News and notes
from around the state SOUTHERN REGION Brandon Elliott and Choral Arts Initiative performed a concert in November featuring the premiere of a commissioned 30-minute secular cantata, What Color is the Dawn?, for chorus and marimba by Del Mar-based composer Jordan Kuspa. The performance on November 17 also featured additional West Coast premieres by composers Andrew Maxfield, Edie Hill, and Elaine Hagenberg. Retiring after this year, Michael Hayden, Director of Choirs at Mira Costa High School and 2014 California Teacher of the Year, and pianist Mark McCormick will take the 64-voice Mira Costa Festival Choir to Italy for Holy Week, April 3-13, 2020. They’ll begin by performing their first concert in Rome at Chiesa Sant’Agnese in Agone on Palm Sunday evening. The next day the MCHS Festival Choir will be singing Holy Monday Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The tour continues through Florence and Venice. In fall 2019, Matthew Kellaway stepped into the interim choral music position at Fullerton College. Matthew is conducting the Fullerton College Men’s Chorale and Fullerton College Women’s Chorale, as well as the newly formed Musical Theatre Ensemble. With a continuing passion for helping choristers to become musically literate, Karen Garrett has written Sight Singing for Festival Choirs. This course is aligned to the Choral Sight Reading Festival Adjudication Rubric available at SCVA Festivals, some Northern CMEA sections and four other states. The course is currently available for High School levels 1-3, with other levels
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and a Middle School volume in the works. The 12-week all-inclusive course is available at www.festivalmusicpress. com. Thank you, Karen, for making these music literacy materials available and accessible to all! Donald Brinegar’s newly published book, Pitch Perfect: A Theory and Practice of Choral Intonation, is now available on Amazon. There will also be a Kindle version, a website with sound and video examples, and a teacher’s edition with lesson plans for AP music classes, undergraduate choral music classes, and graduate choral seminars. Don will be presenting on the topic of intonation at the ACDA Conference in Salt Lake City on March 6, 2020.
FAR SOUTH REGION The Far South Region welcomed Dr. Arian Khaefi as the new director of choral studies at San Diego State University. Dr. Khaefi comes to San Diego after serving on the faculty at Fullerton College. In October, the San Diego Master Chorale and Palomar College Chamber Singers (under the direction of John Russell) and the San Diego State University Symphony Orchestra (under the direction of Michael Gerdes) gave the San Diego premiere of Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words of the Unarmed. The program, titled “Truth and Reconciliation,” also featured a premier of Swedish composer Henrik Dahlgren’s “Son to Mother” on a text by Maya Angelou. In November, the San Marcos Unified School District celebrated its 3rd annual Elementary Honor Choir with a culminating concert at Double Peak
28 • Cantate • Vol. 32, No. 2 • Winter 2020
School. SMUSD’s Elementary Honor Choir is a 6-week program, including 3rd- through 5th-grade students from each of the district’s 12 elementary schools. Students audition and are chosen by their teachers to participate. The choir includes approximately 100 students. The SMUSD Honor Choir is under the direction of Pam Lindamood with pianist Suzy Bohling.
NORTHERN REGION Ken Rawdon was the guest conductor and adjudicator for the Redding Choral Festival in November. Approximately 250 students worked on two selections together throughout the morning, followed by individual choir performances throughout the day. Deborah Divine accompanied throughout the morning, as well as for eight of the local choirs! The California Music Educators Association recognized our Northern Section Representative, Alissa Aune, as the CMEA/Pearson/Scott Foresman/ Silver Burdett Choral Educator Award for 2020. She will receive her award at CASMEC in February 2020.
BAY AREA
Angel Vázquez-Ramos encouraged middle school students in Palo Alto to “feel what the words mean so your audience can be inspired by your sound.” Dr. Vázquez-Ramos visited seven classrooms and conducted an evening concert on October 2 featuring Palo Alto Unified School District’s choir students in grades 7-12. Hundreds of singers attended the “Sound Off ” at San Jose State in October and the Tenor-Bass Choral
California Choral Directors Association
