat about women as conductors? Again, we’ve come a long way, although the universe sends us reminders now and then that we women are still not charter members of this club. I teach a music appreciation course for mostly non-majors at my community Leading the Way
college, and a couple of semesters ago, a young woman wrote in a concert report that she’d been shocked to see me leading a performance of Mozart’s Requiem, because she hadn’t realized that women were allowed to conduct orchestras. We still have some work to do. In this realm as in so many that have been historically dominated by men, we’ve moved past many of the obvious and tangible barriers to entry. Conservatories aren’t going to shut their doors to you for being a woman, and if your parents nix your conducting career, that probably has more to do with your perceived earning potential than your gender identity. But sexism (like all isms) works in subtle ways long after a profession is ostensibly integrated. Women reading this: What’s the first thing people always want to talk about after you’ve conducted a performance—your exquisite command of phrasing, or your dress? Right. Dress. Most male conductors still opt for a tuxedo as performance attire; there’s no such “uniform” for women that’s universally understood to communicate formality and elegance. Wear a suit, and someone’s sure to ask why you’re trying to look like a man. Wear a dress, and, well, “you just don’t really look like a conductor to me.” Women, I’m the last person who will offer you fashion advice, but I hope you proudly wear what’s comfortable and confidence-inspiring. Men, I hope you’ll consider killing two birds with one stone by breaking out of the tuxedo mold now and then. It’s liberating for you, and it helps expand the range of “what a conductor looks like,” which makes things a little smoother for your colleagues of different gender expressions, ethnicities, or physical abilities. Our hang-up with women’s attire, of course, is only one symptom of the larger perception issues that we still don’t always recognize as gendered. Here’s another: women’s voices. Not our singing voices—our speaking voices. The historian Mary Beard, in her wonderful essay “The Public Voice of Women in Power,” digs as far back as Greek and Roman antiquity to trace the history of society’s discomfort with women’s voices—what they say, how they sound saying it, and what it means that they’re speaking at all. She discusses the art of oratory as a signifier of masculinity, the near-total ban on women speaking in public across many centuries and societies, and the inevitable coding of men’s voices as the standard of wisdom and artistry in elocution. She points out that most of the famous speeches by women in history are about the station of women in society: Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman,” Hillary Clinton’s 1995 address to the United Nations conference
Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 13
on women, Malala Yousafzai’s speech to the same body 18 years later, to name a few. As uncomfortable as those speeches made some listeners at the time, women talking publicly about women are still, on the whole, easier to swallow than women talking publicly about men, or (heaven forbid) women giving orders. We don’t usually forbid women from speaking in public these days (except for the occasional senator from Massachusetts who gets scolded for reading a letter from Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor— nevertheless, she persisted), but we do still, as a society, shush them if they go on too long about things that make us uncomfortable, and we register our unease in the language we use to describe them—“whiny,” “emotional,” “shrill,” “strident.” Women of color deal with an added layer of stereotyping, often having to do with sounding “angry” or “aggressive.” (If you want to see this play out in real time, hop on Twitter every week when Jessica Mendoza is doing color commentary for ESPN’s Sunday-night baseball broadcast. She’s knowledgeable and pleasant, but you’d be shocked by the abuse she gets from men who are enraged by her very presence in the booth. There’s a common theme in the complaints: It’s not that they have any problem with a woman calling a baseball game, it’s just that this woman’s voice is so irritating.) In the past few years, we’ve also been especially tough on women, especially young women, for vocal tics like “uptalk,” the habit of ending each sentence in a raised pitch as if it’s a question. It drives me crazy too—but did you know that research suggests that “uptalk” evolved in women as a defense against being interrupted, since, according to one study, women are interrupted 33 percent more often than men? Learning that gave me a new level of patience with people with this quirk, and a new way to discuss it with them if the topic arises. A few years ago, a colleague and friend who was responsible for selecting conductors for a master class based on their rehearsal videos told me that he had filled all of the available spots with men. “There were women who applied,” he said, “but they all talked their way through rehearsal.” Hmm. Did they really talk that much more than the men? Every single one of them? If not, what led to the perception that they did? If so, wasn’t that a pattern worth investigating a little more deeply? Could it have anything to do with the fact that boys and men are generally more socialized to be at home in their bodies than women and girls are, while girls tend to develop language facility earlier? And since rehearsing a chorus is always a combination
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of those skills, why must we automatically privilege the more masculine-coded one over the more femininecoded one? Wouldn’t a master class be a prime opportunity to help the natural talkers become better movers and the natural movers become better talkers? we, as conductors and educators, discuss these Igivehope topics with our students and singers of all ages. Let’s them the tools to recognize sexism (and racism,
homophobia, transphobia, ageism, and ableism) and the confidence to call it out. Let’s talk about how transgender issues and our evolving understanding of gender identity fit into the choral world, in terms of culture and vocal technique alike. And let’s put our singers in the presence of all different kinds of capable women, women who dress and move and speak in lots of different ways, women who will define or redefine for them “what a conductor looks or sounds like.” That means signing up for festivals with women as adjudicators and clinicians, and bringing smart women to your rehearsals as guest directors or master teachers for your conducting students. It means paying them for their labor, respecting their time, and not grilling them about their “work-life balance” if you wouldn’t ask a male conductor the same thing. And because true, farreaching progress doesn’t happen in isolation, it means volunteering to be on the boards or the committees that choose honor-choir conductors and conference presenters and panelists and commissioned composers. Sometimes, being an advocate will mean being unpopular, like when you say “I’m sorry, is there a reason that we automatically assigned the woman conductor to the SSAA All-State choir?” just as the rest of the committee is all ready to wrap up and have lunch, or when you write an article for your regional newsletter about the absence of women composers from your last conference. Sometimes—and frankly, I don’t think we acknowledge this often enough—being an ally means giving up something that’s meaningful or valuable to you, such as when you discover that everyone on your conference panel is the same gender or the same color as you, and you say, “Tell you what—why don’t I give up my spot so that you can make this group a little more diverse, and I’ll be happy to take part next time.” I watched an online conversation a few weeks back in which a handful of white male sportswriters did exactly that: They had realized, when a conference program was published, that there were zero women and only one person of color on the list of presenters, and three or four of them who had been scheduled to speak said publicly that they were removing themselves
California Choral Directors Association
from the event so that the organizers could find a wider variety of voices. I watched their conversation evolve, and I found it indescribably moving. They weren’t doing it for attention or admiration; they had been excited to be included in this conference, but it mattered more to them that underrepresented groups felt included in their profession. They were being good allies, both by speaking up and by stepping aside. They were, quite literally, making room—the “room” Virginia Woolf knew we needed, even though in 2018 we’re still rather reluctant as a culture to make that accommodation. Say the phrase “safe space,” and someone nearby will roll their eyes hard enough to be audible. Turn on any House Hunters episode and you’re likely to hear a husband explaining that he needs a “man cave” where he can be free to watch manly things on TV and drink manly domestic beer, presumably with at least one fastener unfastened on his manly clothing. Have you ever heard a woman on those shows demanding a “woman cave”? Now and then there’s one who wants a craft room, but otherwise it’s generally (tacitly) assumed that the woman’s space in her home is the kitchen, or the “common room” that Virginia grew to despise. Indeed, a study just a few years ago showed that women average five fewer hours of time to themselves each week than men, chiefly because they’re more responsible for housework and chores. Creativity needs time, privacy, safety, and legroom. Being an ally means making space, literal and figurative, for women and for all the under-represented groups who have had to beg for some time alone or battle for a place at the table. To paraphrase a saying I’ve seen a lot lately: In the moment, scoot over; in the long term, build a bigger table. Finally, supporting women in the field also means fighting for equal pay, generous parental leave policies, and reproductive freedom. It means standing up against sexist language, sexist behavior, and sexual harassment, and extending that same advocacy toward people of color, LGBTs, and people with disabilities. It means not shying away from talking about money—whether it’s yours or someone else’s, whether it’s an adjudicating fee or rising tuition costs or the hourly rate your university pays its adjunct instructors.
that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh….my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year….and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born.” What Virginia Woolf understood so well was that “women in fiction,” like “women in music,” isn’t just a concept or a title for an article. Women in fiction and music—and art, science, technology, and politics—are living, working, struggling, dreaming human beings. Each of us is permitted to claim without apology the time and space that foster our artistry and the resources that feed it. And all of us are tasked with pooling our energies to keep bringing the Judith Shakespeares of the past, and the Fanny Mendelssohns of the future, out of the common-room and onto the stage. I realized, as I pondered this subject in preparation for my summertime talk, that even though Virginia was infinitely wiser and wittier than I am, I had one advantage over her: She worked in an inherently solitary art form; I work in a communal one. Did you catch this in the quote above?: “I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals….” She knew that, perhaps paradoxically, the only path to the independence and self-reliance she wanted for women was through a collective consciousness, a common goal, and a unified voice. What a lucky coincidence—that’s exactly what we do in our choir rooms every day.
H
Eliza Rubenstein is the editor of Cantate. This article is “Elevating Women in Music” festival of the CSU-LA 2018 Summer Master’s Program. Links to works cited in this essay, as well as to resources related to choral music by women composers, may be found at csulawomeninmusic.wordpress.com.
ere’s Virginia Woolf again: “I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young—alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle [pub]. Now my belief is
Leading the Way
adapted from a keynote address given at the
Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 15
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music.usc.edu/choral
California Choral Directors Association
the COmposer’s voice:
WHAT ARE WE TEACHING? his summer, my first piano student in T LA—a student I’d taught since she was nine years old—left for college. Knowing she
Dale Trumbore has received commissions, performances, and awards from organizations including
ACDA, ACME, Center City Opera Theater, Chanticleer, Inscape Chamber Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, and VocalEssence, and she has been hailed by the
New York Times for her “soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies.”
Dale is orginally from New Jersey and now lives in
Los Angeles.
Hear her music at www.daletrumbore.com.
Leading the Way
won’t pursue music in college, I couldn’t stop wondering in those final lessons what she’d gotten from our time together. When our students leave music, what do they take with them? So much of music isn’t actually about getting everything right; I’d rather have my students learn to tell a story with their playing. I want them to learn to prepare themselves as well as they can for a successful performance, but also to keep going in the face of whatever may go wrong within a performance. I want to develop resilient, confident performers, as much as that skill can be taught. I tell my students that some things are beyond our control, but we can always choose to try our best. I remind them that if they know they practiced well but they still make a mistake, it’s okay. I tell them this jokingly, though it’s not a joke at all: Even if you make a horrible mistake, your family and friends will love you. Trying is a choice, and in music, it might be the one that matters most. We can certainly do less than try. We can back away from hard work. We can turn away from pieces that will push us to the edge of our ability. We can choose to do only what’s simple or what comes easily to us. But I want my students to make mistakes. I want them to take risks. Our lessons are the perfect safe place in which to mess up. On some level, I’m actually hoping my students make lots of mistakes, so we can correct them and make new, different mistakes. Eventually, we move past thinking about music in terms of right or wrong notes and instead focus on using those notes to tell a story. Sight-reading, for example, is a skill we develop by taking on new challenges. It isn’t just about recognizing patterns; it’s about approaching the unknown with a certain fearlessness, striding boldly into the unknown. Confident sight-reading actually has a lot in common with performing something you’ve practiced for months: Both are about embracing your mistakes and choosing to continue anyway. Both force you to listen to an internal metronome ticking inside you—or to follow a conductor—no matter what goes wrong or right around you.
When we play a new piece, we aim to set ourselves up for success before we even start. We identify key signatures, modulations, and tempo shifts. We scan our music for everything that looks challenging, and we give ourselves a minute to prepare for that challenge. We take the whole piece at that slower speed, so that we have a greater chance of getting it right. When my students are sight-reading or playing challenging music they haven’t practiced enough, so many of them speed up exactly when they should be slowing down. I used to do this, too. I don’t know if it’s frustration or panic that makes our heart beat faster, speeds up our internal metronome, or triggers some fight-orflight reaction—as if by going faster, we could steamroll right over all that we don’t know, as if to muscle through it and be done with it sooner. But we can learn to overcome our worst instincts. We can learn to proceed slowly and rationally, even when we’re feeling confused and frustrated. As a music teacher, this might be the most valuable lesson I can impart to my students: You can take nearly everything you know about sight-reading and performing, apply it to the rest of your life, and be a happier, calmer, and saner person as a result. in teaching piano that I’ve realized the Ihowt’sextentonly to which my own music lessons changed I approach difficult situations. In my best
moments, I scan ahead for the most challenging aspect of whatever I’m about to take on. If I’m doing something for the first time, I remind myself that mistakes are okay, even welcome, and that I don’t have to go fast when I don’t know what I’m doing. I acknowledge that all I have to do, and all I can do, is prepare as much as I can, show up, and try. Do I want my students to play beautifully? Yes. Do I want them to remember to curve their fingers, relax their wrists, and sit up straight? Of course. But eventually, many of my students will stop taking music lessons. They may stop making music altogether. But if they’ve learned to say yes to challenges that allow them to grow, to take new experiences as slowly as they need to, and to view their choices, their abilities, and their own minds with patience and kindness, then I’ll have done my job as a music teacher. Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 17
REmEMBERING AL TALBERG by Jonathan Talberg s news of my father’s illness and subsequent passing A spread on social media, my family and I were touched tremendously by the outpouring of support by so many
members of the CCDA. For five summers, from 2011 to 2015, Al Talberg (April 13,1928–February 25, 2018) taught morning Tai-Chi at our CCDA Summer Conference at ECCO. During those years, he befriended many of you, took headliners to Yosemite for lunch at the Ahwahnee, played hooky at the lake, enjoyed evening refreshments with people of all ages, and danced up a storm at our legendary themed parties. I was especially moved by how many of you came up to me at ECCO this summer to express your condolences and to tell me how much you missed my dad. What a gift it is to have your colleagues and friends know your father. It was the wisdom he imparted—during his morning classes, at mealtimes, or sitting on a bench overlooking the lake—that many of you have commented on. While I was considering the blessing of having had him as a father for almost 50 years, I realized that many of his “Al-isms” (as my friends call them) related not only to life in general, but to our crazy careers as choral conductors as well. I decided to share them with my dear colleagues as a tribute to the man I called Dad: • If you’re going to speak about people, speak positively about them. Except for politicians. Most of them are incompetent. • There’s more to life than work. Don’t work too hard. Don’t brag about how hard you work. Work. And then enjoy your time with family and friends. • Tell people you love them. • Tell people you’re proud of them. • Stay active. • Listening is way more interesting than talking. • Trust the scientific method, logical thinking, and people smarter than you. Science and engineering have been
18 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
responsible for most of humanity’s advances. • Don’t do your own taxes. • Have a drink every night. Or two. But not three. • You’re never too old to learn. • How much money someone has is absolutely no indication of their worth as a human being. • Racism and bigotry are always wrong. • Never trust a zealot. • Ridicule can equal love. But only if the ridiculed understands that you love them. • Let people help you. • Work so that you can pay other people to do what they do well. Consequently, don’t feel badly if you can’t fix a toilet, or a radiator, or a fence. You work, in part, so that a plumber, a mechanic and a carpenter can work, too. Our economy works best when we all concentrate on what we do best. • People are imperfect and organizations are made up of people, therefore organizations are imperfect. Beware of groups— especially religious, political, and educational—that seem to have all the answers. No one has all the answers. • Sometimes, there are no words. Just hold the people you love closely. • Don’t retire. Change your focus. • Go for it. You can’t do life wrong. But, you can probably do it better. you again for the love; I wish each and every one Thank of you a wonderful year!
Jonathan Talberg is the Director of Choral, Vocal, and Opera Studies at the CSU-Long Beach Bob Cole Conservatory of Music, and a past president of CCDA.
California Choral Directors Association
Kansas City Chorale Seraphic Fire Lorelei Ensemble Voz en Punto (Mexico) Nairobi Chamber Chorus (Kenya) Ansang City Choir (S. Korea) St. Stanislav Girls’ Choir (Slovenia) Tallahassee Community Chorus Kansas City Symphony &
2019
Symphony Chorus …and many more!
HONOR CHOIRS Children’s Emily Ellsworth, conductor MS/JH SATB Derrick Fox, conductor HS/Collegiate SSAA Sandra Snow, conductor HS/Collegiate TTBB Jefferson Johnson, conductor
ACDA National Conference
AND MORE! Legacy Directors Chorus “A Journey Through ACDA History” Pre-Conference “Welcome to KC” event on Tuesday evening featuring: Kansas City BBQ Allegro Choirs of KC Heartland Men's Chorus Kantorei
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI FEBRUARY 27 - MARCH 2
Interest Sessions & Exhibits Conference Hotel: Kansas City Marriott Downtown The Kauffman Center The Folly Theatre Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral W W W . A C D A .
CHORAL JOURNAL June/July 2018
Leading the Way
O R G Volume 58 Number 11
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OPA! Our Big Fat 2018 CCDA Summer Conference at ECCO was a smash, we were thrilled to honor Swan Award winners Vance George and Linda Lovaas, and Betsy Cook Weber might just be our “best and favorite” headliner yet! Thanks to everyone who attended and everyone who worked so hard to ensure that even smoky skies couldn’t cast a pall over a fantastic event.
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California Choral Directors Association
Leading the Way
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California Choral Directors Association
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Vision for the
Future
Scholarship Fund Donors special care has been given to the preparation of donor acknowledgments. We regret any errors or omissions. please contact us at (657) 217-0767 or exec_admin@acdacal.org with corrections. Thank you for your support!
President’s Circle Platinum ($500 and higher) Tammi Alderman * in honor of the past and present CCDA board Nick Strimple * in honor of James H. Vail Burt and Polly Vasché * President’s Circle Gold ($300 and higher) Anonymous * in memory of Paul Salamunovich Kenneth J. Abrams Lou De La Rosa * Robert Istad and David Navarro * Eric Medeiros in memory of Tim Shannon Lori Marie Rios * President’s Circle Silver ($100-$299) Daniel Afonso * Kyle Ball + Jeffrey Benson * Jenny Bent Jack Bertrand * in honor of Dr. James K. Bass Rob Blaney + Glenn Carlos + Mitchell and Laurel Covington Mike and Julie Dana * Jennifer Gaderlund Emily Gates Cricket Handler * Brandon Harris + Jeffe Huls * in memory of Lynn Bielefelt Mark Hulse Mary Anne James
Stacey Kikkawa Beth Klemm * in honor of Norman Paschen, my Dad! John Knutson + Bruce Lengacher for George Attarian and Byron McGilvary Anthony Lien * in honor of my musical brothers, Buddy James, Michael Najar, Matthew Potterton Arthur Lio MaryClare Martin * David Montoya * Kristina Nakagawa * in honor of Lois Caran, Joe Huszti, and Charlene Archibeque Kim Nason * in honor of Rob Istad and Chris Peterson Matthew Netto * in support of CSUF contributions to the choral world Jason Pano in Honor of Lou De La Rosa, Robert Istad, Christopher Peterson Molly Peters Dr. Christopher and Tina Peterson * Molly Buzick Pontin + Mary and Wally Purdy * in honor of John Alexander and in memory of Richard Knox Shawn Reifschneider * Zanaida Robles + Antone Rodich * John Russell * Joseph Schubert * in honor of David Norman and Roman Maciejewski SCVA + Grace Sheldon-Williams + James & Marilyn Shepard + Jennifer Sivers-Suh + Will Skaff and David Xiques +
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Shelby Smith + in honor of my mother and father, Daniel and Suzie Smith John Sorber * Joe and Dana Stanford + Carolyn Teraoka-Brady * Kathryn Thickstun + Janice Hawthorne Timm + Betsy Cook Weber + William Zinn * Sponsor ($50-$99) Dana Alexander Ruth Ballenger Bernadette R. Burns Patrick Burzlaff Kelly Caswell in honor of Mary Purdy Jessica Cosley Lauren Diez Julie Ford * in honor of Perla Warren Scot Hanna-Weir Michelle Hawkins Monica Maddern + Susanna Martone + Michael J. Mello Brianna Mowry + Joshua Palkki + Rachelle Randeen + Krista Scharf + Jo Anne Stoddard
Karl Chang + Ryan Clippinger + Andrew DelMonte * Cari Earnhart Maryloie Espinoza + Dr. Jennifer Garrett Leatrice Innocent Erika Jackson + Derek Jamieson + Susan Zimmer Johnson + Townsend Losey + Christopher Luthi National Concerts + Nicholas Patton + Loretta Pearce+ in honor of Dr. Douglas Chase Jan Pedersen-Schiff + Susan Peterson + Christiane Rohayem + Alexis Rubell + Sheen Leem Sanchez Rebecca P. N. Seeman + Karyn Silva + Stephanie Stewart Mary Stocker Lois Tai * Kevin Tison Darla Tuning + Elizabeth Waterbury +
Supporter (up to $49) Bethany Alvey + Gemma Arguelles + Judy Bowers + Jamie Butler + Lydia Chaffee + Eileen Chang +
* Founder’s Circle + New donor
California Choral Directors Association
Enter CCDA’s 4th Annual George Heussenstamm Composition Competition! January 2019: Complete contest guidelines will be published at www.calcda.org and in the Winter issue of Cantate April 15, 2019, 11:59 p.m.: contest submissions due online (no late entries will be accepted) May 15, 2019: winner of the 4th Annual Heussenstamm Composition Competition at ECCO announced online JULY 21-14, 2019: Winning composition read and winning composer honored at CCDA Summer Conference at ECCO
Leading the Way
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2019 Junior High/9th grade HONOR CHOIR APPLICATIONS DUE OCTOBER 15 Visit www.calcda.org for complete information! 2018 Central Region Honor Choir November 15-17, Clovis North High School, Fresno Dr. Josh Palkki, California State University Long Beach: TTBB Choir Dr. Shawna Stewart, Biola University: SSAA Choir Dr. Joe Modica, University of Redlands: SATB Choir 2018 Coastal Region Honor Choir November 15-17, San Mateo High School/San Mateo Performing Arts Center, San Mateo Dr. Anna Hamre, California State University Fresno: SATB Choir Dr. Angel Vazquez-Ramos, California State University Bakersfield: SSAA Choir Dr. Tim Seelig, San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus: TTBB Choir 2019 All-State Honor Choir March 14-16, 2019, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA Dr. Richard Bjella, Texas Tech: TTBB Choir Dr. Kevin Johnson, Spelman College: SSAA Choir Dr. Gisele Wyers, University of Washington: SATB Choir Dr. Rollo Dilworth, Temple University: Junior High/9th Grade Choir Visit www.calcda.org/calendar-of-events/honor-choirs/ for complete information!
“C
h-ch-changes!” Many of you have heard that the CCDA All-State Honor Choirs are rejoining CASMEC in Fresno in 2020. This is very exciting—it means we will have a truly unified state conference, and it also means we will have ALL of our state student honor groups performing in the same place at the same time. It will also benefit the music teacher who does everything (band, choir, orchestra) because they can attend one conference instead of having to find time and funds for, or choose between, two different ones. What does this mean for Honor Choir? The audition process will be the same, and there will be no changes to Regional Honor Choir. For students and directors participating in All-State, however, we will be changing to the model of the CBDA and CODA honor groups, which means all students—even local students—will be required
26 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
to stay in our block of hotel rooms (in quads). We will have chaperones with them at all times (chaperones will be assigned to groups of 10-15 students). We will also be providing all meals for students. For your advance planning, we will need teacher volunteers to chaperone. Chaperones will have their rooms (doubles), meals, and conference registration covered as a thank-you for their assistance. I am looking forward to these positive changes and what they mean for our organization and our honor choir students going forward. If you have any questions about CASMEC and Honor Choir in 2020, please e-mail me at honorchoir. ca.allstate@gmail.com. Thank you! —Molly Peters, CCDA Honor Choir Chair
California Choral Directors Association
stangeland family
july 1 - july 10, 2019
Youth Choral Academy A peak artistic experience for high school choral musicians under the direction of Dr. Anton Armstrong at the world-renowned Oregon Bach Festival. Spend 10 days performing exceptional choral literature and strengthening your passion for the choral arts through daily rehearsals, classes, and workshops.
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University of Redlands Bachelor of Arts • Bachelor of Music Master of Music • Artist Diploma Master’s in Vocal Chamber Music starting fall 2019 Music Scholarships & Graduate Assistantships Available Information and Applications www.redlands.edu/music 909-748-8014 music@redlands.edu Christopher Gabbitas of The King’s Singers joins U of R choral faculty
Leading the Way
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News and notes
from around the state NORTHERN REGION The Northern California Band and Choral Directors Association will host their annual high school Honor Band and Select Choir January 31–February 2, 2019. Chris Peterson from CSU Fullerton will lead the choir at Sonoma State University. This year also marks the first annual Northern California Jazz Honor Choir during the same event! Gaw Vang Williams from CSU Sacramento will usher in this inaugural group. Selection and audition deadlines are November 1, and more details can be found at www.ncbcda.com. Sacramento State School of Music welcomes Andrew Kreckmann as its new Director of Choral Activities. Dr. Kreckmann succeeds Dr. Donald Kendrick, who was there for 33 years. Kendrick will continue with his Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra, and also as Music Director for Sacred Heart Church. Jenise Coon from Chico High School was one of eight teachers from around the country selected for the Freddie G Fellowship, an all-expense paid, five-day trip to New York City, featuring master classes taught by Tony Award-winning Broadway professionals such as composer and musical arranger Jeanine Tesori, Newsies director/choreographer Jeff Calhoun, and Broadway sound designer Matt Kraus.
BAY AREA This September, the Mission Peak Chamber Singers and Artistic Director Ofer dal Lal launch the East Bay People’s Choir, a non-auditioned, fee-free ensemble for people of all ages and all backgrounds led by Ash Walker. Visit www.chambersingers.org/peopleschoir for information. Congratulations to Ofer for becoming a United States citizen!
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Send news of hirings, retirements, awards, commissions, premieres, collaborations, or projects to your regional representative or Cantate.Editor@gmail.com!
The San Jose State University Choraliers, West Valley Chamber Singers, and Resounding Achord (Directors Jeffrey Benson, Lou De La Rosa, and Kristina Nakagawa), toured the Baltics together this summer. They performed in Helsinki, Tartu, and the Estonian National Opera Concert Hall in Tallin, and took part in a memorable community service project and cultural exchange at the Haiba Children’s Home near Tallinn. The Saint Mary’s College Chamber Singers and Glee Club (Dr. Julie Ford, director) earned two World Choir Games Silver Medals in Tshwane, South Africa, but treasured most the opportunity to sing South African protest songs in honor of the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth. Berkeley-based Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus (Rebecca Petra Naomi Seeman) celebrated their 40th year of bringing exciting and beautiful choral programs to the Bay Area in 2017-2018. The season included the commission of prominent Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist’s Songs from the North, a dynamic and moving setting of poetry from the Arctic regions of Greenland and Canada. On May 4, 2018, the USF Classical Choral Ensembles, the Lesbian/ Gay Chorus of San Francisco, and the Lick-Wilmerding High School Choir collaborated in a powerful performance of Robert Cohen’s Alzheimer’s Stories in Saint Ignatius Church, San Francisco. This moving work will receive a signature performance at the 2019 ACDA National Conference in Kansas City.
CENTRAL COAST REGION Eleni Pantages is the the Director of Vocal Music at San Marcos High School, Santa Barbara. She leaves
Viewpoint School in Calabasas after a successful five years building a choral program. Eleni steps into the position left by Carolyn Teraoka-Brady, Central Coast Regional Representative for CCDA, who is overjoyed to have her former student take the reins. Beth Klemm recently passed on the reins of the Central Coast Children’s Choir to her fellow directors, JoAnne Stoddard and Melody Svennungsen. Beth was the Artistic Director for 22 years. Canzona Women’s Ensemble celebrates their 10th Anniversary Season with a program of favorite songs selected by patrons, singers, and directors, under the batons of Founding Artistic Directors Cricket Handler and Jill Anderson. “The Songs We Love Best” takes place on Sunday, November 4th at 3:00p.m. at the United Methodist Church, San Luis Obispo.
CENTRAL REGION Adam Serpa began the new school year as Choral Director at Modesto High School, having most recently worked at Dublin High School in the Bay Area. On a grant from CSU Stanislaus for research in his native Brazil, Dr. Daniel Afonso interviewed conductors and presented master classes and conducting workshops there this past summer. The work took him to Brasilia (the nation’s capital), Curitiba in the south, and Bahia in the northeast, as well as to Rio. Daniel has written a new choral suite to be published by earthsongs in the fall. Kathy Blumer has retired after a stellar career teaching all levels of public school choral music, most recently at Clovis High School. Jennifer Apple-
California Choral Directors Association
by will move to Clovis HS from Granite Ridge Intermediate, where Riley Garcia will begin teaching. Riley is a recent grad of CSU Fresno. The Tenor/Bass Choir from Rayburn Intermediate School in Clovis sang at CASMEC in San Jose last February under the direction Allison Crose. Kudos also to Heather Bishop, whose stunning Women’s Chorale from Clovis North High School performed in March at ACDA’s 2018 Western Division Conference in Pasadena. Polly Vasché, retired in 2004 as conductor of the Thomas Downey High School Choirs, Modesto, was named the Conference Honoree. Christopher Borges of Bakersfield High School has taken a job at The American School of São Paulo, Brazil. Amanda Isaac will take over at BHS, leaving her post at Norris Middle School and area elementaries in Bakersfield. Amanda Locke, formerly of Taft Union High School, is now teaching at Bakersfield South High School, following Katie Villereal’s move south to Oceanside.
Gershon, along with guest conductors Moira Smiley and Rollo Dilworth at Walt Disney Concert Hall in July. Five other venues were filled with singers and live-streamed in from around the state. Selah Gospel Choir performed at RuPaul’s DragCon in May at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The Southern Region welcomes Dr. Gene Peterson to California Baptist University in Riverside! Pick up a copy of Jason Mraz’s new album, Know, which features the Tesoro High School Madrigal Singers (Keith Hancock, director) on the track “Love is Still the Answer”!
FAR SOUTH REGION In July, more than 750 singers in the San Diego vocal music community gathered with thousands more throughout the state of California to participate in the “Big Sing California.” The event united the choral music communities of Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento and Fresno in the largest community sing in California history.
John Carter, retired Columbia College choral director, has begun a series called Sonora Sings Classical, inviting any and all to the ABOVE: Bay-area ensembles collaborate to historic Red Church in Sonora to perform Alzheimer’s stories. read through serious choral literaThe Choral Consortium of San ture, with accompaniment but without rehearsal. For the first Diego held its Fourth Annual CCSD Summer Chorus in such event last March, the church was at capacity with 200 June. This year’s program focused on vocal jazz, led by Matt area singers. The second Sing takes place in late September, Falker of MiraCosta College. The CCSD’s Beer Choir to the delight of choristers in the Sierra foothills and beyond. San Diego chapter will celebrate its one-year anniversary in October with its ninth gathering. Each event is led by a differSOUTHERN REGION ent San Diego area choral director, highlighting the diversity of San Diego choirs and serving as a recruitment tool for new Congratulations to Kris Ornelas (Grover Cleveland Charter singers. High School), who was named LAUSD’s Rookie of the Year in May, and to Andrew Ball (Corona Del Mar High In July, Sacra/Profana hosted their annual Summer Choral School) for winning Gold in the Youth, Folk Song, and Intensive, led by Dr. Keith Pederson (Point Loma NazaSacred Music categories at the International Youth Music rene University) and Juan Carlos Acosta (Artistic DirecFestival in Bratislava, Slovakia in July! tor of Sacra/Profana). The program involved high school singers from throughout the San Diego region in a week-long SCVA (Southern California Vocal Association) offered a series of workshops and rehearsals which culminated in a perprogram of beginning resources in their inaugural program, formance at the First United Methodist Church of San Diego Jumpstart! Choral music educators in their first five years of along with the members of Sacra/Profana. teaching or teaching-training programs were given valuable classroom resources in August, the first of this three-part series. See www.scvachoral.org for more information. Thanks to our Regional Representatives (Alissa Aune, Julie Ford, Polly Vasché, Carolyn Teraoka-Brady, Stacey Kikkawa, The Los Angeles Master Chorale hosted “Big Sing Caliand John Russell) for collecting and sharing news from their fornia,” in which over 2,000 audience members sang with areas! Send your news to your regional representative if you’d the Master Chorale conducted by Eric Whitacre and Grant like to be included in a future issue.
Leading the Way
Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 29
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30 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
California Choral Directors Association
Top Five for your Choir:
CHILDREN’S CHOIRS I Kim Nason has been K-8 music specialist
a
with the
Capistrano
Unified School District since
1988, and often
conducts the district elementary honor choir.
She also serves
Director of Music
as
at
Shepherd of the
Hills United Methodist
Church in Rancho
Santa Margarita, where she conducts the adult choir and leads the annual summer music camp for kids and youth.
Kim received her B.M. in
Music Education
from the
University of
Southern California and her ral
M.M. in Cho-
Conducting from
Cal State Fullerton.
’m going back to basics this year. I’m focusing on pieces that will let my singers spend more time on singing beautifully than on holding onto their part. I want them to feel the beautiful phrases and become really skilled at staggering their breathing. I want them to be challenged by a new language or dialect. I want them to use their voices to express drama and excitement. We’ll still make some beautiful harmony, but this year, the focus is on unison singing. These five examples couldn’t be more different, but they all invite young singers to sing together in one voice. I’m looking forward to the challenge of finding the best possible blend and balance as we focus on melody. Jerry Estes Yo Vivo Cantando Unison with piano Heritage Music Press 15/3025H This joyful and rhythmic song will get your singers moving. The title phrase is the only Spanish text (“I live to sing”), so it’s easy to learn. It works well as a spirited opener with a multicultural flair. Add some rhythm instruments and this will be a favorite for singers and audiences alike. Arr. Lori-Ann Dolloff Manx Lullaby Unison treble with piano and optional C instrument Boosey & Hawkes 48004661 Manx Gaelic, as spoken on the Isle of Man, is similar to the Gaelic spoken in Ireland and Scotland. Many Manx folk songs make reference to birds, as this one does. Complete with a bird-like obbligato on optional C-instrument, this is a lovely selection for unison voices.
sounds. “Something is is stirring out in the hall. Shadows are creeping across the wall…” This dramatic song cries out for movement and interaction between singers as they try to convince each other that they’re not afraid. Bob Chilcott The Time of Snow Unison with piano or organ Oxford University Press 978019346320 This beautiful song for soprano voices and keyboard is the first of Chilcott’s Three Christmas Songs. It is the story of the journey of Mary and Joseph to the stable in Bethlehem, set against a bleak winter landscape. The lyrical melody and piano part are hauntingly beautiful. There are also parts available for small orchestra (harp, suspended cymbal, glockenspiel, triangle, and strings). W.A. Mozart, arr. Jill Friedersdorf and Melissa Malvar-Keylock Laudamus Te Unison with piano and flute Hal Leonard Corporation 08750095 Even younger choirs can experience Mozart’s “Mass in C Minor” with this beautiful arrangement for unison singers. The Latin text gives ample opportunities to work on pure vowels, and the melody will be a little more challenging than many other unison titles. The flute obbligato adds a sparkling harmonic layer to the piece.
Sheldon Rose Something Unison with piano Alliance Music Publishing AMP0836 This song is perfect for a Halloween concert, as it describes a spooky night and creepy
Leading the Way
Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 31
Top Five for your Choir:
WOMEN’S CHOIRS M Tina Glander Peterson has twenty years of professional choral-directing and teaching experience as a public school music educator in sin and
Wiscon-
California.
Currently, she is Director of
Choirs at Irvine
High School, where she conducts five choirs and teaches advanced placement music theory.
She also holds the position of of
Minister
Music at Church
of the
Foothills in
Tustin. Tina earned her
Bachelor of Music
Education degree from University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and her
Master of Music in Music Education and Choral Conducting from the
University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
usic for women, by women. Who better to express the thoughts and emotions of an SSAA choir? The following five pieces were all composed by women, using texts that were also written by women. The Orange County Women’s Chorus has an incredible resource available on their website: a database of over 400 choral pieces written by female composers, collected by Eliza Rubenstein and Dr. Magen Solomon. Check out these five pieces and share the link (www.ocwomenschorus.org/women-composers) with others you think would enjoy this resource! Gwyneth Walker Sisters (from My Girls: Three Songs on Poetry by Lucille Clifton) SSA a cappella Treble Clef Music Press 80300153 Lucille Clifton’s poem speaks to the connection of all of us as sisters, from the “very same place” that “you and me” come from. Gwyneth Walker adds snaps, claps, and vocal percussion effects that make “Sisters” a piece that I can’t wait to program. University of Houston’s Women’s Choir has a great recording on YouTube with movement that truly enhances the playful nature of this joyful piece. Carol Barnett Song of Perfect Propriety SSA a cappella Earthsongs S-291 Why do the TTBB choirs get all the songs about pirates and adventures at sea? Carol Barnett puts an end to that with this setting of Dorothy Parker’s poem. Barnett wrote this piece for the Cornell University Women’s Chorus as part of a multi-year commissioning project unofficially called “No Whining, No Flowers.” All the pieces were composed by women, using poetry written by women. (Check out their website for more titles from the commissioning project: www.cuchorus. com/commissioning-project.) A quote from the website: “The texts were intended to explore topics that differ from the traditional treble
32 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
choir repertoire themes of ‘Oh woe, my man has left me,’ and ‘La la, look at all the pretty flowers’—hence the title of the project.” Dale Trumbore Frozen In SSA with piano and violin accompaniment Boosey & Hawkes, Inc - 48023336 “Frozen In” takes us on a journey through a cold winter’s night with friends from long ago. The piano and violin accompaniments evoke images of snowflakes blowing in the wind. The dissonance in the vocal parts creates a calm yet chilly feeling of the evening. Dale Trumbore’s setting of Annie Finch’s poem gives us a beautiful new winter piece to add to our holiday concert programming. Alice Parker Dickinson: The Definition of Beauty SSAA a cappella Walton Music W1547 Alice Parker sets this Emily Dickinson poem with beautiful melodies and extraordinary counterpoint. “The Definition of Beauty” was ACDA’s 2013 Raymond W. Brock Memorial commissioned composition. The poem expresses that beauty can be extremely complex, even in its simplicity. This is truly a well-crafted piece that will be a good challenge for your SSAA choir. Rosephanye Powell, arr. William C. Powell Sorida (A Zimbabwe Greeting) Hal Leonard Corporation - 00200528 SSAA a cappella with percussion “Sorida” is a term of greeting in the Shona language of Zimbabwe, similar to “shalom” in Hebrew or “jambo” in Swahili. Powell’s brilliant use of ostinato makes this piece accessible, with each voice part layering in their individual two-measure repeated sections. It is also available for other voicings, making Sorida a great piece for you to program in a combined performance with all your choirs.
California Choral Directors Association
FRESNO STATE CHORAL DEPARTMENT
MUSIC MAJOR/MINOR AUDITION DATE
Leading the Way
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California Choral Directors Association
Top Five for your Choir:
Two-Year Colleges T Dr. Arlie Langager has been the of
Director
Choral Studies at
MiraCosta College since
2008. She holds
undergraduate and graduate degrees from the
University of
Calgary and the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Langager was the
Artistic
Director of the Calgary Boys’ Choir and the
Mount Royal
Youth Choir, and for nearly a decade she directed the awardwinning
University of
Calgary Vocal Jazz ensembles.
here have been semesters at my community college when I don’t know how many singers I’ll have, or if I’ll even have balanced sections, until the very first rehearsal! Choosing repertoire becomes even more puzzling if I find I have incoming choristers who have the maturity to rehearse and perform complex artistic concepts, but who are relatively new to singing and sight-reading. The following are effective, challenging performance pieces that work with a variety of choir sizes and experience levels.
Ysaÿe Barnwell Nearly Insane (from Quilt Songs) Mixed choir a cappella VocalEssence Music Press “Nearly Insane” is a new, three-minute octavo from the larger work Quilt Songs: Women Weaving the Fabric of Life. Barnwell, wellknown as a performer with Sweet Honey in the Rock, was commissioned along with four other composers (Alice Parker, Libby Larsen, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Carol Barnett) to write pieces inspired by particular quilts. Barnwell chose an intricate quilt from the 1870s named “Nearly Insane,” and poet Mary Moore Easter created the text. The repetitive elements make it easy to learn. Set in a lively, tango-style rhythm, voices layer over the bass ostinato pattern. Bruno Ruviaro and Scot Hanna-Weir Sympathy Mixed choir, soprano solo, mason jars, cell phones brunoruviaro.github.io/sympathy This poignant setting of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “I know why the caged bird sings”) fosters a new look at the text, and is a favorite of singers and audience alike. The work uses pre-recorded sounds for singers and audience members to play on their cellphones. The singers experience performing an intense musical work even though the score is only three pages long, and the full SATB choral texture occurs only in the middle of the piece. All the necessary links are available for free at
Leading the Way
soundcloud.com/sympathytracks/sets/ audience-tracks.
Sarah Hopkins Past Life Melodies SATB divisi a cappella Morton Music MM2001 “Past Life Melodies” was commissioned in 1991 for a high school choir and is now regularly included on a number of festival and all-state repertoire lists. Featuring harmonic overtone singing, the vocalized texture is unique, compelling, and accomplishable by choirs of various levels. A rehearsal guide is available through the publisher or composer’s website to help teach overtone singing techniques. Lydia Adams Mi’Kmaq Honour Song SATB or unison/two-part Leslie Music Supply LE 5038 Inspired by the honor song of the indigenous Mi’kmaq community from northeastern Maine and Canada, Adams combines texts and fragments of existing melodies to create a new work. Through nontraditional notation, she sets the simple tune against a fabric of nature sounds (there are a couple of solos for confident performers who can imitate sounds of forest animals). Like “Sympathy,” this piece is ideally performed with singers placed around the audience. Jackson Hill When Spring Is Born at Last SATB a cappella GIA Publications G-6525 For this setting of an 8th-century Japanese text, Hill uses pentatonic and 21st-century choral harmonies that are accessible and require minimal vibrato. As with his “Voices of Autumn,” he incorporates stylistic devices of Buddhist chant by writing vocal inflections and glissandi into the score. At almost 7 minutes long, the piece works best when keeping a steady rhythm without rushing. This edition includes notes from the composer and James Jordan, editor of the Evoking Sound Series.
Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 35
Top Five for your Choir:
VOCAL JAZZ T Michelle Hawkins is an award-winning choral director, arranger, vocalist, and flutist.
As
Associate Professor of Music at Skyline College
(San Bruno, CA),
she directs the
Oceana
Concert Choir and highly acclaimed vocal jazz ensemble scape.
Sound-
She serves on the
faculty of the
Stanford
Jazz Workshop (Palo Alto, CA) where she received the standing tor
2017 Out-
Music Educa-
Award. Her groups
have won four beat for
Down-
Music Awards
“Best Vocal Jazz
Group,” and they have been selected to perform a concert session at the
2018 ACDA Western Division Conference.
he following selections are among my favorite charts for intermediate to advanced vocal jazz ensembles. They feature a wide variety of styles and musical concepts to explore with your choir, including wordless vocals, accessible chord changes for improvisation, expressive ballad interpretation, and an impressive scat soli. Rosana Eckert In the Early Morning Stillness SSAA, Level II or III Rosana Eckert Music Sound Music Publications www.smpjazz.com “In the Early Morning Stillness” is a beautiful, original ballad by singer/songwriter Sarah Tolar, arranged for treble choir. It features a gentle 16th-note groove, a lyric solo, and a flowing group interlude. The solo section is set to a diatonic chord progression that is excellent for beginning improvisers. Kerry Marsh Not While I’m Around SSAB, Level II Kerry Marsh Vocal Jazz and Beyond www.kerrymarsh.com “Not While I’m Around” is a beautiful and contemporary version of the song from Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. It is based on Jamie Cullum’s arrangement from the album Pursuit and features a baritone soloist. I highly recommend listening to the original Broadway cast recording and Jamie’s version for a compareand-contrast discussion about style and delivery. Explore the differences between musical theater and jazz with your choir!
wordless vocal, it brings a welcome change of pace to your concert and a chance to explore different timbres and means of expression with your choir. With its contemporary straight-8th groove, lyric melody, and beautiful chord changes, “Wishing Well” offers many stylistic concepts to explore, and the solo section features a simple chord progression for beginning improvisers. Darmon Meader and Peter Eldridge For All We Know SATB, Level IV Alfred Music This is a gorgeous and haunting ballad by Fred Coots and Sam Lewis, recorded by the New York Voices on their CD A Day Like This. Explore the depths of emotional expression with your choir as you interpret this stunning arrangement. It also has an optional duet feature for soprano and baritone. Kelly Kunz and Nick Moore Harold’s House of Jazz SSAATBB, Level V Kerry Marsh Vocal Jazz and Beyond www.kerrymarsh.com “Harold’s House of Jazz” is a Richie Cole tune, arranged for Groove For Thought by Kelly Kunz and Nick Moore. This impressive, up-tempo jazz waltz features a challenging (optional) scat soli section and is a great opener for your concert. It also has an optional big band accompaniment for collaboration with your instrumental ensemble.
Jeremy Fox Wishing Well SATB, Level III www.jeremyfox.net You’ll love this newly published arrangement of the song by guitarist Mike Stern. As a
36 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
California Choral Directors Association
California State University, Bakersfield
DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC & THEATRE VOCAL ENSEMBLES Chamber Singers Opera Theatre University Singers Women’s Choir
VOCAL AREA FACULTY
Prof. Heather Chu, Instructor of Voice Prof. Katherine Kiouses, Instructor of Voice & Voice Class Dr. Soo-Yeon Park, Director of Opera Theatre & Diction Prof. Peggy Sears, Instructor of Voice Dr. Angel M. Vázquez-Ramos, Director of Choral & Vocal Studies
HOW TO APPLY
All prospective students must apply through CSU- Mentor (csumentor.edu), the California State University website designed to help students through each phase of their application process. CSUMentor is also a great way to begin planning for college and to keep track of your academic progress. 9001 Stockdale Hwy. | Music Building, Room 105 | Bakersfield, CA 93311 Phone: (661) 654-3093 | Fax: (661) 654-6901 | Email: kmendenhall_gregory@csub.edu
C
Leading the Way
S U
B .
E D
U
/ M U
S I
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Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 37
CCDA BOARD Directory EXECUTIVE BOARD President Robert Istad (562) 822-5952 robert.istad@gmail.com President-Elect Jeffrey Benson (408) 924-4645 jeffrey.s.benson@ gmail.com Vice President Lou De La Rosa (408) 206-7192 l.delarosa.wvc@ gmail.com Membership & Development Lori Marie Rios (818) 679-7463 lmrdiva1@gmail.com Treasurer Chris Peterson (657) 278-3537 cpeterson@fullerton.edu Executive Administrator/ CCDA Office Kathleen Preston 921 N. Harbor Blvd., #412 La Habra, CA 90631-3103 (657) 217-0767 exec_admin@acdacal.org
REPERTOIRE & RESOURCES
REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES Bay Area Julie Ford (925) 631-4670 julie@julieford.org
Children’s & Community Youth Kimberly Nason (949) 472-6492 dknason@mac.com
Central Polly Vasché (209) 526-9692 pollyvasche@pacbell.net
Junior High & Middle School Susie Martone susie.martone@gmail.com
Central Coast Carolyn Teraoka-Brady (805) 689-1780 cteraoka-brady@ sbusd.org
Senior High School Tammi Alderman (626) 299-7020 x3615 tammialderman@gmail.com
Far South John Russell (917) 686-0110 johnkrussell@gmail.com Northern Alissa Aune (530) 277-6691 aaune@suhsd.net Southern Stacey Kikkawa (310) 551-5100 skikkawa@bhusd.org
CLA Coordinator Willow Manspeaker wmanspeaker@stevensonschool.org All-State Honor Choirs Molly Peters (213) 880-7597 mepeters79@gmail.com
COLLEGIATE College & University Buddy James (510) 885-3128 buddy.james@ csueastbay.edu Two-Year College Arlie Langager (858) 774-0412 alangager@miracosta.edu Student Activities Josh Palkki (202) 679-3350 josh.palkki@csulb.edu LIFELONG
EVENT CHAIRS Summer Conference at ECCO Jeffe Huls jhuls@smmusd.org
YOUTH
CCDA State Conference at CASMEC Kristina Nakagawa (408) 205-6050 artistic@ resoundingachord.org
Choral Composition David Montoya (626) 419-8031 davypavy@aol.com
Community Choirs Jenny Bent (707) 664-3925 bentje@sonoma.edu Music in Worship Ruben Valenzuela (760) 715-7956 rv.hypodorian@gmail.com REPERTOIRE-SPECIFIC Contemporary Commercial Choirs William Zinn (916) 601-4175 wzinn6023@gmail.com Ethnic & Multicultural Perspectives Angel Vázquez-Ramos (714) 305-1087 vazquezramosa@gmail.com Men’s Choirs Gavin Spencer (530) 241-4161 gspencer@suhsd.net Vocal Jazz Michelle Hawkins (650) 738-7134 hawkinsm@smccd.edu Professional Choruses Molly Buzick Pontin (714) 662-2345 molly@pacificchorale.org Women’s Choirs Tina Peterson (562) 453-9681 tgpeterson@me.com
COMMUNICATIONS Cantate Editor Eliza Rubenstein erubenstein@occ.cccd.edu cantate.editor@ gmail.com
38 • Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018
Webmaster & Graphic Design Anthony M. Lien (530) 758-5896 amlien@lienhome.net
Social Media Coordinator Jason Pano (408) 768-0733 jasonpano@yahoo.com
California Choral Directors Association
CONGRATULATIONS CALIFORNIA CHOIRS ON YOUR SUCCESSFUL 2018 CONCERT TOURS Chino Hills High School MS. LAURA RUTHERFORD Choir Director
Beverly Hills High School MS. STACEY KIKKAWA Vocal Music Teacher
, Helsinki
e Choraliers San Jose Stat
Rocklin High School MR. SHAWN SPIESS Choir Director
Campolindo High School MR. MARK ROBERTS
Director of Choral Activities
Fountain Valley High School MR. KEVIN TISON Vocal Music Director
Biola University DR. SHAWNA STEWART Director of Choral Activities
Dr. Jonathan Ta
lberg
San Jose State University DR. JEFFREY BENSON Director of Choral Activities
West Valley College MR. LOU DE LA ROSA
Director of Choral & Vocal Studies
Resounding Achord MS. KRISTINA NAKAGAWA Campolindo
Artistic Director
Choirs, Nash ville
Peninsula Cantare DR. JEFFREY BENSON Artistic Director
e, Dublin
Biola Choral
Fountain Valley Troubadours, Sydney
www.perform-international.com
Leading the Way
www.perform-america.com
info@perform-international.com
Cantate • Vol. 31, No. 1 • Fall 2018 • 39
California Choral Directors Association 921 N. Harbor Blvd., #412 La Habra, CA 90631-3103
We can’t say where your CSULB bachelor’s degree will take you, but we know that if you want to make a meaningful difference in the world, your beautiful journey can begin at The Beach.
Elizabeth Shuman, MD
Resident Physician, Otolaryngology, University of California, San Francisco Member, San Francisco Symphony Chorus
Steve Blum
Professional Jazz Pianist, Composer and Arranger Faculty, Pacific Boychoir Academy
Zanaida Robles, DMA
Published Composer and Arranger Director, The Messiah Project Director of Choirs, Harvard-Westlake School
Leeav Sofer VJ Rosales
Singer and Arranger “The Filharmonic” Staff Arranger, The Late, Late Show with James Corden
Founding Director, Urban Voices of Los Angeles Singer and Conductor “Mostly Kosher”
For more information, please contact: Jonathan Talberg, DMA Director of Choral, Vocal and Opera Studies jonathan.talberg@csulb.edu
Joshua Palkki, PhD Coordinator, Choral Music Education joshua.palkki@csulb.edu