CCDA Cantate (Fall 2020)

Nathaniel_Dett

igorstravinsky1

JSBACH_GOAT

Dame Ethel Smyth

Florence B. Price (is right)

Sam Coleridge-Taylor

Clara S.

Johannes B.

ella-shepard

At the CSU Fullerton School of Music,

We Believe …

…that people learn and perform best in a safe and positive environment. …in student-centered teaching and learning. …that developing musicianship is key to your future success. …that Everything we do, we do Together. …that the quality of your musical training really matters. …in the power of music to change lives for the better. …that professionalism is a teachable skill. …that great conductors and singers must also be great teachers. …that how you do anything affects how you do everything. …in Reaching Higher to help you achieve your goals. …that Everything relates to Everything. …that together we are stronger. …that you will teach the way that you were taught. …that where you have been is much less important than where you are going.

WHAT we do is important.

WHY we do it, is for YOU!

music.fullerton.edu 2 • Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020

California Choral Directors Association

IN THIS ISSUE 5 | LEARNING AND GROWING from the president’s pen · by jeffrey benson 6 | “SHOW THEM THE LOVE” letter from the editor · by eliza rubenstein and brandi birdsong 9 | COCOONING the composer’s voice · by dale trumbore 10 | ALL-STATE HONOR CHOIRS by molly peters

12 | 2020 HOWARD SWAN AWARD WINNERS 16 | SEEN & HEARD 19 | NOW WHAT? crowd-sourced resources for remote learning from ccda members 47 | GEORGE HEUSSENSTAMM COMPOSITION CONTEST WINNER by david montoya

66 | NEWS AND NOTES happenings from around the state

69 | VISION FOR THE FUTURE scholarship fund donors

70 | CCDA DIRECTORY

Leading the Way

our summer home at ECCO is quiet this year, but CCDA members are staying connected as we navigate the pandemic and look ahead to gathering in person in 2021!

Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020 • 3

CANTATE Volume 33, 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).

The editor reserves the right to edit all submissions.

ADVERTISING IN CANTATE Please visit our website (www.calcda.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.

WHEREAS, the human spirit is elevated to a broader understanding of itself through study and performance in the aesthetic arts, and WHEREAS, serious cutbacks in funding and support have steadily eroded state institutions and their programs throughout our country, BE IT RESOLVED that all citizens of the United States actively voice their affirmative and collective support for necessary funding at the local, state, and national levels of education and government, to ensure the survival of arts programs for this and future generations.

California Choral Directors Association empowers choral musicians to create transformative experiences for California’s diverse communities.

CCDA is a 501(c)3 non-profit, tax-exempt corporation and an affiliate of the American Choral Directors Association.

UPCOMING EVENTS Saturday, September 12: CCDA Fall Conference (check your e-mail and CCDA’s website and social media for developing

On the cover: Zooming with the greats.

4 • Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020

information!)

California Choral Directors Association

From The president’s pen:

LEARNING AND GROWING hat a year 2020 has been so far! None of us expected our classrooms to look W so much like our living rooms, dining rooms,

Jeffrey Benson is Director of Choral Activities at San José State University. The

Washington Post hails his choirs for singing

“with an exquisite blend, subtlety of phrasing, confident musicianship and fully supported tone…that would be the envy of some professional ensembles.”

He is also the Artistic Director of Peninsula Cantare, a community chorus based in

Palo

Alto. He received his Masters degree and his Doctorate in Choral Conducting/Music Education from The Florida State University and his

Bachelors

degree in

Music

Education from New York University.

and bedrooms this spring, but music teachers and conductors all over the world pivoted to virtual environments to provide our singers the best education possible during extenuating circumstances. I’m unbelievably proud of the work you’ve all done to adapt, stretch, and grow as choral conductors, as well as advocate for our programs across the state. We have a diverse group of musicians and students in our organization and it’s our job to serve their diverse needs even in times of crisis.

CCDA’s core mission is to empower choral musicians to create transformative experiences for California’s diverse communities. In light of recent events in our country, CCDA is moving forward with a further commitment to take real action in our organization to fight racism. We are now working on actionable ways to effect meaningful change in this arena. Our board recently approved this statement to show our support for Black communities throughout our state and our country: The California Choral Directors Association condemns unjust police brutality and the murder of Black people. We acknowledge that these senseless acts of violence stem from the larger issue of systemic racism throughout our nation. It is crucial that we stand in solidarity to defend human rights and actively call out injustice. Black communities need our support.

Black lives matter.

CCDA is committed to intentional diversification of its membership and its Board of Directors to more accurately reflect the state it serves. We also seek to “broaden our tent” regarding the types of choral activities that may speak to and honor people of color. Our mission cannot and will not be upheld without fighting for marginalized communities. This statement is long overdue and is the first step toward tangible action.

Where hate divides, choral music has the power to unite and educate. It is imperative that the choral community join the fight for equity.

We will not be silent.

This statement is just the beginning.

CCDA recently formed a Committee for

Leading the Way

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Our work will continue to intentionally diversify our membership and Board of Directors to more accurately reflect the state we serve. We will create opportunities for our BIPOC members and our students. Silence cannot and should not be tolerated any longer. CCDA will continue to celebrate our diversity and empower every choral musician in this state. response to the worldwide pandemic, has been extremely busy working ItonCCDA provide our members strong leadership

and exciting events to help lead the way. In addition to our Tuesday webinar series this past spring and our Summer Choral Summit in July in place of our beloved conference at ECCO, we will continue to provide presentations in the fall, and possibly in spring 2021, on topics related to online and hybrid teaching, virtual choirs, and new technologies, as well as reading sessions. CCDA is currently developing ways to provide honor choir experiences for our middle school and high school students in a safe and healthy way that still is exciting for young singers all over the state. Stay tuned for updates.

Thank you to our amazing board members who have volunteered extra hours this spring and summer to better provide resources for all of us. Eliza Rubenstein has once again amazed us all by pulling together a truly professional magazine with tremendous resources in record time. Molly Peters and her honor choir committee are working tirelessly to inspire our student musicians in new ways virtually. Christy Rohayem stepped up to chair our brand-new Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Her leadership and the entire committee’s work are leading the way for a more equitable and inclusive CCDA. And finally, Alissa Aune, Buddy James, Arlie Langager, and Tina Peterson tackled our first Summer Choral Summit in record time—and what a fabulous learning experience for us all.

I’m proud to be part of such an inspiring group of humans. CCDA continues to learn and grow because of our members. Thank you for caring about each student. Thank you for making a difference. Thank you for changing hearts and minds. Bravi tutti!  Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020 • 5

letter from the editor:

“Show them the love” oday I write, and we all live, under the T pall of a pandemic that disproportionately affects Americans of color, amid the Eliza Rubenstein is the Director of Choral and

Vocal Activities at

Orange Coast College, and the

Artistic

Director of the Orange County Women’s Chorus and the

Long Beach

Chorale & Chamber Orchestra. She holds degrees from

Oberlin College and UC-Irvine, and she is a former animal shelter supervisor and the co-author of a book about dog adoption.

Eliza’s family

includes her partner,

Julie Fischer; a yellow Labrador named Dayton; and a cat named

Wilbur. She’s

passionate about grammar,

Thai food,

photography, and the

St. Louis Cardinals and

St. Louis Blues.

echoes of the Black Lives Matter protests that continue to shake our nation awake, and in the mournful reverent hours after civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis has left this earth. Today—every day, actually—is a good day to listen more than to speak, and I’ve asked one of my gifted former students, soprano Brandi Birdsong, to be the voice of my editor’s column for this issue as we discuss, briefly in print as we’ve done over breakfast in the past, the experience of being a black woman in the choral-vocal world right now.

slavery and all of your classmates turn and look at you. I’ve had a choir-mate actually tell me I’d get into a university because I happen to be a black girl interested in opera—as if I wouldn’t get in for my talent or musicianship.

The idea that I would get things handed to me for affirmative action purposes when I feel I have to work harder than others to be taken seriously is a back-handed compliment. This is one of the many examples of not being taken seriously in the music world, and not only as a person of color, but specifically as a black woman.

Eliza: I was struck today by this quote from Jason A. Dungee: “For Eliza: Are there particular Black conductors, there pieces of music that have can exist a particular been speaking to you these internal tension that last several months, during occurs when you realize the coronavirus shutdown that the primary voice and the protests against people want to hear police brutality?

“I am something my ancestors from you is one of Brandi: For whatever dreamed of” —Brandi Birdsong activism, not music.” reason, the Dona Nobis Have you experienced Pacem by Ralph Vaughan that as a Black singer Williams has been something that keeps as well?

Do you feel free to create your own coming up. That may have to do with Walt path as an artist, or do you feel that the music Whitman’s text, or the music that marries the world is inclined to pigeonhole you? text so perfectly.

Brandi: At times, yes! This is tricky because Eliza: We want to think of choral in my experiences in choir, my voice is music-making as an inherently inclusive and considered too “rich,” “colorful,” or “big” for welcoming art form, but have there been times some solos or roles. But when certain other when you didn’t feel that way, and when your opportunities come into play, like a spiritual choral directors and choir-mates perhaps didn’t or gospel piece, it’s an almost unspoken realize that you didn’t feel that way? decision that I would be considered for it.

I’ve had people ask why I didn’t audition for Brandi: I can’t speak about anyone’s gospel solos in choir. I’ve never auditioned for personal experiences about this subject gospel pieces in choir, ever. The assumption except my own, but I think, for me, there is can be a little frustrating because when a constant “token black person” role that is there are other solo opportunities, I’m not played. Being in a choir that is diverse but encouraged or asked why I didn’t audition. I still lacks black people is like those painful think the main point is that I am more than days in high school when the teacher discusses

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California Choral Directors Association

the trauma black people have experienced. I am something my ancestors dreamed of and I want to break more boundaries, not just singing the typical “oh, Brandi can do that for us” repertoire.

Eliza: The intersection of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter uprisings have created a strange and unsettled atmosphere for all of us. What, if anything, do you want to hear from your teachers and conductors in this time?

What’s helpful? What’s not? What do you want the choral profession to hear and understand?

Brandi: I want musicians and choral directors to know that when we, as black people, see brutality filmed every day, and when we watch it every day—people who look like our brothers, our aunts, our cousins—it’s traumatic.

The [African American] music that they perform stems from trauma and pain. It’s hard enough to see people rationalize the killings of black people. But it’s painful seeing the music directors we love so much use gospel and spirituals to make their programs more enjoyable but also be so silent. If you want to tread lightly on this subject and not make public statements that show people where you stand, at least check in on your students and singers.

Show them the love you have for them like the love you show for black culture and music. 

CCDA’s Fall Regional Conferences have been cancelled due to the pandemic.

Check your e-mail and CCDA’s website and social media pages for information on other opportunities being developed for this fall. www.calcda.org

University of Redlands Bachelor of Arts • Bachelor of Music Master of Music • Artist Diploma GRADUATE DEGREES OFFERED IN Composition, Conducting, Pedagogy, Performance, Vocal Chamber Music Music Scholarships & Graduate Assistantships Available For More Information www.redlands.edu/music music@redlands.edu

CHORAL FACULTY Nicholle Andrews, Christopher Gabbitas VOICE FACULTY Melissa Tosh, Marco Schindelmann, Patricia Gee, Cynthia Snyder, Donald Brinegar

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020 • 7

LMU Music Welcomes

DR. T.J. HARPER Director of Choral Activities

Loyola Marymount University Choral Music Program Located in Los Angeles, the second largest artistic and entertainment market in the country, the LMU Choral Music Program offers undergraduate degrees in music with concentrations in Choral Conducting, Composition, and Vocal Performance. Scholarships are available.

CHORAL ENSEMBLES Consort Singers Concert Choir Treble Voices Sinatra Opera Workshop

cfa.lmu.edu/music

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the COmposer’s voice:

cocooning ack in April, our next-door neighbor pointed out two monarch butterfly cocoons B on the side of our house. One was black, nearly Dale Trumbore is a Los Angeles-based composer and writer whose music has been performed by organizations including the

Los Angeles

Children’s Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Modesto Symphony, Pacific Chorale, Pasadena Symphony, The Singers, and

VocalEssence.

How to Go On, Choral Arts Initiative’s album of

Trumbore’s

choral works, was a

#4-bestselling Classical album on iTunes the week of its release.

Hear Dale’s music at daletrumbore.com.

ready to emerge, and the other was lime-green.

The next day, the black cocoon was gone—we’d missed that butterfly hatching—but my husband and I spent the following week monitoring the green cocoon, finding excuses to walk past it, leaning over our washing machine to peer out the window and make sure it was still there.

Some vapid, basic part of my brain thought: Oh look, a metaphor! Something new and exciting and inevitable in the midst of all this chaos and uncertainty.

We watched as the green cocoon eventually turned black, then translucent, each dot and stripe newly visible on the butterfly’s folded wings. Within the next twenty-four hours, my internet research told me, the butterfly would hatch. I checked it obsessively for so many of those hours.

But just after the chrysalis split, I realized the butterfly wasn’t moving.

I looked up what could have gone wrong. Its wings might not have been strong enough, or maybe it was sick from the start. But how could it have made it that far, the chrysalis already cracked open, wings fully formed, and not push through?

I told myself not to make a metaphor out of it. If it was a metaphor, it would be an uninspired one. Here we all are, stuck inside our cocoons, unable to escape, just like....dead butterflies? No, I thought. Don’t dwell on it.

Definitely don’t write about it.

ach day is a new struggle. I’ve written about anxiety before; I wrote a whole book E about it. In non-COVID times, I’m worrying

about ordinary life: meeting deadlines, getting new work, whether I’m doing enough, whether I’m doing too much. Now I’m concerned for the health of my friends and family and worrying about the future of our country. I’m desperately hoping that other members of the music community are spending this time in our respective cocoons thinking about making music more equitable for all. “What a strange time to be alive,” I keep writing in the few work emails I’m sending. “Hope you’re doing as well as is

Leading the Way

humanly possible!”

When I got a new commission request a month ago, I was startled by my own reaction. I was excited, sure—I always am, whenever new commissions come in—but also unreasonably surprised. Without realizing it, I’d quietly resigned myself to potentially not finding new work for a year, or maybe several years. When every 2020 performance I had was cancelled, $25,000 of future income lost in a matter of weeks, a small part of me gave up on music altogether. I’ve spent this summer sluggishly finishing pieces for existing contracts and sending those scores off into what feels like a black hole, every premiere postponed.

But there is still new work coming in. Some is lined up already; some will emerge when it’s the right time. I’m telling myself I’ll spend this fall with fewer commissions than usual finally writing a solo piano piece about how memory evolves over time, something I’ve been talking about composing for years. I’ve been trying to do yoga every day, because it makes such a difference to my mental health, even— especially—when that yoga starts with me lying flat on the floor, not moving at all.

And when I feel most despondent about the state of, well, absolutely everything, I ask myself what I can control. I’m considering where I have power to advocate against racism and white supremacy in classical music, whether that’s in the texts I choose to set, the peers whose music I recommend, or the advice and mentorship I provide to others. I’ve been asking myself these questions for years, but the answers are more important now than ever. I can always do better, and more.

There’s only so much we can control in normal times, and in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, that window is even smaller. Still, after we consider what’s in our power right now, we can use each personal superpower for good, controlling what we can: the music we program in the future, the music we recommend to others, and the projects—personal or professional—that we create with the resources we have now. We can tend to our wings, keeping them strong so we’ll be ready, when the right moment comes, to push forward. 

Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020 • 9

ALL-STATE Honor Choir updates

by Molly Peters

I

Details are still being worked out, so please stay write this article in the midst of a wide range connected to CCDA, or reach out to me with any of emotion, and I know you can relate. We feel questions (mepeters79@gmail.com). anxious about returning to school (or not!); we feel extreme sadness at the loss of singing together; we feel frustration with our own children (who, me? no, my he timeline will be similar to our normal schedule for children are perfect angels...); we are worried about posting the All-State lists, sending repertoire, and our friends who live alone; we miss our students; we uploading rehearsal tracks. While February seems like a miss human contact; we have lost friends and family long time away, we must prepare for the possibility of a to COVID. This is an incredibly trying time for Virtual All-State Honor Choir. We are still working on everyone, no matter the exact set-up, but what our individual here are some of the circumstances are. aspects the Honor Honor choir Choir committee has may be the furthest already worked out: thing from your mind right now, • Each choir will do but I do want to two selections alone, let you know about and there will be a the changes we are third combined piece making this year. (because we never get We are committed to to do this in person!). giving our students • Students will have an All-State Honor access to rehearsal Choir experience tracks and will be even though our fall expected to prepare Regional Honor their music with your Choirs have been help.

Members of the 2019 All-State SSAA Honor Choir perform in cancelled. concert. (Photo by Robyn Peters) • There will be two We are moving required “rehearsals” all our fall auditions with our conductors. online. We will hold a two-round audition process, They will occur sometime in January and/or February, hoping to make the auditions less daunting for your dates and time TBD. Each rehearsal will be 60-75 students and for you as you prepare them to audition minutes long. from a tiny box on their computer screen. The first round will be focused just on the solo (we are looking at • Students will have until sometime in early March using a piece of choral music and having students sing (deadline TBD) to record their videos and submit them their part for a portion of it rather than an Art Song). for the processing of the virtual All-State video.

Students’ videos will be uploaded to OpusEvent (or some other online audition platform), and adjudicators Again, this is a work in progress, so please check will score all submissions. We will move the highestFacebook, your e-mail, and/or the CCDA website for scoring singers on to a second round in which they more updates. In these uncertain times, however, we will do some of the theory portion of the audition live felt it was important to give our students an honor choir via Zoom (or some other platform). It will be like the experience (hopefully like no other)!  regular audition....except online.

T

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California Choral Directors Association

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020 • 11

CCDA is honored to present the

2020 Howard Swa

A

nna

Hamre became

Director of Choral Activities at California State University, Fresno, in 1999, where she conducted the Concert Choir, Fresno Community Chorus, Master Chorale, and Coro Piccolo. These choirs frequently collaborated with other area musical ensembles, especially the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra. Her work has taken her beyond the USA to Mexico, China, Italy, Austria, and England.

She has served as President of ACDA’s Western Division, and as Western Division Representative on the Council for Choral Education of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME). Her honors include the California Association for Music Education (CMEA) President’s Award (2013), the CMEA Choral Conductor Award (2006), the Fresno State College of Arts and Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award (2003), the Fresno-Madera Counties Music Education Association Choral Educator Award (2003), and more. Anna is the author of The High-School/University Sight-Singer, a musicliteracy method in use in every state and several other countries. Her publication The Weekly Sight-Singer: An Abbreviated and Accelerated Method was released in 2011. 

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an Award Winners

J

oseph

Huszti is Professor

Emeritus of Music in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine. During his tenure at UCI, twenty-seven international concert tours included prize-winning performances at the International Musical Eisteddfod (1979, 1986, 1992, 1997, 2008), the Béla Bartók International Choral Competition (1988, 1994, 2000), the Koorfest (1979), and the World Choir Games (2006, 2010), among others. In 1965, Huszti and his Bakersfield College Choir were the first American winners of the top prize at the International Choral Eisteddfod in Llangollen, Wales, an accomplishment that earned them command performances with Pope Paul VI and President Lyndon Johnson. He continues to direct the award-winning Irvine-based Men in Blaque, a TTBB ensemble that has performed and competed around the world. Before coming to California, Huszti headed the choral activities at Boston University’s School for the Arts and directed the Young Vocalists Program at the Tanglewood Festival from 1972-1977. He has collaborated with internationally renowned musicians including Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Norman Dello Joio, and he served as president of Western Division ACDA from 1979-1981. 

Leading the Way

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California Choral Directors Association

"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach."

CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS from You Were Made For This

Leading the Way

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California Choral Directors Association

SEEN & HEARD Coronavirus meant we couldn’t gather this year for our usual CCDA Summer Conference at ECCO, and we’re sad to miss out on the learning and the fellowship we always enjoy there.

But our intrepid CCDA board created a fantastic online experience with the CCDA Summer Choral Summit, and while we wait to be able to meet in person again, here’s a look back at some highlights of our last few ECCO costume parties! As always, send your best photos of your choir’s activites—musical or extra-musical—to cantate.editor@gmail.com if you’d like them to be considered for publication in a future issue.

Leading the Way

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UNIVERSITY of SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THORNTON SCHOOL of MUSIC

choral& sacred music

DEGREES OFFERED Choral Music BM, MM, DMA Sacred Music MM, DMA APPLICATION DEADLINE DECEMBER 1, 2020 visit music.usc.edu/choral

MUSIC.USC.EDU

18 • Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020

@USCTHORNTON

California Choral Directors Association

Now what?

Crowdsourced ideas from CCDA members for teaching and directing during a pandemic

W

e asked, and you came through!

We invited CCDA members to send us their favorite distance-learning lesson plans and projects to share with their colleagues, and dozens of choral directors—from up and down the state and from every kind of ensemble—answered the call.

The next 45 pages are filled with ideas that you’re invited and encouraged to use with your students and singers. You’ll find lessons that are easy to replicate on virtually no notice, and ones that take some extra work; projects that are technologically adventurous, and those that don’t even require internet access; a handful of activities that speak to a particular niche in the choral world, and plenty that can be used or adapted for practically any chorus.

What they all have in common is that they represent the ingenuity, the creativity, and the generosity of our CCDA membership. You won’t just find some useful ideas to borrow here—you’ll find a whole stack of new reasons to appreciate everything that this choral community represents. 

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Soundtrack of my life Julie Dana • Fresno City College • Fresno Elementary through adult Molly Peters shared this with me; I made some adjustments to it for my summer music appreciation class, and their answers were heartfelt and honest. This is that assignment as I taught it, not only during COVID, but also during the uprisings of the Black Lives Matter movement. I felt it was necessary to allow my students—if they wanted—a voice in discussing current events taking place in the world. Their contributions were beautiful.

Soundtrack of my Life Given the number of people in the world who have turned to music and the arts during the current world events, this assignment will give you an opportunity to share your music and how it has influenced you in your life.

Select three major moments that have affected you in your life. At least one of your moments should represent a current event in our society at this time (e.g., social justice, immigration, pandemic, government, global issues etc.). The others can be personal if you wish (graduation, being born, travels, loss of family, learning a skill, etc.).

The assignment • Choose one song for each major life moment and write a short (3-4 sentences) overview of why you’ve chosen this music. Please include the artist’s name, the year recorded, and a YouTube link.

• Include one image per song. It can be something from your life (a photo), or a photo of the musical artist, or even a drawing or piece of your own art!

• You can share any type of music and event for this assignment, as I will be the only one to read and listen.

I look forward to listening to your soundtracks, should you choose to participate in this assignment.

Resources needed: Internet access

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Coffee house Jenny Tisi • All Saints Church • Pasadena All choir types/levels We did an online coffee house. This took place the night of what was to be our spring concert.

My middle school and high school choristers performed song that they wrote, or covers. They accompanied themselves on guitar, piano and ukulele. Others contributed by reading poetry, linking their artwork to songs, or playing instruments. We even had family acts! This was streamed live from our church and lots of advertising was done. We drew a pretty decent crowd and everyone was grateful!

Resources needed: Internet access, Zoom or other streaming platform

“Korona Karaoke” David V. Montoya • La Habra High School • La Habra Middle school, high school, community/four-year college One activity I did to keep my students singing was Korona Karaoke! Students submitted a video of their best karaoke song performance. Some students chose to make beautiful music videos of themselves singing in various locations around the house and yard. Students were very clever and creative! All the students were required to send a recording, but they could also compete for prizes if they wanted to. I had eleven students who wanted their video in the running for simple prizes (Starbucks gift cards for first, second, and third places). All my classes were able to watch and vote, and voting was made easy by using a Google form. The posting of the videos all in one place was trickier, but I purchased a subscription to Padlet.com for $10, and I was able to posts all of the videos together in such a way that students were able to make positive comments about their peers’ videos. (Padlet has a monthly fee and you can cancel at anytime. I also found it helpful for creating video tributes for retirements and graduations.)

Resources needed: Internet, Google forms, and a way to post videos

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The four questions Keith Hancock • Tesoro High School • Rancho Santa Margarita Middle school, high school, commmunity/four-year college [Editor’s note: We learned after publication that this article was written by, and should have been attributed to, Doreen Scott Fryling of New York. We regret that she was not credited earlier!]

For this assignment, please pick one thing to do. This is an opportunity to direct your own learning and interests. There is no way for us to replicate the beauty and benefits of singing together in real time at this point, but we can continue to thrive as musicians. Realizing that you all have different prior experiences and different ability levels, I have provided learning experiences that allow you to create, analyze, perform, explore, process, practice, learn from others, and learn by yourself.

The four questions: 1. What did you do?

2. Why did you pick this experience?

3. How do you know if you learned anything from doing it?

4. What could you do next to extend this experience?

Be prepared to receive feedback from me and be willing to answer any additional questions I have for you based on your experience.

Here are your choices (pick one): Be a conductor: Pick one of our pieces that we are have sung, and go beyond just keeping time and conduct using gestures and cues that you believe would help a choir perform that piece. And answer the four questions.

Be a composer who uses music technology: Make a piece of music using garageband or similar program (ask Mr. Hancock for recommendations). Include a vocal line and at least three other sound layers. Tell me about your composition process either by writing up a short summary or recording an audio response that is between two and five minutes long. Your garageband piece should be at least 30 seconds long. And answer the four questions.

Be a choral composer who uses traditional notation: Make a piece of music using MuseScore or Noteflight (free online). Compose either a warm-up exercise (complete with lyrics) or a piece for choir (SATB with or without other instrumentation). Tell me about your composition process either by writing up a short summary or recording an audio response that is between two and five minutes long. Your piece length is determined by you. And answer the four questions.

Be a performer: Record audio or video of yourself performing your favorite song to a karaoke track. Tell me why it’s your favorite song right now and why you like singing it. And answer the four questions.

Be an a cappella performer: Using the a cappella app, record yourself harmonizing in at least three parts to a song of your choosing. You must have at least a verse and a chorus. And answer the four questions.

Be a performer/creator: Record an audio or video of yourself performing your own harmony parts that you have made up to a recording of your favorite song. Imagine you are a back-up singer and be creative! Tell me why it’s your favorite song right now and why you like it. And answer the four questions.

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The four questions, continued Be a teacher: Find a video online that would be valuable for your peers to watch that is related to singing/ choir/music. Write up an explanation of why it would be beneficial for anyone in our class and what you learned from watching it. Provide some prompt questions that could help students think about the content in the video.

And answer the four questions.

Conduct an interview: Ask a family member you’re stuck with (or call someone) about their music making.

Some possible questions are: Did they/do they have formal or informal music education? How do they prefer making music? What impact has music had on them? Do they think that all students should be exposed to music education? What memories do they have about music making? Write up a summary of your findings with any insights you have about this interaction or record an audio response that is between two and five minutes long.

And answer the four questions.

Do a comparative analysis: Find two recordings of the same piece by two different artists (you could use one of our choral pieces we are preparing or a song recorded by two different artists). Analyze how they are similar and how they are different and why you prefer one over the other. Write up an analysis (at least two hundred words). And answer the four questions.

Explore music careers: Consider all of the ways that you consume music now that you are social distancing.

Explore and pick a music career that is responsible for bringing music into your home (e.g. sound engineer, commercial artist, film composer, jingle writer, Youtube artist). Write up a short summary of what this person does, what type of schooling would be helpful for this career, skills necessary for this job, and your thoughts on that profession. And answer the four questions.

Listen to Song Exploder: Pick your favorite artist or explore someone new. Listen and respond to one of these Song Exploder episodes. http://songexploder.net/episodes What is their creation process like? What surprises you about this episode? Write up a summary of your findings with any insights you have about this or record an audio response that is between two and five minutes long. And answer the four questions.

Make a presentation: Using a slide presentation, share with me your favorite piece of music. Format your slides like this: slide #1 title and artist, slide #2 an analysis of the piece from a construction standpoint, slide #3 why we should listen to this piece, slide #4 a link to a recording. And answer the four questions.

Pitch an idea: If you would like to create your own music learning experience, pitch your idea here. I will review your suggestion and give you the go-ahead or offer suggestions for making it viable. Be sure to make your case for why you would benefit from your own idea. You will receive credit for the assignment (not the pitch- so pitch early). And answer the four questions at the conclusion of your work.

Propose a choral program: Create a choral program of your own. Decide how to structure your program and pick pieces that fit your vision. Create a budget and go to jwpepper.com to find out the cost and what is available for different kinds of choirs. Include at least nine choral pieces for three different choirs. Create a slideshow with a slide for each piece that explains why you have chosen that piece and a link to a recording of it.

Have one additional slide that explains your vision. And answer the four questions.

Research: Pick one of our pieces we are preparing and do some research on it. Things to consider might be intent of the composer, context of time and place, lyric interpretations, and/or structure of the composition.

Write up a detailed description of the piece that demonstrates your understanding of it from a deeper perspective. And answer the four questions.

Resources needed: Internet

Leading the Way

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Choir newsletter William Paisner • Southwest Women’s Chorus • Temecula Adult community, church I create and post a newsletter every week to our community of current members, alumnae who have shown an interest in returning, and remaining alumnae. It includes 4-5 examples of past chorus YouTube submissions to keep their memories functioning plus a specific YouTube or Facebook video that moves me and that I want to share.

Resources needed: Internet, e-mail

Google sites Heidi Harriss • Actis Junior High School • Bakersfield All choir types/levels I used Google Sites to create a website that students could visit to choose from a variety of activities to keep them musically engaged while they are studying from home. The activities allowed for students to explore different facets of music. The autonomy allows students to direct their own learning in a meaningful way. The particular activities I chose are specific to middle school and could also be used by elementary students, but a director could modify the types of activities for their group appropriately. My website can be viewed at: https://sites.google.com/ pbvusd.k12.ca.us/actischoir/home.

Resources needed: Internet, e-mail

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Low(er)-stress virtual choir Nicole Dedmon • Fullerton College • Fullerton High school, community/four-year college, adult choirs Virtual choirs are very popular right now for very obvious reasons, but the downside to them is the incredible amount of time and technical expertise on the part of the conductor required to pull one off. Also, the main creative process behind the virtual choir is enjoyed by only the conductor, which defeats the purpose of encouraging students to have independent ownership of the musical process. So, I plan to do several of my pieces as virtual choirs with audio only. Since this is much faster to sync and put together, I want to include student input on this process— begin the recording process early, then meet over Zoom to listen to it and provide feedback. For example, how is the energy level? Where could articulations be better? Where could our tuning be better? I would then have them re-record a final time. This obviously takes much more time and requires an earlier start to the recording process, so it means that it will be harder to get through a large amount of repertoire, but I believe that including student input will really help to improve their skills throughout this time of virtual learning.

For presentation in a “virtual concert” format, it is certainly better to have some sort of visual component. One option is to simply have students lip sync along on Zoom, but I think a more creative option would be to collaborate either with the art department or the media department, or perhaps even the theater/dance department. Some of these professors might be just as in need of COVID-era activities for their students as we are, and they might be happy to provide a visual media to accompany the recording.

Also, I will be taking advantage of the time we now have to spend on other non-performance aspects of music making. I am very interested in hearing student input on the analysis of these pieces, and I plan to have live discussions, but also to have them write a short paragraph after these discussions, essentially to function as program notes. I will select some of these and feature them in the video, so that viewers can see into our creative process a little bit more. My overall goal is essentially to create a “choral collage” of our repertoire that has a throughline for our audiences. It is essentially a combination of a concert and a final project.

Of course, this is not “choir” in the traditional sense, but we have to find a way to continue their collaborative music making skills in a way where they are actively engaging and taking ownership of the musical process. Perhaps it is not a bad idea to take this time to teach them the skills of critical listening. We will emerge with better, more independent singers who are able to reach a higher level of music making at a faster rate when we can be back in person.

Resources needed: Internet, recording device, laptop with access to basic recording software (SoundTrap, for example), a collaborative department across campus

Leading the Way

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Songwriting challenge Ariel May • Canyon High School • Anaheim Middle school through college choirs One of our most requested and engaging assignments was a Songwriting Unit. I taught this during the Fall semester, so the students were excited to do it during distance learning as well.

Students followed the form (at right) for the process, which required them to write a verse and chorus. For the songwriting unit, students were provided with two accompaniment tracks—slow and upbeat—using the same chord progression (1-4-6-5). The accompaniment tracks can be simple recordings on piano or guitar. The students were instructed to choose between the provided accompaniment tracks and practice improvising a melody over the recording. While listening to the track, they were encouraged to write down any thoughts, feelings, or lyrics that came to mind. Some students came up with a melody first, while others began with lyrics. Once they had secured one of the two, they worked on the other. Advanced students were given the option to create their own accompaniments.

For the final submission, students recorded a video of themselves singing their song with the accompaniment track playing from another device or playing their own accompaniment.

Duration of assignment: 3 weeks Checkpoints: select any collaborators (solo, duet, trio); submit melody (audio recording, submit lyrics: share inspiration for the lyrics; submit chord progression; submit final video recording.

Additional learning: collaboration (students can collaborate with partners); submit notation of their melody (all or 4-8 bars); submit rhythmic notation.

Resources needed: Internet access, smartphone or other video recording device.

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Songwriting challenge, continued Songwriting Assignment 1

NAME:__________________

The process of writing a song can unfold in many different way: start with a melody, a rhythmic groove, accompanying chords, etc. For this assignment, follow the steps below on your own or with a partner.

After completing this form, record a video of you singing your song with the accompaniment (you must be visible & clearly heard). Upload your video to Google Classroom.

1. CHORDS- Listen to the provided accompaniment tracks (Google Classroom) for the verse and chorus. The most common chords are 1-4-5, the Primary Chords. Advanced: choose your own chords.

2. FEEL- Choose the feel of the song. For this assignment, there are two provided accompaniment tracks: Slow and Upbeat. Advanced: record chords in your own tempo, rhythm, and meter.

3. LYRICS & MELODY- Create a melody & lyrics that fit your chord progression. Lyrics can be about your week, school, a mood, the world, a relationship, your favorite ice cream, etc.

4. FORM- For this assignment, you only need to write Verse 1-2 and Chorus 1-2. Advanced: add additional sections (e.g., Verse 1-2, Chorus, Verse 3-4, Bridge, Chorus).

——————————————————————————————————————————

Verse- Chord Progression: 1-4-6-5

Chord Names: _____ - _____ - _____ - _____

Chorus- Chord Progression: 1-4-1-5

Chord Names: _____ - _____ - _____ - _____

LYRICS Verse 1

Verse 2

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

!

_______________________________________________

Chorus 2 (can repeat Chorus 1)

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

Chorus 1

Song Title:_________________________________

Leading the Way

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Students in charge Scott Glysson • Cal Polytechnic University • San Luis Obispo All choir types/levels old enough to participate Once a week, each section in my choirs took a turn leading some type of fun activity of their design. It is amazing to see their creativity, and this makes them feel like they are invested in the time together. Some were musically rewarding (in my women’s chorus, one section chose to present a few pieces by female composers), and others just lots of fun (everything from sharing their pets on screen, to “kahoot” question-and-answer games to learn more about their classmates. It was important, in this time, to take time out and simply connect with each other on a basic human level.

Resources needed: Zoom or Skype access

“Si le le” F. May Le Roy • Cathedral City High School • Cathedral City All choir types/levels Our choirs enjoyed this simple song by Bobby McFerrin (arranged by Paul Smith), as taught by the members of Voces8 in this video for everyone to participate in via singing and/or body percussion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9xDt4oduYE [Editor’s note: Check out Voces8’s other “#LiveFromHome” videos on YouTube for lots of terrific interactive options!]

Resources needed: Internet access

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Interview an adult Kim Nason • Capistrano Unified School District • Mission Viejo Elementary, middle school/junior high My teaching partner and I created an assignment for our fourth graders in which they interviewed an adult (a parent, grandparent, or neighbor) about a song that had been important to them.

The students were first asked if they had a song that was inspirational or made them happy, and why they liked it. Then, they asked an adult to name a song that inspired them and talk about why it was important to them. The fourth graders found a recording of this song recommended by an adult and listened to it, then wrote about how they felt when they heard it.

As an extension, students were asked to make a Google slide presentation of the information that they got from their interview, including images of album covers and artists.

For our fifth graders, we asked our students to interview an adult with questions including “What songs were sung to you as a child?”, “Do you remember any bedtime songs?”, “What songs would you sing on a road trip?”, “What do you remember about music in school when you were young?”, “Did you sing in a choir or play an instrument?”, “What was your favorite band or artist when you were in high school?”, and “Can you share any memories about a concert you attended?”

Then they were asked to listen to one or more of the songs that were mentioned in the interview and write a brief comment about the music.

When they completed the interview, they too had an opportunity to make a Google slide show presentation to share with the person they interviewed.

This assignment was simple, but could easily be expanded for older students to be a more detailed interview about musical tastes, genres, artists, and composers.

Resources needed: Internet, ideally, but this could be done offline as well

Leading the Way

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COVID concert series Julie Dana • Fresno City College • Fresno Any choir type/level Since we were shut down the day before our first concert of the semester, in an attempt to still have a concert experience for the end of the semester, I had our Canvas platform divide my ensembles into small groups of six or less. They were given “topics” (secretly to each group), such as Healing, Freedom, Fire and Water, etc., and asked to put together a concert, 15 minutes in length, using choral recordings from YouTube, Vimeo, etc. We were meeting via Zoom on a regular class schedule, and I gave them time in breakout rooms during our class. In those breakout rooms, they discussed, shared videos, and assembled their concert materials. Most groups put their “concert” together via YouTube playlist.

Required along with the music selection was: • An “acknowledgements” page, allowing them to show me who did (or didn’t) do the work.

• “Program notes,” similar to what they have seen in their own concert programs, including translations, why they selected the piece, or how they came up with the music and the order.

They were not allowed to use any music we had performed or studied in class!

They loved the assignment and asked to have it included in our work when we are back together.

We had a two-night Zoom watch party with all of the ensembles and concerts mixed together.

My student leadership and I met and I showed them the topics (here I found out that they were super secretive about their topics, as none of them knew any except their own; they were giggling and saying “awesome!” when they saw others’ topics). The student leadership then was tasked with putting the concerts together solely with the topics considered. I acted as the secretary only, and let them discuss how to put the playlists in order to create a program. (It was really great to hear them putting it together!)

On the evening of the concerts, we all tuned in, I introduced the group, they introduced their concert and shared their program notes in the Zoom chat feature, and they shared their concerts.

My only change to our next semester’s assignment will be that I will request the concerts ahead of time so that I can share them using my own internet access, which is better than some of the students’; we had a couple that did not play properly due to bad connection.

Resources needed: Internet, Zoom access

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COVID concert series, continued CHORAL ENSEMBLES FINAL PROJECT SPRING 2020 Small groups will be assigned in each class to make up a production team!

Your goal is a 15 minute Choral Concert that will be viewed by your colleagues during an “FCC CHORAL CONCERT NIGHT” (Or NIGHTS) during the week of <date> (Exact dates and times to be announced later).

All three ensembles will participate in this ZOOM event at the same time!

Your concert will consist of youtube videos played in succession as a concert. (YouTube playlist is fine!). Or if you want to get fancy, you can do some kind of power point presentation with introductions to the songs as you go…. Be creative, just let Mrs. D know what your plans are first! There should be no less than 3 pieces in the concert but probably 4 short, 3 minute pieces will work!. A little short is fine, but please don’t make it longer than 15 minutes!

• • • •

• •

•

•

The videos must be of choral ensembles. This can include one jazz or acappella ensemble as long as you have other more traditional pieces represented as well!

Work together as a team in your small groups on your private Canvas Chat Rooms!

Develop strategies for viewing youtube videos or searching out music in other ways and then find a video performance of it.

You may not use any music that we have performed previously or prepared this year in class OR music that you have heard at a choral festival recently. i.e. – Don’t use some popular Jake Runestad composition that we’ve heard at several festivals. But DO use another, not so well known, Jake Runestad composition that you find in searching your topic.

Be creative with your topic and research texts that might fit in with your topic!

Look up music from some of the ensembles that Mrs. Dana has posted in your Canvas class PAGES area… this might give you a good start on finding some interesting literature.

Please prepare program notes of some sort about each piece in your concert. This can include information about the composers, or poet, or why you selected the piece and how it fits into your program. (Make sure it is your own words please!)

Be sure to have an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT PAGE listing each member of your group and their contributions to your project!

Each group will have a different concert theme so we will get some great music shared!!!

Your project MUST be completed by Friday <date>! And turned in to Mrs. D so she can check it out, make sure it works etc.

Leading the Way

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Connect with the text Tom Carter • Pinewood School • Los Altos Hills All choir types/levels Objective: To deepen the authentic connection between singer and text, singer and song, and choir and audience.

Overall process: Encourage the singers to imagine a context for the singing of the song. When would someone sing this song? To whom would they sing it (sometimes it’s easier to call this person the Other)? How would they want to affect their Other? Through a series of small group or teacher-led exchanges, help them to flesh out the specifics. For example, if the song is “This Little Light of Mine,” the singers might come up with the story that they are singing to a friend who is suffering from a lack of confidence. The way they’re trying to affect that friend could be “to give them back the confidence they lost and encourage them to live life to the fullest.” Note: It doesn’t matter if they are accessing a true or imagined story—if they flesh out the details, their connection will be just as authentic either way.

Deepen the connection: Once they have a story that makes sense to them, encourage deeper and more specific connections. Using the above example, prompt them in interchanges like these.

Q: What specifically did your friend do that led them to be discouraged? A: They didn’t make the team they wanted to. Q: What team? A: The varsity tennis team. Q: How do you know?

A: They told me. Q: How badly are they taking it? A: They have stopped communicating with their friends, and they have given up on their dreams of going to college on a tennis scholarship. In short, they are devastated. Q: If you get through to them, how will they change? A: When I can get them to restore their confidence, they will be their laughing, joyful self again, and they will get back on the court!

Choose stories: At this point, each singer could choose the story that intrigued them the most (of the ones they just heard), and spend a few minutes journaling/thinking about all the specifics they would know if this story were real. You could also break them into small groups which would then come up with one or two stories per group. After they do so, each group would share with the whole choir. Who is/are the person(s) they’re singing to? What do they look like? What’s their name? What’s their relationship to you? Where are they as you sing to them? What are they doing or saying right before the music starts? What do they do/how do they change as the song progresses. The entire choir doesn’t have to embrace the same story! As long as the scenario gives a compelling reason for the singer to sing those words—and doesn’t contradict the desired mood/ tone of the piece—it will enhance the overall performance.

Further down the road: If you are working virtually, the singers could do all of the above as they prepare. If you are able to sing as a group (online or in person), the singers would incorporate their imaginations, trying to affect their Other(s) as they sing.

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Connect with the text, continued Deeper dive: Other small group or individual activities include fleshing out the details within the text, and empowering the singers to know what they would know if they were a real person singing these words in their imagined or real-life context. To do this, singers go word by word, line by line, making specific and personal all that is general. In “This Little Light of Mine,” each singer would know which personal “light” they’re singing about . . . just as they would know why the Other’s light has been tamped down. So, when they sing, are they referencing themselves giving classroom speeches with more confidence? Trying out for the school play? Standing up to a bully? Telling their parents that they want to be a singer rather than a doctor?!

If the text is more detailed, the singers have more specific opportunities to put flesh and bone on words, deepening both meaning and authentic connection as they do so. For example, look at some of the lyrics in Stanford’s “The Blue Bird”: “The lake lay blue below the hill, / O’er it, as I looked, there flew / Across the waters cold and still / A bird whose wings were palest blue.”

Singers learning this glorious piece would deepen their authentic connection by fleshing out each image. Q: Where is this lake? What does it look like? How big is it? What surrounds it? What about the hill? How big? What colors? What vegetation? What smells? What were you doing there? How far away was the blue bird? How was it flying? What was the weather? What were you doing there? How did this experience affect you in the moment? In other words, the singers get to flesh out all the specific details so that when they sing, they are “remembering it” just as if they really lived that experience. As they sing, their imagination taps in, resulting in a much deeper personal connection that will show on their faces, in their bodies, and in their voices.

Working in small groups, the singers can ask each other these sorts of questions and build an even more vibrant connection to the song.

Pedagogical support: Certain practices go a long way to help singers who are trying to develop a full human connection to the text. Certainly, the establishment of a safe environment is crucial (the more supportive the leader and the group, the more the singers will be willing to risk full expression). As they explore free and connected movement that is tied to their story, their faces will express what’s going on for them. Rather than telling them to look a certain way or express a particular emotion on their faces on in their voices, guide them back to their connection -- it’s all about that Other and the specifics they’ve fleshed out. You want them to look enthusiastic or “alive”? Entreat them to “do whatever it takes to get your Other to smile!” If you are standing in front of them, you can be their Other. No need to make a face that you want them to model or entreat them to do anything; they are trying to affect you, not the other way around.

Much more on all of this on www.choralcharisma.com, including a step-by-step mini-workshop to help explain and undergird the process (see “Session Notes”). Feel free to drop me a line for support/clarification as well: tcarter@pinewood.edu.

Resources needed: Internet access

Leading the Way

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“Echo Music” Paul Kimball • Lincoln Unified School District • Stockton All choir types/levels We need to figure out a way to sing live through Zoom, but as we all know, the delay factor makes it impossible to stay together. I experimented with my own high school and middle school choirs and came up with a solution, and two original compositions, that I call Echo Music. It’s outside the box, but it’s inside the reality of distance rehearsals. The basic principles: • • • •

Don’t worry about when entrances happen. Think about the beauty of echos in a cave.

Do small groups or soloists throughout the piece.

Have piano solos and tremolo chords to help with pitch.

Piano parts should be played with one hand when choir sings.

The text of “Nocturne” is all about echos and is in the public domain. I also arranged “Swing Low/Sakura/Shalom Chaverim” for middle/beginning high school. Both work for a large variety of voices. Chords are built for scared individuals, lots and lots of solos can be assigned, and I included very few dynamics because they are difficult to control in computer meetings!

I’d like to see composers run with this so that we can have live musical experiences. I am more interested in spreading the concept than these particular pieces; I am giving them away, so feel free to share. E-mail PKimball@lusd.net for full scores and a demo!

Resources needed: Internet access; Zoom or Google Meet

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California Choral Directors Association

Postcards from the edge Eliza Rubenstein • Orange Coast College • Costa Mesa All choir types/levels This isn’t a musical activity at all, but as we’ve all been reminded these past few months, music-making is only one element of our responsibility to our students and singers.

During a weekly Zoom meeting with my Orange Coast College Chamber Singers, I told them that I was using my stay-at-home time to clean out some drawers, and that if they’d like to receive an ugly card from me, they only needed to message me a mailing address or enter it into the Zoom chat.

Almost everyone in the group was excited to get mail (I was reminded that their generation doesn’t really do cards), so I collected a long list of addresses, and sent each of them a card with a personalized message and a sticker. The ones who got ancient, hideous Christmas cards were perhaps the most delighted of the bunch; many of them texted me photos of, or made social-media posts about, their cards upon arrival.

As a bonus, it gave us a reason to discuss the importance of supporting the U.S. Postal Service.

I’ve kept the list, and will do another round or two of cards during the summer. Who doesn’t love Christmas in August?

Resources needed: A drawer full of old stationery and a roll of stamps

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020 • 35

Building Bridges Transforming Lives

Power of Music

Explore Remarkable Destinations Nearby

Hawaii

Los Angeles & Disneyland

Montreal & Québec City

Nashville

New Orleans

New York

Toronto & Niagara Falls

Washington DC

Choral Festivals 2344 Perimeter Park Drive, Atlanta, GA 30341

36 • Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020

Amazing choral events in Costa Rica, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, and Portugal.

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770.220.2242

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www.perform-international.com

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info@perform-international.com

California Choral Directors Association

CAL POLY MUSIC BACHELOR OF ARTS IN MUSIC MINOR IN MUSIC

The Cal Poly Choral Program has four choirs: PolyPhonics, University Singers, Chamber Choir and Women’s Chorus. There are opportunities in classical, jazz, opera and more!

Directed by Scott Glysson, the choirs tour nationally and internationally and have a choral exchange program with Kenya.

MUSIC MAJOR FOCUS AREAS • Music Education • Composition • Music History or Ethnomusicology • Sound Design • Jazz

I’VE FOUND A SECOND HOME IN THE MUSIC DEPARTMENT — Music Major Studying Voice

THE FACULTY GUIDED ME THROUGH MY UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE AND INTO LIFE AFTER COLLEGE — Spring 2020 Graduate

• Performance

CAL POLY Cal Poly is located in San Luis Obispo, on California’s beautiful Central Coast.

Cal Poly has been accredted by the National Association of Music (NASM) since 2004.

CALIFORNIA POLY TECHNIC STATE UNIVERSIT Y / SAN LUIS OBISPO / CA / 93407 MUSIC DEPARTMENT / 805-756-2406 / MUSIC.CALPOLY.EDU

facebook.com/cpmusic @calpolymusic, @calpolychoirs

Leading the Way

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SAVE THE DATE

Pacific Choral Festival April 23 - 25, 2021* Faye Spanos Concert Hall Stockton, CA More info: go.Pacific.edu/ChoralDay High school musicians are invited to join conservatory faculty and students for: •Workshops •Rehearsals

•Presentations •Performances

*The dates are subject to change due to COVID-19

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Leading the Way

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Be a rapper Miguel Chicas and Ebun Agboola • Irvine Unified School District • Irvine Elementary, middle school/junior high, high school We created a three-lesson activity to introduce our upper elementary students to rapping. In lesson 1, students watched a video in which they were introduced to rap. After watching the video, they were to select one of the four Dr. Seuss passages in the graphic at right, and one of the two beats we provided. Students were then asked to record themselves speaking the passage over the beat with a rhythm of their own. They were given examples of how to do it, as well as step-by-step instructions.

In lesson 2, students listened to three songs and completed a Google form, sharing whether or not they believed each song was rap or not. (The songs we chose were “Benny’s Dispatch” from the musical In the Heights, “Parents Just Don’t Understand” by Will Smith, and the recording of a YouTube video of an opera singer singing Rossini’s aria Largo al factotum over a beat.)

In lesson 3, students were asked to write their own rap. We found that a lot of students had thought the recording of Largo al factotum was a rap while the other two were not. Before they wrote their own raps, we had students watch a video that discussed how the act of rapping is a technique, while rap/hip-hop is a genre. Following the video, they had to come up with a theme (favorite food, something they like to do with their friends, hobbies, etc.). Using this theme, they made a list of 10-20 rhyming words, which they used to help them write four lines of their own rap. (i.e. “when I go for a run, I have a lot of fun.) Then they chose a beat that was provided for them and rapped their lyrics over it.

There were many benefits to this activity. We were able to discuss how rapping is just rhythm over music. Students were able to compose their own rhythms. Students were able to express themselves (we heard a lot about how they were frustrated or sad about not being able to be at school). We were able to relate rapping to recitative, which then allowed us to introduce them to opera. Also, we were able to help students realize that rapping in itself is not a negative thing, as it can sometimes be portrayed in popular culture, but a really neat way for people to express themselves.

I believe the biggest challenge we faced was getting students to use the beats and record themselves at the same time. It varied depending on what the student had available. However, we found that if the students used Flipgrid, they were able to record themselves and play the recording in a different tab at the same time.

Resources needed: Internet access, recording devices that allow them to play audio as well as record themselves at the same time

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Be a rapper, continued

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The Joy Project Andrew Ball • Corona Del Mar High School • Newport Beach Middle school/junior high or high school One of our big successes during distance learning was our Joy Projects—small-scale video projects aimed at adding some joy to the world. They worked great for a number of reasons: 1. They continued to foster community in a time of quarantine, as students commented on and shared each other’s videos.

2. They taught students how to use some of the software students would be using for other aspects of our class.

3. There’s really very little onus on the teacher to micromanage, freeing us to catch up on the multitude of other projects that we’re putting together.

The students were given the following assignments: Joy Project #1 Goal: To put some good into the world by creating a video that will bring a smile to someone’s face, utilizing only resources found at home.

Step 1: Figure out something you can do that might put a smile on someone’s face. This can be done on your own or with others, be as simple or complicated as you would like. Here are some options (these were hyperlinked to examples) if you’re having trouble thinking of your own thing: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Sing a cover of a song you like Play a cover of a song you like on an instrument you’re pretty good at Play a cover of a song you like on an instrument that you’re god-awful at Write an original piece of music and perform it Create a parody of a popular song and perform it Tell a joke Juggle well Juggle poorly Do a dance Do a magic trick Find a creative use for a household object Perform a monologue Or something completely different

Step 2: Make sure that the execution of your idea follows the following criteria:

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The Joy Project, continued • • • • • •

STAY HOME (immediate yard okay) Keep it clean (if you wouldn’t want me showing it to the principal, don’t do it) Make sure we can see your face for at least part of the video Keep it positive (no pranks, no sad songs) You may involve other people, but you are the star of the video New content only! Please don’t send in an old video of yourself.

Step 3: Record your video. This can be done using your phone’s video app, or using the Screencastify extension on your chrome browser (which allows you to record video using the camera on your chromebook or laptop). You can install Screencastify by going to www.screencastify.com.

Step 4: Upload your video to Google Classroom.

Joy Project #2 Goal: To provide positive feedback on your peers’ Joy Projects Step 1: Log onto google drive using your school account, and go to our Joy Project submissions.

You will not be able to access the files if you are not logged into your school account.

Step 2: Watch videos uploaded by your ensemble and leave positive comments for five or more of them. Please be aware that it will display your name with your comment, so please be sure you make good choices. To leave a comment on a video, click on the comment button on the upper right-hand part of the screen as you’re watching the video, and write something kind for the person who submitted it.

Step 3: Now watch some videos from other ensembles, leaving positive comments for five or more of them. Just as with the comments for people in your own ensemble, be courteous to the people whose videos you’re commenting on.

That’s it! Make sure you’ve left comments for a total of ten or more videos.

Resources needed: Internet access, video/audio recording devices (smartphones work best)

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Talent show Melissa Trevino Keylock • San Diego North Coast Singers • Encinitas All choir types/levels San Diego North Coast Singers is hosting a summer on-line talent show for each choir. Singers who wish to participate can share whatever talent they want to share- they can sing, dance, play an instrument, act, tell jokes, juggle, read a poem they enjoy, show a completed drawing, craft, or artwork, etc. It gives each child a chance to “shine” in a way that makes him/her/them feel confident in a way we can’t normally do with the time restrictions of live rehearsals and performances.

Resources needed: Zoom or similar conferencing platform

Kahoot!

Jakob Swetland • Cantate Community Choir • Irvine All choir types/levels The activity that probably drew our members closest to one another was a Kahoot! night.

Kahoot! is a quiz game that consists of three wrong answers and one right answer. I am able to input the questions that were sent to me on kahoot.it, where colors and shapes were added to each response to the questions. Players can use the app or go online, enter a code that they receive (when the game is started and the screen is shared on zoom), enter a name or nickname, and wait for other players to join. I had them submit questions about themselves or about other members for the quiz. If a member wanted to explain their answer, we had a little story time as well. This idea I got from my mentors and current professors Dr. Istad and Dr. Peterson, and I decided to give it a go with my own choir! Members were encouraged to bring their favorite snack or pet, or any family members who wanted to join the fun. It was a great time, and it really brought all of our members together at our last meeting.

Resources needed: Internet Access, Zoom (or Google Hangout), Google Forms

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Program notes Genevieve Tep • Carlmont High School • Belmont High school, community/four-year college, adult choirs Students write program notes on songs of their choice, or music provided by the instructor.

Resources needed: Internet access

Program Notes Instructions Contents: Program notes MIGHT contain the following information - you choose the most relevant and interesting info to include.

• Composer info, including biographical information and what motivated them to write the song, when the song was premiered, who it was written for, etc • Information about the text, poetry, poet, or lyrics • Historical background • Compositional tools used by the composer • Interesting “tidbits” about the song Writing Mechanics: • Your name and choir will be on the top of your write up • Each entry will have the Title (BOLD, non Italic) then the composers FULL NAME, birth and death date next to the title • Within the the write up, song titles are in Italics and are capitalized • In the write up, the Þrst time you state the composers name you use their full name, after that refer to them only by their last name.

Program notes should be between 75-150 words long, and include a translation if the song is in a foreign language. (Translation is not included in the word count) Sources: You should have at least two sources sited for each song. Begin in your sheet music, then go after a couple of additional online sources.

Online sources are Þne for composer background - if the composer is living go to their website! If the composer is deceased, wikipedia is Þne for basic historical info about the composer. You may also look at CPDL.org for translations and composer information. Poets.org is a good website to Þnd information about poets and poetry. Your own interpretations of the text and song are an acceptable thing to include as well. Include a list of links to your sources on your google doc under the program notes.

Submission: Submit your assignment to school loop or google classroom. PAPERS not submitted through either google classroom or school loop will NOT BE GRADED.

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Remote sight-reading Josh Small • Ukiah Unified School District • Ukiah Middle school/junior high, high school Objective: Students will sight read melodic and rhythmic examples.

The teacher will: 1. Select 4-bar melodic and/or rhythmic examples for the students to perform (some challenging, some easy).

2. Screenshot and upload them to Google classroom.

3. Create a short video walking them through examples that are similar to their assignment by recording your screen and using your voice and mouse to show them (visibly and audibly) how to perform the example.

4. Upload this video to classroom.

5. Offer virtual sessions to work with students. The time delay is a challenge, but I have found that a consistent, audible tempo makes it possible. See notes on other strategies below.

6. Provide feedback as students turn in submissions.

The students will: 1. Practice the sight-reading excerpts.

2. Schedule a time for a virtual lesson if they need help.

3. Record their performance (all that really matters is the audio) on their phone, chromebook, laptop or other device.

4. Upload their recording to the appropriate Google classroom assignment.

Best practices and suggestions • Start easy. Let the students be successful. Before transitioning to remote learning, I considered my choirs to be decent sight readers—ot superior, but adequate for their level. Once I started these individual assessments, I learned that most of the students were just following a couple leaders (sound familiar?) and were not actually too secure in their own abilities.

• Go back to basics and start at the beginning. In my first videos, I went back to identifying, explaining, performing and showing the basic rhythmic values and solfeggio syllables. Start at the beginning and sequence their learning; lead them to what you want them to achieve.

• Sight Reading Factory (www.sightreadingfactory.com) is incredible. Pay for the teacher subscription and purchase the student subscriptions so they can practice. Identify the levels or make custom levels, and use these as your official “assignment” excerpts (I just took a screenshot of them). SRF does have a recording and assignment functionality, but I wanted to keep it within Google Classroom for ease in grading and notification.

• Time delay and sight reading: There is a time delay. I found that during the virtual lessons with a student, I could tap the tempo and use my mouse to bounce on top of the note in time. If I was 46 • Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020

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Remote sight-reading, continued leading in this manner, I would do my best to stay consistent and listen to their performance, knowing it was technically “behind.” The consistency allowed them to maintain a consistent tempo.

It takes a little time to get used to, but I found it worked wonders for the students who needed to see and hear how to perform a rhythmic or melodic phrase.

• Less is more! These are time consuming to grade. Keep it to 4 bars and 1-2 assignments a week.

Encourage the students to practice other examples at the same level in SRF, then record when they are ready. I started with four per week and eventually moved to two, because it was taking me hours and hours to provide feedback and grade each example.

Variations • Students (individual or in groups) can write a melodic or rhythmic example and upload their performance of it. You can also have students perform another student’s example.

• Give dictation assignments in which the teacher performs and records a 4-bar rhythmic or melodic example and uploads the performance for the students to notate.

While it’s not the most “fun” thing, I noticed so much growth in my students. Before remote learning, students often told me they were awful sight readers and didn’t make any effort to get any better.

Remote learning required students to take ownership of their learning and provided me with the time and resources to individually assess each student’s level and provide intentional, meaningful, and actionable feedback specific to their performance and needs.

Resources needed: Internet access and two internet connected devices (chromebook/laptop, cell phone, etc.), sightreadingfactory.com subscription

CONGRATULATIONS TO GREG LAPP, the 5th winner of the annual George Heussenstamm Composition competition!

Greg’s THREE SONGS FROM TWELFTH NIGHT were selected by our team of judges from 21 excellent entries. We’ll need to wait till next summer to read the piece as a group at our summer conference, But Greg’s piece was presented at this July’s Choral Summit. Congratulate Greg and see more of his work at www.greglappmusic.com!

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Caro mio ben Alan Garcia • Magnolia High School • Anaheim High school During our shutdown, each of my students learned Giuseppe Giordani’s Caro mio ben in either Eb or C Major, and recorded their performance to a pre-recorded accompaniment track. These recordings were individually uploaded for assessment for supportive and constructive feedback. The purpose of this assignment was to give each of my students an individual assessment using the same base material while also teaching a foreign language and bel canto performance style. Typically, this assignment is given to each student as a final; in-class meetings allow us to learn the song as a group, create supportive camaraderie, and promote positive learning experiences in solo voice and technique. I tell my students that there is no such thing as a good “solo singer” or a good “choral singer,” but simply good “singers” who work hard, persist, and maintain an openness to learning. I also use this assignment as a vehicle to promote growth over aptitude, reminding students that each musician is on their own musical journey and that singing solo in front of your peers is an accomplishment all on its own.

In the world of COVID, this assignment had to be formatted to replace in-class masterclasses and practice with several key resources to help them complete the assignment. These included annotated PDFs of the piece in both keys, high quality recordings of the piece in various voicings, a pre-recorded accompaniment track, and various methods for students to submit recordings.

• Annotated PDFs in both keys allowed for my students to choose a range that is comfortable for them while also providing Italian pronunciation on the same document as the music. I did not require any student to sing in a specific key, regardless of voice type sung in choir. Students who struggle with musical literacy can also be given clarity as to which line to follow while learning music individually. Caro mio ben has several public domain editions easily accessible for printing, annotating, and scanning.

• Because many students are aural learners who use reference recordings to influence their singing, I knew picking proper recordings of the song was paramount. Instead of relying on professional recordings by accomplished opera singers, I chose to ask personal musician friends of mine to record themselves singing it with appropriate technique and timbre for a young singer to emulate.

This mainly focused on freedom of the voice, openness of vowel, and natural vibrato. By having my friends span several voice types, it made each recording more relatable to each student regardless of section. Once I received each recording, I uploaded each one to our online system for students to download.

• For a pre-recorded accompaniment track, there are several available for purchase and/or download online. I am a terrible pianist, but I can play Caro mio ben in C and Eb. I chose to record an accompaniment track myself. This also allowed me to record a version of the accompaniment with a metronome as well.

• We used Schoology as our primary online learning platform, but file upload seemed to be a recurring issue. To accommodate, I allowed students to send in the file via e-mail, YouTube, 48 • Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020

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Caro mio ben, continued Dropbox, or any other method of file transfer, so long as it met the deadline.

• In the past, success with this assessment revolved around breaking down the Italian art song in small pieces and building trust amongst the classroom to promote vulnerability. Online, students lose the repetition of hearing each student sing the piece several times and lose the opportunity to feel the support of their peers. However, they gain the privacy of individualized feedback and no audience. In order for students to be successful in an online setting, I knew every student would need access to all the resources and guidance to properly navigate them. For several of my students, the amount of resources could be overwhelming. To check-in with students, I used in-class meetings, office hours, and appointments to talk about the assignment, demonstrate the recording process, re-teach pronunciation, and answer any questions. Any students who wanted to practice their recording also had the option to schedule a timeslot for practice with me.

Accommodations • This assignment was hardest during its first implementation, when almost all students were unfamiliar with Italian art song. This will be the fourth year I’ve assigned Caro mio ben as a final, so the veteran choir students now find the assignment highly accessible. This allowed me to focus on my new members and to use veteran singers to assist less confident singers.

• While I gave this lesson to each student, the actual assessment differed based on the choir.

Chamber Singers (advanced mixed) and Vocal Harmonia (intermediate treble) each had to learn, perform, and record the song in its entirety. However, Concert Choir (beginning mixed) simply learned the A section of the work; I offered the remainder of the piece as extra credit.

• For my students who are part of a special education program, I followed each student’s IEP and gave more time, assistance, and resources as each student required.

• For my English Language Learners, I relied on the visual cues and notes that I included on the physical PDFs of each score. This included pronunciation, marks to delineate between vocal line and piano, as well as more time and assistance if needed.

• In the weekly class meetings and office hours, I retaught pronunciation, answered any questions, and allowed myself to be available for assistance. Students needing more help were given timeslots for additional individual instruction as well.

Supplemental Assignments Depending on the prior knowledge of your students, this lesson can be extended and supplemented with building block assignments on IPA, Italian diction, Italian art song history and background information, and bel canto style and performance practice. It could also be supplemented with general music theory assignments, such as note identification, score scavenger hunts, poetic interpretation, and related musical exploration. The possibilities are endless!

Resources needed: Internet access, recording/playback device Leading the Way

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2020: The Virtual Concert Anabel Pauline • Los Amigos High School • Garden Grove Middle school/junior high, high school A project I plan on doing with my students this fall is creating a Virtual Concert called “2020” that reflects the collective human experience of this year. Students will be placed into groups and given the task of programming a themed three-song concert set for which they will record audio and create music videos. Below are the first two activities I’ve planned for this project.

Activity 1: Create a playlist Our first activity for this project will be to create a playlist. The objective is to create themed playlist of 5-8 songs utilizing the students’ preferred music platform. The platforms that are the most accessible to create playlists on are YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music. Students will need to select a theme, and they can pick any theme that fits under the umbrella of the year 2020. Options they can consider include quarantine, pandemic, school, changes, social justice, human rights, current events, moods, etc.

Students will be asked to submit 2-4 sentences describing their chosen theme and how it fits into the overall theme of 2020, as well as a link to their playlist.

I did this assignment as a stand-alone assignment during distance learning, and students enjoyed getting creative in choosing themes for their playlists; they explored new music they wouldn’t have otherwise listened to in order to find music that fit their theme. It serves a diverse population of singers by encouraging student choice and providing multiple means of expressing those choices (sharing through a platform they are comfortable with).

Activity 2: Program a concert set proposal Using their themed playlists as a starting point, students will be placed in groups of 4-6 people (depending on class size) and collaborate on programming a three-song concert set that tells a story.

They will present the details on a Google Slides presentation.

Students will collaborate with their group to decide on the following elements of design: theme, story line, song choices, background design, props, and attire. Students will distribute the work evenly amongst group members to complete their Google Slides presentation. Each team member should be responsible for completing at least one slide, in accordance with the following plan: Slide 1: Title of your concert set that reflects your theme Slide 2: Story arc and song details • Provide a list of the songs and the composers • Include song lengths • Write a few sentences summarizing the story your set is telling

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2020: The Virtual Concert, continued Slides 3-5: One slide per song • Link to the song • Link to the sheet music • Describe how the song progresses the storyline Slide 6: Props and backgrounds you might want to use • Include images Slide 7: Attire throughout the set • Include images I did this assignment as an individual activity, and it had similar benefits as the playlist activity, such as fostering creativity, encouraging student choice, and providing multiple means of expression. This activity will further serve a diverse population of singers by adding the element of collaboration with peers of various skill sets in order to successfully program a concert and create a presentation.

Once each group’s proposal is approved by the teacher, groups will move forward with creating their virtual concert set. I plan on breaking down that process with the following activities: Activity 3: Prepare concert music Activity 4: Create video storyboard Activity 5: Record and edit concert music videos Resources needed: Internet access, smartphone or other device

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Waveforms Michelle Hawkins • Skyline College • San Bruno Jazz choirs at any level Our jazz choir recorded a short passage and analyzed the waveforms for musicianship and ensemble skills feedback.

Using a free, online DAW (digital audio workstation) such as www.bandlab.com, the instructor uploads a short passage for their students to sing along with and match as closely as possible. These can be melodic or rhythmic passages. Singers, using their laptop or smartphone, can then record themselves singing with the passage, and compare their waveform with the original track waveform.

Students will be able to visually analyze their entrances, cut-offs, articulations, and dynamics. If they are copying a rhythmic sample, they can see visually where they tend to rush or drag on certain rhythms. The analysis can be done via Zoom with the entire class or one on one as individual assignments.

Resources needed: Smartphone or laptop, headphones, internet access

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Zoom scavenger hunt Diana Landis • Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church & Southern California Children’s Chorus • Newport Beach Elementary, middle school, junior high, and children’s choirs I was furloughed from my church choir job but wanted to provide some closure to the year. We recently held an end-of-the-year party on Zoom where we chatted and presented certificates of participation and attendance awards (we shared the screen to show samples of the certificates).

The highlight of the party was our Scavenger Hunt. I had prepared a list of ten items and announced each item one at a time. For example, “You have 30 seconds to find something that starts with the first letter of your name.” (By giving them a time limit, we avoided sitting and waiting for one kid wandering around the house!)

Two of the favorite items were finding a kitchen instrument and finding a real instrument (they can take their camera or phone to the instrument to show it off if it’s not portable). We then asked anyone if they wanted to play their instrument for us, and most did! We closed the party by singing (muted) and dancing to a piece from the choir musical we had been working on. I had a video of them from rehearsal that I shared so they could watch the choreography and do it at home.

I had planned to assign points to different items, but in the end, it was so much fun that everyone was a winner. I mailed their real certificates and some special stickers for playing the game the week after the party.

The kids loved the Scavenger Hunt. I have kids from grades 3-8, and even the junior high singers loved it!

Resources needed: Internet access

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Meet The Aeolians Jim Blackett • Irvine Unified School District • Irvine High school, community/four-year college This guided listening activity gives students the opportunity to experience Oakwood University’s The Aeolians’ magnificent performance from the 2019 ACDA National Conference in Kansas City. After watching the performance on YouTube, students respond to the following ten questions on a Google form. In addition to developing students’ aural skills, these questions also serve as a review of the academic language of vocal music: phrasing, diction, placement, onsets, etc.

1. If you were telling someone about this performance who has not seen the video, how would you describe the ensemble’s diction? Consider consonants, vowels, onsets (how the choir begins to sing a note), and releases.

2. What do you notice about the sound of the section you sing in?

3. What was your favorite piece the choir sang (and why)?

4. In Dale Trumbore’s “In the Middle,” the composer uses word painting, a technique in which musical elements reflect the literal meaning of the lyrics. How does Trumbore use word painting to emphasize ideas of “time” in the song? Consider timestamp 4:12, where the choir sings “Time is always ahead of us...” and refer to the full lyrics here: https://www.daletrumbore.com/ in-the-middle 5. The title of “Regina Coeli” by Vytautas Miskinis means “Queen of Heaven” in Latin. At timestamp 8:46, how does the choir’s placement help bring these lyrics to life? Remember the framework of placements 1-5, where placement 1 refers to the brightest, most forward sound.

6. “Singet dem Herrn” by J.S. Bach. Traditionally, in a concert that combines choir and orchestra, the orchestra sits in chairs in front of the choir. In this performance, however, the instrumentalists are interspersed among the choir, and they stand to perform (except the cellists, who remain seated). What do you think is the purpose of this innovative arrangement, and how might it benefit the performance?

7. “Jubilate Deo” by Pietro Ferrario. Consider the rhythmic feeling at timestamp 14:08-14:22.

This passage can be considered an example of asymmetrical meter—a rhythmic pattern in which pulses contain different numbers of beats, resulting in a feeling of unevenness. (Some examples of asymmetrical meter include 5/4, 7/8, and 11/8.) Can you figure out which type of asymmetrical meter is represented here? Additionally, how do some choir members’ physical movements help encourage rhythmic unity during a tricky passage like this?

8. “My Lord What a Mourning,” arr. by William Dawson: A lyric that is repeated frequently throughout a song is called a refrain. The refrain of this song is “My Lord, what a mourning, when the stars begin to fall.” From 20:01-22:30, how does the choir maintain musical interest while singing this singular refrain? You might consider dynamics, phrasing, and diction.

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Meet the Aeolians, continued 9. “Smile” arr. by Cedric Dent. How does the choir adjust their sound while the soloist is singing? Some musical elements to consider are volume and placement.

10. “Promised Land” by Ken Burton. What impact did the staging and narration have on you?

Or, how did the staging and narration add to the performance?

Students then participate in a class discussion. If instruction is online, sharing can be sequenced so that students first type their responses into the chat box and then volunteer to verbally elaborate on them. This way, all students have the chance to make their thoughts known. (In my experience, most enjoyed discussing questions #2—because they got to speak with pride on behalf of their vocal section—and #3, because they got to share their personal musical preferences.) Students can also propose their own discussion questions.

Adapt the questions to emphasize concepts/skills that your ensembles have been working on!

Resources needed: Internet access

Listening journal Ariel May • Canyon High School • Anaheim Elementary, middle school/junior high Every Monday, I posted a performance from YouTube (choral, vocal jazz, art song, aria, a cappella, etc). Students filled out provided information about the composer, performer, time period, ensemble type, style, meter, and tonality. Additionally, students provided 2 complete sentences about the performance using academic language, including Italian musical terms, tone, blend, balance, intonation, expression, dynamic contrast, phrasing, breathing, facial expression, engagement, vibrato, etc.

This assignment facilitates discussions about the arts from multiple perspectives (media, history, religion, politics, culture, etc). Administrators appreciate this type of assignment as it supports literacy, development of academic language, analytical skills, cross-curricular learning, and more.

Resources needed: Internet access, device (smartphone, computer, or tablet)

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Virtual classrooms Samantha Gossage • Capistrano Unified School District • San Juan Capistrano Elementary, middle school/junior high, high school, children’s I want to talk about Virtual Classrooms! As many music educators found during our virtual teaching time, virtual classrooms can be a fun, engaging way for students to participate in music exploration interactively. It’s also a great way to add a personal touch to your lessons with little messages and bitmojis. Once you have your classroom set up, it becomes easy to switch things out and add new content—just like your real classroom! Creating one is as simple as finding a room background, furniture, and icons and adding links to the pictures. There are many “how to build a virtual classroom in Google slides” YouTube video tutorials to help you get started.

As a primary music teacher, I chose to use my virtual classroom (screenshot included) as an activities center for the last weeks of school. I added videos to interactive websites such as Chrome Music Lab and Groove Pizza, YouTube videos of classical works and stories, and interactive Google Slides activities. The students were guided to click on a bitmoji of me first, which led to a YouTube video on me singing our opening song, doing some warm-ups, and introducing them to the classroom.

So, how can this be useful in all music classrooms? The virtual classroom is a place to hold content. The possibilities are endless for what material you choose to actually put into your classroom. Virtual classrooms can be used to hold practice tracks, listenings, and sight-reading exercises as everyday things at a secondary level. Entire lessons can be created and put on their own slides as themes. For example, you can have a music history slide that includes articles, listenings, and activities. Personal videos you record can also be uploaded to YouTube and linked to your classroom for students to see and hear you! These personal videos are a great opportunity to guide them through how your virtual classroom works, lead warm-ups, and give a lesson while creating or continuing that personal connection.

As I mentioned before, you can also create interactive activities such as listening activities. A colleague of mine, Carly Hancock, created a few of these for our younger students. One activity asked students to listen to a series of sounds being played and identify whether the sounds were ascending and descending. Another activity had a similar concept, but students were asked to identify the rhythm being played (screenshot included).

The ideas and content that can be created and included in a virtual classroom are limitless. They can be a great interactive tool for keeping students engaged while keeping content organized.

Resources needed: Internet access, device (smartphone, computer, or tablet)

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Virtual classrooms, continued

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Rehearsing virtual choirs Scot Hanna-Weir • Santa Clara University • Santa Clara Middle school through adult A huge component of what we do in choir is perform, evaluate, and perform again—hopefully with improvement. That’s the arc to a successful rehearsal that leads to a successful performance, and the structure that allows our singers to grow as musicians. We need to hear what we’re doing, learn what we can improve, and execute those improvements. As conductors, we shape our singers’ progress by coming up with creative analogies and rehearsal strategies, and iterating these concepts until we reach a polished performance. But how do we do that with virtual choir?

By using an iterative approach to creating a virtual choir, we can provide opportunities for feedback and growth for our students, similar to a normal rehearsal, only much, much slower. This approach compels us to do fewer pieces, but to experience them in a more robust and comprehensive way. Over the ten-week spring quarter with my non-auditioned concert choir at SCU, we did one virtual choir project. That’s it. This gave us the time to rehearse, record, give feedback, and improve.

The three iterations 1. Initial video is submitted and peer-evaluated anonymously (two evaluations per submission).

2. Second video is submitted and gets individualized feedback from the director.

3. Third and final video is submitted and used for the finished project.

Setting up the initial submission: We had a Zoom rehearsal to walk through the overall details of the piece. I gave them a recording of that rehearsal, a guide track with the score and me conducting to MIDI instruments and a click, individual practice tracks with their parts highlighted, and a marked score that reflected our initial rehearsal.

First submission checklist 1. Try very hard to clap exactly when instructed to do so in order to synchronize your track 2. Sing expressively (dynamics and articulations) 3. Look engaged as you sing 4. Use headphones!!!!!

5. Record your video in landscape (phone held like this == not || ) 6. Listen to your own recording afterwards and make sure you weren’t too loud for your microphone or too soft to hear Peer evaluation rubric: Use the rubric provided to give your fellow singer ideas of where they were successful and where they can improve. Your grade is based on your completion of this assignment, not the quality of your performance. (Please do try to do your best!) We hope through feedback from your peers and me, this will improve throughout the quarter. When you review your peer, remember to be kind, and as specific as possible. The reviews from your peers on your video will appear anonymously—but kindness is still important.

Setting up the second submission: While some singers did a great job recording the piece using the

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Rehearsing virtual choirs, continued initial set of tools, some of my less experienced, less confident singers needed more tools. I had some students who did not submit because they didn’t feel like they could accomplish the task, so I created additional aids for the second round. In hindsight, I probably could have anticipated this and made these for everyone from the start, but having them for the second round was beneficial.

Individual rehearsal videos and pronunciation guide: I made nine short videos, one with a slow walk-through of the pronunciation of the Swahili in our piece and then eight others (each about 8-10 minutes in length) going through each of the eight parts in detail, slowly, and rehearsing all of the challenging spots of the piece.

Specialized guide tracks: A few singers clearly struggled to find their parts in the sea of MIDI instruments. Many of them are singers who I have had in live choir before and who I know can succeed when they are singing in their section. To simulate this, I took several singers who had very successful early submissions and synced up their video to the guide video. This allowed singers to see and hear an actual person singing their part as they recorded their second or third iteration.

Setting up the final iteration: I gave specific feedback to each of my singers through comments in our learning management system and when warranted, attached an individualized guide track with someone singing their own part.

Real voices guide track: For the final iteration, I took eight singers who had good first or second round recordings and made a demo recording of our piece. The production value was low. I used my initial conducting video with the clap lead in, then brought in eight singers and a soloist and made sure that the volume level wasn’t too high to avoid clipping. That was all the editing I did, but this gave singers a real ensemble to sing with for their final performance.

The student experience: While the iterative process isn’t strictly necessary for all students in the choir, neither is our normal rehearsal process. The fact that we all do it together is what improves the ensemble and everyone grew by submitting multiple iterations of the piece. In particular, several students who struggled at the start felt empowered and grateful that they were able to participate. As one singer wrote: “This class was far out of my comfort zone and caused me to push myself, and I feel that this class helped me so much during my time in quarantine. Thank you so much for spreading the joy of music and helping students as much as you possibly can even in a virtual environment. From the first to the second to the third video I felt better and better until I did my best! I am really happy that I challenged myself with choir and had the honor to learn from you even in a virtual choir! I really enjoyed this quarter in choir and wanted to make sure you had felt the appreciation since it is really hard to teach and feel the rewarding aspects of teaching (my mother is a kindergarten teacher and misses the fun parts of teaching and interacting with students and I think this is true no matter the level). I am excited to hear the final track for ‘Baba Yetu’!”

I’ve created a web page that gives examples of the videos I created to help my students through this process.: www.scothw.com/projects/virtual-choir/rehearsing-virtual-choirs-an-iterative-approach/ Resources needed: Smartphone, second connected device, headphones, internet access

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Music in the Air Rebecca Lord • formerly in Los Angeles and Northridge Jazz choirs at any level I have subscribed to MITA (Music in the Air): www.ArtsInteractiveInc.com It is a fabulous website, and it would be an invaluable resource during the pandemic. It is an online learning platform for music educators and students with a variety of ready-to-go resources, including information on musical time periods and their historical contexts, different musical styles, forms, composers, and music from around the world. There are fun interactive listening samples and scores, videos, and other ways to explore and learn about music. This could be a fabulous hassle-free addition to curriculum. It is engaging and extremely well done, designed and created by UCLA’s distinguished professor of music Robert Winter.

Resources needed: Smartphone or laptop, headphones, internet access

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Virtual improvisation Eliza Rubenstein • Orange Coast College • Costa Mesa College or community choirs My college singers love doing improvisational warm-ups when we’re rehearsing in person—a passion that served us well when we were suddenly forced to go remote and I wasn’t yet up to the challenges of a full-scale virtual choir.

We also have a sequence of Recording Techniques classes at OCC, and their students needed projects that they could do from home, so their instructor and I decided to collaborate. I gave our Chamber Singers the assignment—if they wanted to participate—of recording a vocal improvisation of up to 30 seconds in the key of G-flat (major, minor, whatever) on their phones, and sending the recording to both instructors. Most chose to take part, and some created multiple recordings.

The Recording Techniques instructor shared the collected clips with his students, and gave them the challenge of combining any or all them into an interesting audio mix. The results were marvelously creative and diverse: Some students added beats and made dance remixes, some used special effects to give their project a cinematic feel, and all seemed to have a lot of fun with the assignment.

I was drawn to one of the resulting mixes in particular; its haunting, echoey qualities seemed appropriate for this disorienting moment in our collective experience. We happen to have a talented photographer in our choir, so I combined the one-minute-long audio track with some of his equally moving photos from our June 2019 trip to New York, and posted the result on our social media pages. It’s been viewed more than 1,200 times, and only about 50 of those are from me in the moments when I miss my students the most. (You can find it by clicking to “videos” on our Facebook page if you’d like: www.facebook.com/OCCmusicdept) Resources needed: Smartphone; the ability to create an audio compilation or a colleague/student who is willing and able to do so

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Jazz choir at a distance Michelle Hawkins • Skyline College • San Bruno Jazz choirs at any level Michele Weir, renowned jazz vocalist, pianist and educator created a list of 7 pedagogical options for online teaching. This list is the product of lengthy conversations with jazz directors across the country.

She has me given permission to share this list with CCDA. This is extremely helpful info for jazz choir educators. Please include links to the websites that are included in the document.

1. Reading You might start with basic sight reading—solfege or singing notes on numbers of the scale. Then move to jazz choir passages, like an 8-bar passage, or more. All singers can potentially read the soprano part (in their own range,) then alto, tenor, bass. If it’s swing, you can have students can speak (read) rhythms/ lyrics only at first. Start with a ballad, do a swing tune or passage, do a bossa, then break into 5-part or 6-part chords when ready.

2. Jazz theory: Learn it by singing it Learn the jazz chord types, then arpeggiate them on numbers (1, 3, 5, b7, 5, 3, 1). Do ear training quizzes (“what is this chord type?”), then start on vocal group voicings—simple 4-way close chord voicings (what part am I singing? root? third?) Then sing (with associated ear training also) the extensions (9, 11, 13 and their alterations), then inversions and other voicing types. Study excerpts from arrangements, asking “why is this chord hard to tune?” “Is this an open or closed voicing?”

“What two parts have the most dissonance and why?” Play a note, then assign parts: “everyone sing ‘oo,’ with bass on 3rd, tenors on the b7th, altos on the 9th, soprano two on the #11, and soprano one on the 13th.”

3. Listening Guided listening instruction: Listen to the same recording multiple times. Upon each successive listening discuss the following: • Personal reactions: “Do I like it?” and “How does it make me feel?”

• Musical elements: “Is that electric or acoustic bass?” and “Is that a turnaround • progression on the intro?”

• Analysis of the interpretation: “How are they using [or not using] vibrato, tone, stylistic • inflection, phrasing, and conversationalism? How’s the blend and balance?”

• Explore the history and musical background of the artist, making it sort of a jazz appreciation activity.

Please see the Listening Lessons classes at www.MusicHabit.com.

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Jazz choir at a distance, continued 4. Rhythmic work Listen to different tracks in all styles: swing, funk, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, shuffle, jazz waltz, etc.

• What is the groove?

• Tap the quarter note.

• Speak in rhythm the 8ths on doo-ba—are they straight? Swung? Shuffle?

• Do reading exercises with rhythms only—in swing feel, then in straight 8ths—the same exercises back and forth.

• Can you step or tap in tempo while doing these activities?

5. Parts learning Learn parts to arrangements. Assign a section leader and send different voice part sections to separate online breakout rooms to rehearse. Use excerpts from your repertoire, and have note texts for evaluation and grading. Use parts tracks; these are available from Kerry Marsh, Jeremy Fox, and others. Also see Kerry’s class “Online Skills for Vocal Jazz Ensemble” at MusicHabit.com and Kerry’s new project, “SkyTracks,” available at his website: www.kerrymarsh.com.

6. Solo singing/vocal improvisation Spend some time listening to recording and practicing vocal solos. Singers will need to have accompaniments in their location. These can be made using the player function in the iRealb app. It doesn’t even have to be a full song; you can have new students learn 16 bars of a song to get the experience. Scat-singing warmups as part of class. There are a lot of materials available: www.MusicHabit.com has classes by Rosana Eckert, Aimee Nolte, and soon will have MusicHabit Workouts (a series of scatting and other exercises based on different tunes), which will be built for use in the classroom.

7. Virtual choir And last but not least: Of course virtual choir is also a great option, and probably the best way to simulate a live jazz choir experience. Consider doing it not only as an end-of-semester single song.

If possible, consider recording some short excerpts first, early on, as a regular part of your activities during the semester. This should make the final “concert” song or songs stronger.

Resources needed: Internet access

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Personal playlist Jessica Pettygrove • Montebello High School • Montebello Middle school through college Using a variety of different sources/similar project ideas online (primarily for English classes), I created instructions for a “Personal Playlist Project,” a project meant to tell a student’s individual story of significant moments in their life through song. Especially during distance learning, this allowed students to understand how powerful music has been in their lives as a tool to heighten positive emotions and cope with negative ones.

Throughout our time learning online, I wanted to emphasize the importance of not only enrichment and theory assignments, but also creative and mental health check-in assignments as well. For many of my students, home was (or is) a stressful place to be, thanks to issues with family, responsibilities outside of homework, finances, limited/no WiFi, etc., whlie school was their safe place where they could have the most positive interactions of the day. It was important to me to allow the students many opportunities to dive into work that served them more deeply than key signatures and solfege.

The project encouraged students to share as much or as little as they were comfortable with sharing, and many had breakthrough moments with me in our discussions of their song choices. It has been an incredible way to explore the musical interests of my students beyond choral music, something that I am always seeking to do in order to keep students engaged throughout the year and to program more music that they like and are drawn to.

This project is also a subtle way to work on English skills and concepts, as the students are asked to organize their ideas in a purposeful way when presenting the songs, as well as to discuss these ideas with complete and clear sentences. For English Learners or students with special needs, you can include sentence frames for their projects, offer ideas for life moments as starting points, conduct one-on-one conference calls to ask interview-like questions instead, or pair students with higherachieving peers or students with fluency in both English and the other student’s L1 to present to each other online.

Most of my students submitted this project in the form of Google Slides or a Google Doc. Once they had submitted their assignments, I created a Spotify playlist with all of the songs they chose, in hopes that some of the other students’ song choices could resonate with them as well.

An important thing to remember when administering this assignment is to give the students space and freedom to tell as much or as little as they feel comfortable sharing about their own stories. For many, the moments they remember in their lives are not often positive and can bring up trauma that has not fully healed or been properly taken care of. For others, they will struggle to feel as if they have had any significant moments in their lives at all and may opt out of the project altogether. Although this project can be difficult for some students emotionally and mentally, many complete the assignment feeling seen, heard, validated, and relieved. Give them lots of time to complete this project (I gave them about 3 weeks). Encourage them to talk with friends, family members, or even you to explore 64 • Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020

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Personal playlist, continued ideas, discuss songs, and revisit or confront both new and old feelings and memories that they may encounter. As their teacher, you may learn things about them that you didn’t know before, however strong a relationship you may already have with your students prior to this assignment. I absolutely did. Projects like this display to the students that you care about them and their experiences, which will further contribute to your classroom atmosphere, how they connect to new or unfamiliar music, how they connect to each other, and how they connect what they learn about themselves, music, and the world in your class to their future experiences beyond your classroom.

Resources needed: Internet access ideal, but this could be done offline as well.

This is a creative project for you that I hope you will enjoy doing. Take your time and be creative. My hope is that by the end of this project, you will find it meaningful. In projects like this, we are exploring just how incredible the power of music is. This is as deep and/or as personal as you choose to make it.

Keep this in mind—The events/moments that you choose for your soundtrack have most definitely defined the person you have become. As you prepare to enter the world as adults— going off to college, entering the work force, joining the military— or even just continuing in high school, think about the person you are today, and how you got here.

1. Brainstorm a list of the most meaningful moments in your life (thus far). What events have shaped who you are, what you believe, and how you view the world?

2. Select AT LEAST 6 of the most important moments from your list.

3. Now comes the fun part: Link these events to the music you listen to. You must connect each event you have chosen to a different song.This is a challenge for some students and easy for others; I encourage you to grasp at a greater knowledge of music and share your ideas with others. Some of you will have similar events and you might just find some new music you love.

Talk to one another. Share your ideas.

4. Next, put your songs in order. This should not be random! Put together your soundtrack in a meaningful way. This does not have to be chronological, though it might be.

5. In a brief paragraph (at least 1 sentence per song), introduce each event/song (include the artist and the title). As you reflect on these things, remember that this is why the organizing principle (the order you put your songs) is so important.

6. Finally, in a short conclusion (at least 3 sentences), thank the listeners for “sharing” these meaningful life experiences with you (remember, you are writing this for someone who cares and is paying attention— me!). This is where you should sum up what this project has meant to you.

Submit your writing as a Word or GoogleDoc. You may also choose to be more creative and make this more of a presentation style with Prezi, PowerPoint, GoogleSlides, or a video. Submit your playlist as a screenshot, or if you'd like to submit a link to your playlist on iTunes, Soundcloud, or Spotify, that works, too!

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News and notes

from around the state FAR SOUTH REGION The San Diego Master Chorale and music director John K. Russell led a virtual community sing of the Fauré Requiem on June 26. Singers from the San Diego region and beyond were able to virtually perform the work from their own homes, led by the music staff and soloists of the Chorale.

Dr. Arian Khaefi, Director of Choral Studies at San Diego State University, prepared and produced a virtual choir performance of “Healing Heart” by Jacob Narverud, which featured 75 singers from around the world, including SDSU Choral Studies students.

Dr. Emilie Amrein, Director of Choral Activities at the University of San Diego helped to create the Choral Commons, a community where choral musicians and organizations can find information and educational resources meant to promote equity-centered choral futures. The focus of the Choral Commons is to provide strategies for innovation grounded in critical and equity-centered values. More information can be found at www. choralcommons.com.

San Diego-based professional chorus Sacra/Profana will produce their annual Summer Choral Intensive (SCI) in a virtual format. This continues their mission to provide high-level choral opportunities to middle and high school students in San Diego. And since SCI is online this summer, they invite like-minded students from across the country to join. SCI takes place from July 13

Send news of hirings, retirements, awards, commissions, premieres, collaborations, or projects to your regional representative!

to July 17 in coordination with Point Loma Nazarene University, and will primarily be led by Juan Carlos Acosta (Sacra/Profana and Village Community Presbyterian Church) and Dr. Keith Pedersen (Point Loma Nazarene University and La Jolla Presbyterian Church).

NORTHERN REGION Happy sixteenth anniversary of the Sacramento Choral Society and Sacramento State University’s first European tour. The Sacramento Choral Society and Conductor Donald Kendrick partnered with the Sacramento State Choral Music Program on their first European tour in 2004 with performances in Munich (Ottobeuren Abbey), Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. The 120-voice chorus partnered with four European professional orchestras to perform Hadyn’s Harmoniemesse, Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna, and Dvořák’s Te Deum. The tour was capped by a professionally mastered CD recording by Radio Hungary in Budapest’s famed Liszt Academy, a recording concert hall. Their European Horizons CD is available online at Amazon and CD Baby.

Chanteuses, Sacramento’s premier women’s ensemble, directed by William Zinn, has continued weekly Zoom meetings throughout the pandemic shutdown. On Saturday, June 27, Chanteuses held an outdoor rehearsal hosted by a member in her neighborhood park.

Everyone wore a mask and stood in a large circle spaced at ten feet. It was wonderful to see each other and sing! Next thought: an open parking

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garage. They also recorded a virtual choir performance of “Never One Thing” by May Erlewine, arranged

by Corie Brown, which can be found on YouTube.

Nancy Hill retired from Anderson and West Valley High Schools in Anderson after 34 years of teaching.

Nancy spent her entire career at these schools, directing a variety of choirs, musicals, bands, and even the culinary arts program. She started a non-profit in her area to help support her programs and bring music to kids in an underserved area. Life beyond the classroom includes running her theater company, Axiom Repertory Theatre in Redding.

BAY AREA The San Jose State University Choraliers and the Kirby Chamber Singers presented a world premiere of Melissa Dunphy’s Eight of Swords in honor of the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage this past May. Conductors Alex Koppel and Dr. Jeffrey Benson presented the premiere virtually on a brand-new platform for streaming concerts called Feel-it-Live.

Bay Area ensembles recorded and produced many virtual choir productions in spring 2020, and a number of ensembles, including the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir (“Music of the Pacific Rim” and “Spring Sing”) and Scola Cantorum Silicon Valley (“Virtually Elijah”), produced full online concerts and programs.

The Santa Clara University Chamber Singers, under the direction

California Choral Directors Association

of Scot Hanna-Weir, performed the first live concert over the internet by a university ensemble in the United States. The performance, “Embrace the Lag,” featured four pieces of aleatoric music that capitalized on the natural latency of the internet but still allowed for live collaboration. While most of the rehearsal time was spent trying to troubleshoot connectivity issues and audio settings, the end result was still something that felt like a live choral performance for both the singers and the audience.

about audience comfort levels for future concerts. Kudos to this group, and others not mentioned, for sharing their optimism and enthusiasm and keeping the music alive.

Nicole Lamartine comes to the Central Coast as the Sorensen Director of Choral Music at UC Santa Barbara.

For twelve years prior, she was the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Wyoming, where both of her choirs had the honor of singing at Northwest ACDA and Northwest NAfME conferences. She is in demand across the nation as an All-State clinician, and has conducted festivals all over the world. Nicole has been an active member of ACDA as Northwest Region President (2016-2018), Wyoming President (2009-2014), Chair of the national Collegiate Honor Choir (2009) and national Women’s Honor Choir (2013), ICEP conductor exchange program conductor to China (2014), and a member of various selection and audition committees.

Joyce Keil is retiring from the Ragazzi Boys Chorus, which she founded in 1987. Nearly 33 years ago Joyce noticed that girls had plenty of available outlets and lots of support for public singing, but while boys were welcomed at mixed choirs, it wasn’t as socially encouraged and didn’t provide the same supportive atmosphere.

When she brought ABOVE: Joyce Keil (left), Peggy Spool together boys only, they CENTRAL REGION found a place to thrive.

From an initial group This fall the Central region welcomes new teachers of 12 boys, she built an organization that now Cameron Clarno (Clovis East High School), Tara embraces more than 250 young singers from over Haner (North High School/Frontier High School), 100 schools in more than 30 counties. Her Ragazzi Johnny Santiago (McKee Middle School), and Dr. Jeff boys have toured the world, and performed with Wilson (Fresno Pacific University). We wish them great major symphony and opera companies. Kent Jue success in their new appointments! will take over as Ragazzi’s new Artistic Director.

We say goodbye and wish success in their graduate studies At the end of 2020, Peggy Spool will retire from to Kyle Ball (San José State University), Jack Bertrand Vivace Youth Chorus, which she founded in 2003.

(Michigan State), and Carlin Truong (University of During her tenure as artistic director, Vivace’s choirs Houston). You will be missed! have performed at conference and international festivals, on international tours, and with numberous SOUTHERN REGION professional and community ensembles. Kristina Nakagawa has been tapped to succeed Spool.

Karen Garrett has published a new book, Sight Singing for When asked about her successor, Spool said, “She brings a wealth of experience to Vivace...I look Festival Choirs, now available in PDF digital format from forward to our collaboration in the coming months J.W. Pepper.  as I prepare to turn over the helm and to the coming years under Ms. Nakagawa’s excellent leadership!”

Thanks to our Regional Representatives (Alissa Aune, CENTRAL COAST REGION Northern; Buddy James, Bay Area; Angel VázquezRamos, Central; Carolyn Teraoka-Brady, Central Coast; During our lengthy intermission during this Tina Peterson, Southern; and John Russell, Far South) for pandemic, the Canzona Women’s Ensemble, under collecting and sharing news from their areas! Send your news Directors Jill Anderson and Cricket Handler, to your regional representative if you’d like to be included in a have kept their audience up to date with inspiring future issue. music and words, and surveyed patrons for feedback

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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@calcda.org with corrections. Thank you for your support!

President’s Circle Diamond ($1000 and higher) Jeffrey and Jose Lédon Lori Marie Rios and Bryan D. Walker * in honor of Shirley Nute, Don Brinegar and Bruce Mayhall President’s Circle Platinum ($500 and higher) Daniel Afonso * Tammi Alderman * in honor of the past and present CCDA board John Sorber * in memory of Clark Skogsberg President’s Circle Gold ($300 and higher) Kenneth J. Abrams Lou De La Rosa * in memory of Jim Heiner Duane and Linda Lovaas * Nick Strimple * in honor of James H. Vail Dr. Jonathan Talberg * Burt and Polly Vasché *

President’s Circle Silver ($100-$299) Anonymous Charlene Archibeque Kyle Ball Jeffrey Benson * Jenny Bent Jack Bertrand * in honor of Kimberly Dunn Adams and Jennifer Garrett Glenn Carlos Mike and Julie Dana * Rodney Eichenberger Roger Emerson * Angelina Fitzhugh Mary Hamilton Brandon Harris Anthony Lien * in honor of Buddy James, Michael Najar, and Matthew Potterton Albert Mabeza Michael Mares MaryClare Martin * in honor of Lena and Art Babin and Signe Boyer Mary Monaghan * Kristina and Ryan Nakagawa * in honor of Lois Caran, Joe Huszti, and Charlene Archibeque National Concerts Susanna Peeples * Dr. Christopher and Tina Peterson Olga Spriggs

Genevieve Tep * Andrea and Mike Townsend Dr. Angel M. Vázquez-Ramos and Jody R. Vázquez * Sponsor ($50-$99) Dana Alexander Clement Cano Dr. Jennifer Garrett Jeff Morton Brianna Mowry Carolyn Teraoka-Brady * David Vanderbout Supporter (up to $50) Anonymous Karen Garrett Caitlin Giusta Debra Golata Othello Jefferson Heather Mitchell Joshua Palkki Jason Pano in honor of Lou De La Rosa, Robert Istad, and Christopher Peterson Joyce Pricco Jared Pugh Peter Reinman Zanaida Robles Gavin Spencer Dwight Stone

* Founder’s Circle

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CCDA BOARD Directory EXECUTIVE BOARD President Jeffrey Benson (408) 924-4645 jeffrey.s.benson@gmail.com President-Elect Chris Peterson (657) 278-3537 cpeterson@fullerton.edu Vice President Robert Istad (562) 822-5952 robert.istad@gmail.com

REPERTOIRE & RESOURCES

REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES Bay Area Buddy James (510) 885-3128 buddy.james@ csueastbay.edu Central Angel Vázquez-Ramos (714) 305-1087 vazquezramosa@gmail.com

Development & VFTF Lori Marie Rios (818) 679-7463 lmrdiva1@gmail.com

Central Coast Carolyn Teraoka-­Brady (805) ­689-­1780 cteraokabrady3@gmail.com

Treasurer Jenny Bent (707) 664-3925 bentje@sonoma.edu

Far South Arlie Langager (858) 774-0412 alangager@miracosta.edu

Membership Polly Vasché (209) 526-9692 pollyvasche@pacbell.net

Northern Andrew Kreckmann (973) 903-0466 a.kreckmann@csus.edu

Executive Administrator Kathleen Preston 921 N. Harbor Blvd., #412 La Habra, CA 90631-3103 (657) 217-0767 exec_admin@calcda.org

Southern Tina Peterson (562) 453-9681 tgpeterson@me.com

EVENT CHAIRS CASMEC chair Kristina Nakagawa (408) 205-6050 artistic@

resoundingachord.org

All-State Honor Choirs Molly Peters (213) 880-7597 mepeters79@gmail.com CLA Coordinator John Sorber (559) 303-9961 johnso@cos.edu

Summer Conference at ECCO Jeffe Huls jhuls@smmusd.org Alissa Aune (co-chair) sorcerermusic@gmail.com

Children’s & Community Youth La Nell Martin (510) 350-6639 lanellmartin7@gmail.com

Ethnic & Multicultural Perspectives Anthony Arnold (408) 799-5867 arnold_anthony@cusdk8.org

Junior High & Middle School Angelina Fitzhugh (650) 387-6730 afitzhugh@pausd.org

LGBTQ Perspectives Josh Palkki (202) 679-3350 josh.palkki@csulb.edu

Senior High School Stacey Kikkawa (310) 551-5100 skikkawa@fjuhsd.org Two-Year College John Sorber (559) 303-9961 johnso@cos.edu College & University Corie Brown (541) 743-6335 corie.brown@sjsu.edu Student Activities Susie Martone (415) 735-0910 susie.martone@gmail.com Choral Composition David Montoya (626) 419-8031 davypavy@aol.com

Music in Worship Christy Rohayem (510) 908-3047 crohayem@gmail.com Pop & A Cappella Bret Peppo (925) 808-9689 bpeppo@dvc.edu SSAA Choirs Lauren Diez (714) 904-1035 laurendiez415@gmail.com TTBB Choirs Mel Carrillo (559) 827-3560 mpcarrillo03@gmail.com Vocal Jazz Michelle Hawkins (650) 738-7134 hawkinsm@smccd.edu

Community & Professional Choirs Tammi Alderman (626) 299-7020 x3615 tammialderman@gmail.com

COMMUNICATIONS Cantate Editor Eliza Rubenstein erubenstein@occ.cccd.edu cantate.editor@ gmail.com

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Webmaster & Graphic Design Anthony M. Lien (530) 204-8512 amlien@lienhome.net

Social Media Coordinator Jason Pano (408) 768-0733 jasonpano@yahoo.com

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BACHELOR OF ARTS Music Education Music as a Liberal Art Vocal Performance

@FS Choirs

Cantate • Vol. 33, No. 1 • Fall 2020 • 71

California Choral Directors Association 921 N. Harbor Blvd., #412 La Habra, CA 90631-3103

CSULBâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bob Cole Conservatory of Music offers a world-class education in Vocal Performance, Vocal Jazz, Opera, Choral Music, and Choral Education with unyielding commitments to social justice, musical excellence and innovative pedagogy.

For more information, please contact Dr. Jonathan Talberg at jonathan.talberg@csulb.edu | csulb.edu/music