CCDA Cantate -- Spring 2022

2 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

California Choral Directors Association

IN THIS ISSUE 5 | BEING PART OF THE SOLUTION from the president’s pen · by chris peterson 6 | CHOICE letter from the editor

· by eliza rubenstein

8 | THE IN-BETWEEN a choral life between cultures

· by jessica cosley

15 | CCDA SUMMER CONFERENCE AT ECCO 17 | ALL-STATE HONOR CHOIRS by angelina fitzhugh and susie martone

21 | CASMEC 2023 24 | SEEN & HEARD 28 | VISION FOR THE FUTURE scholarship fund donors and new vftf awards

30 | NEWS AND NOTES happenings from around the state

32 | TOP FIVE: POP & A CAPPELLA by anabel pauline

34 | TOP FIVE: ETHNIC & MULTICULTURAL by anthony arnold

35 | TOP FIVE: COMMUNITY & PROFESSIONAL

Smile—it’s Summer! See more photos from CCDA members on pages 24 and 25.

(Photo from Fresno City College’s “Sing!” concert by Mark Tabay)

by brandon elliott

36 | TOP FIVE: MUSIC IN WORSHIP by christy rohayem

38 | CCDA DIRECTORY

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 3

CANTATE Volume 34, Number 3

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 CCDA Summer Conference at ECCO July 31-August 2, Oakhurst

On the cover: Members of the University of San Diego Choral Scholars (Dr. Emilie Amrein, director) perform at the San Diego Sings! Festival. Photo by Erik Carroll.

4 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

California Choral Directors Association

From The president’s pen:

Being part of the solution was a surreal experience for me as I am it was (or would have been) for many Ioftsureyou: I was attending concerts last March

Christopher Peterson is

Professor of Choral Music Education at CSU Fullerton and a teacher, conductor, choral clinician, author, editor,

composer, and choral arranger of music and books published in the

U.S. and around

the world. In his over thirty years as a music educator

Chris has

taught in elementary, middle school, high school, church, community, festival, and collegiate settings. received his

He

BS in Music

Education from the University of Southern Maine, the MM in Choral Conducting from the of

University

Maine, and his

Doctorate in Choral Conducting/Music

at the ACDA Western Region Conference in Long Beach when the mask mandate for LA County ended. Suddenly, it seemed, all the choirs were performing maskless!

I continued watching and listening and enjoying the music…but the elephant in the room was massive and unmistakable; they were singing without masks. It was like a rip in the space/time continuum had opened as I sat there in amazement and wonder.

Was I dreaming? Was this real? What was I hearing? I closed my eyes and listened for a while and what I heard was a clearer and more resonant choral sound. I opened my eyes, and I could see the faces of the singers…expressions, mouth shapes, and I could tell they were really enjoying their first maskless public performance in a very long time. Part of my mind wondered if it was safe, and the rest of my soul basked in the joy of the moment, enveloped by chords and expressive music-making. In that moment I found some renewed optimism that we are finally reaching the beginning of the end of this crazy COVID time, and that we could all soon be singing and performing again like we used to. It was not a dream.

While I know that no one can predict the future I also know that we cannot be limited by the past. We always need to plan for the future and to create a vision of where we hope to go regardless of the challenges we have encountered. I envision a renaissance of singing and choral music that will take hold in the years to come as people sense a strong need to reconnect to the world and to be part of something beautiful and bigger than themselves. We can be a driver of this renaissance through our work to provide transformative experiences for California’s diverse communities. We can be part of a new and inclusive world where more and more people choose to sing together in

community because it expresses the inner core of who they are. We can be part of the solution in a world where so many people feel alone and unheard. We can be the leaders who help more and more people find their voice, both literally and figuratively. We can thrive to new heights in a post-pandemic world, and I know CCDA can help you as you lead the way. We are here for you, and I hope you will continue to connect with us as we all become part of the solution…part of the singing renaissance that I believe is on the horizon. his summer we will continue this renaissance with the return of our T annual Summer Conference at ECCO

(Episcopal Conference Center Oakhurst) from July 31 to August 3, 2022. Our theme will be “Celebrating the richness of our diverse choral communities,” with sessions that will be valuable resources for our attendees as we rebuild our ensembles, sing in person again, and continue to develop inclusion, access, and diversity in all levels of our ensembles.

Our first of two headliners will be Dr. Judy Bowers, renowned choral music educator and Professor Emerita in the College of Music at Florida State University. She has trained and mentored countless music educators across our nation and is one of the leading music educators of our generation. Our second headliner is Tesfa Y Wondemagegnehu, Assistant Professor of Music at St. Olaf College. Tesfa has been sharing joy and a vision for equity and justice through song for many years. Through a triumvirate of teaching, conducting, and performing, he has found a way to transform both students and audiences and to reach those seeking resolutions of peace, equality, and respect … through music. I hope to see many of you there. I can’t wait. 

Education from The Florida State University.

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 5

letter from the editor:

CHOICES fall, a surgery, a stroke, a sleep: These were the last four movements of my A mother’s life, a life of 82 years of music and

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. 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, and four dogs.

She’s passionate about grammar,

Thai food,

photography, and the

St. Louis Cardinals and

St. Louis Blues.

baseball and kids and travels and desserts, a life that closed quietly in the early hours of Thursday, May 19, 2022. I missed the end, having spent a month at her bedside in Missouri before finally deciding that I could safely return to California for a few days to check in on my neglected dogs and jobs and choruses. “Don’t feel guilty about that,” said one of the nurses. “I honestly think she needed you to go, so that she could, too.”

My mother—Nancy was her name— taught me about counterpoint and the infield fly rule, bread-baking and voting and state capitals. She taught my sister to play piano, and she accompanied my violin solos through the Suzuki books and beyond. Her writing was impeccably precise and effortlessly witty, and I have thirty years’ worth of her weekly Monday letters to prove it.

She adored children and dogs, and they adored her back.

My parents met at Washington University’s graduate school of music in the early 1960s, he studying composition, she studying music history.

She finished her doctorate; he didn’t. He got a faculty job; she didn’t. They moved to Alabama in the heat of the Civil Rights movement—they taught their Weimaraner to growl out the car window at Klan checkpoints, and Mama saved a shoebox full of newspaper clippings about segregated schools and pools to show to us many years later—and my father taught music theory at the University of South Alabama while my mother stayed at home with my older sister, born in 1967.

By the time I arrived in 1974, my father had traded music teaching for computer science and the family had moved back to Missouri. Though my mother taught evening music history classes at a handful of local universities throughout my school years, and had part-time gigs writing program notes and

6 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

giving pre-concert lectures for the St. Louis Symphony and others well into my adulthood, she was what the internet now casually calls a SAHM—a stay-at-home mother, who picked us up from school, sewed us clothes, did afternoon crafts and gardening and homework with us, prodded us to practice our instruments, and cooked dinner for us on every night that wasn’t her Teaching Night (we were on our own for those, for better and worse).

She drove us to choir practice and took us for ice cream and taught us music history in the car with an assist from the local classical station.

The world seemed confused by the dissonance between her achievements and her everyday life. My elementary school called on her to accompany pageants and teach music classes, but they regularly addressed envelopes to “Dr. and Mrs. Rubenstein,” which I always corrected to “Mr. and Dr. Rubenstein,” though she never seemed to mind as much as I did. The wife of one of my father’s colleagues, at a dinner of our two families, made the mistake of saying “....but you don’t work,” injecting fire into my mother’s eyes and voice as she replied “I work damn hard, thank you.”

Sometime in my teens or twenties I gathered the courage to give voice to something I’d worried about privately for years: I confessed to her that I’d always felt guilty that she’d given up what could have been a major (perhaps even groundbreaking) career in her chosen field so that she could raise my sister and me.

If I expected gentle reassurances, I didn’t get them. No—she was mad. “Don’t insult me by thinking I didn’t make that choice for myself,” she told me. “I did exactly what I wanted to do with my life.” t wasn’t just my father’s job and my parents’ address that changed between 1967 and I1974, of course. In 1973, Roe v. Wade

redefined women’s ability to make their— our—own reproductive decisions, and with them all the other life choices contingent upon bodily autonomy. Only one of us knows for sure

California Choral Directors Association

that they had us because they really wanted us, I’ve teased my sister from time to time.

The news of the Supreme Court’s intent to revoke that right, leaked to the media on May 2 of this year, came to me as I sat at my mother’s bedside in the same hospital where I was born, rage puncturing my grief as I reflected in the slow grey hours upon the lifetime’s worth of choices that my mother made and the ones other people made for her.

She wasn’t conscious enough during those days to discuss politics the way we’d done for so many years, but even if she had been, I wouldn’t have told her that her granddaughter might soon have fewer options in life than she had. It would have broken her heart.

I did not and do not doubt that my mother wanted to be a parent rather than a professor. But I know, too, that a choice isn’t really a choice when there’s little else on the menu. Our decisions are shaped by a world that lets us fill our lungs with possibility at some moments and presses the breath out of us at others, by a society that still tells women what we ought to want and why we ought to want it, by laws and systems that reward us for some choices and punish us for others.

I believe that my mother loved the life she led. I wonder whether there could have been other lives available for her to love. ow many more paths, how many more stories, will become unattainable for how many more of us if the H forces that govern us continue their inexorable quest to

Leading the Way

possess our bodies—women’s bodies, trans bodies, bodies of color, disabled bodies? Upholding the vision of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in music means doing more than mixing up our repertoire or making supportive social media posts. It means advocating, fiercely, for the kind of diversity that only comes with equality, the kind of equality that only comes with inclusion, and the kind of inclusion that only comes with authentic opportunity and self-determination.

To program works by marginalized people without honoring marginalized people’s work is to enjoy the fruits of unsustainable labor.

Reproductive rights, parental leave, health care, child care, affordable housing, student debt relief, marriage equality, disability access: they’re all non-negotiable if we genuinely seek a just world, a just profession, in which bright lights aren’t extinguished by the burdens of economics or exhaustion. Our voices are not free if our bodies are not free. n absurdity: My living room was filled with college students singing a spontaneous, terrible chorus of A “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down”

when the call came from Missouri that the end was near.

I’d invited the choir for a potluck to make up for lost weeks, to hear young voices in my house and see young bodies sprawled on my grass, to remind myself why I rage, why I care, what I desperately want for them. Maybe I should have been elsewhere, helpless beside a hospital bed, watching a coda I had no power to conduct. Don’t feel guilty, the nurse said. You made a good choice. 

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 7

8 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

California Choral Directors Association

THE

IN-

BETWEEN A CHORAL LIFE BETWEEN CULTURES

BY JESSICA COSLEY Illustration by Jessica Cosley Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 9

Theme A o you play piano?” The older man’s gray eyes sparkle under the concert hall lobby’s lights as he smiles at me. He seems genuine and well-meaning enough, but it’s a trap.

I smile and nod. “Yes.” I cannot tell a lie.

“Wonderful! Are you a student here?” The answer seems obvious, since I’m dressed all in black and clearly the same age as most of the performers he’s just seen.

I give a polite nod. “I am.”

“Who do you study with?” There it is. The moment I’ve been waiting for and yet am never quite prepared for.

“Oh, um…” I smile so my eyes close but I look down anyway—am I embarrassed or proud?—“...I’m actually a voice student.”

The man smiles. “Oh, well that’s nice.”

“D

“A

B re you Chinese?” A portly guest smiles at me from over her thin rectangular glasses.

10 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

“Yes,” I reply, smiling in return.

“I knew it! My son married a Chinese girl and you look just like her.” A look of triumph.

“Oh, great.” They always guess Chinese first. Once in a while, I consider saying that I’m actually Mexican, just to mess with them, but that’s not in my nature.

Another guest approaches me, using Chinese first.

Do you speak Chinese?

A bit. How can I help you?

Cue ten minutes of uncomfortable conversation while I try to find vocabulary words buried in cobwebcovered boxes deep in my brain, and then filter them through sieves of English grammar. The look of pity on the guest’s face pains me as they reassure me I’m doing a good job before they leave. Their kids also have American accents.

Development i. n 2006, prior to my senior year of high school, after thirteen years of piano and seven years of band, I decided to try out for choir. Why did I do this? Maybe I wasn’t being challenged the way I wanted to be, maybe I wasn’t making the kind of music I wanted to, or maybe I just didn’t see the point of it all; my therapist would later call it bipolar disorder.

In any case, somehow I found myself in the shared hallway between the band room, choir room, and multipurpose room singing who-knows-what for a classmate who had been in choir for the past three years.

The hallway was stuffy, full of color guard equipment, backpacks, and teenagers. I looked toward the band people I knew at the other end of the hall; I didn’t know anyone on this side (not technically true). Everyone was waiting to be invited into the room to audition individually, and I had failed to camouflage myself sufficiently against the beige and maroon walls.

Jenny (not her real name) found me. We attended the same church where she sometimes sang on the worship team and I more often played keyboard. We were friendly but not friends. This was my default relationship status with most people. She convinced me to practice by singing to her.

“You have really great tall vowels! You’ll probably make Vocal,” said Jenny, smiling encouragingly. I had a vague understanding that she meant Vocal Ensemble, our school’s top chamber group. Her prediction was right. She congratulated me when the list was posted. I thanked her for her help.

The week before my senior year began, we had choir camp at school. We spent time learning new music, and we played group bonding games. I loathed

I

California Choral Directors Association

group bonding games. It was with just a tiny bit of sick pleasure that I imposed these on my own students years later. I did learn a few things from choir camp. The first was that these people were not my people. They were loud, unfocused, silly, and slow—a far cry from the regimented life I lived in the marching band. The second thing I learned was the “ng-ah” exercise I would use so many times later in my own teaching. My teacher brought me out in front of the group (why, God, why), and had me sing a passage on “ng” and then open up to “ah,” much to the enthusiastic applause of the group, who apparently heard something I didn’t because all I could hear was my blood thumping in my ears. The third thing I learned was the song “Back to One” by Brian McKnight, at the time already seven years old, but new to me at the time. The significance of this is simply that to this day, when someone mentions the song and can’t remember who sang it, I can confidently say “Brian McKnight, 1999.” ii. hen the choir program’s student directors were chosen for that 2006-2007 school year, there were folks who’d already figured out who they were going to be, except they didn’t figure in me. My teacher said I was chosen for my musicianship, and years later I can say I probably would’ve made the same choice.

Especially when the other student director turned out to be less than ideal, most of the responsibility of running out-of-class rehearsals came to me. At the time, I had a fleeting idea of how difficult it was for some of the other students to accept me—you don’t jump the high school hierarchy like that—but I didn’t really feel it as much as some might think.

Given my nature to just “show up and do the work,” I didn’t hear a lot of the murmurs from other students. Jenny, the classmate who sang at church with me, started to ignore me, which I didn’t notice one bit. Teenagers really do tend to only worry about themselves. Anxiety from juggling jazz band, theater, AP classes, and clubs came before worrying about what other people thought about me. It wasn’t until the end of the year when the seniors were saying their goodbyes through tears and handwritten letters that I realized how much we’d all grown out of that period of in between.

“At first I resented you, but you were always kind and did a great job. I’m sorry I doubted you,” was the general sentiment from them. From me, it was, “I’m sorry that I didn’t understand what you meant by ‘choir family.’ I hated it because it implied a closeness I didn’t feel, but I understand that it means we work things out no matter what, instead of giving up.”

W

Leading the Way

It wasn’t all hard work. A group of us bought Disneyland passes together and went nearly every Friday after rehearsal (I know, “rich kids”). Instead of screaming on rides, we sang dissonant high notes at the top of our lungs. We skipped from place to place singing the music of “Fantasmic” in parts, like I used to do with my drumline friends. Blending together, backlit by fireworks and doused in the scent of popcorn and churros, we created our own brand of obnoxiousness.

Working at Disneyland now, I share these memories with our guest groups when they visit, but the truth is, I don’t talk to any of those people anymore. iii. ou don’t know that song? asked Mr. Gan with thin raised eyebrows.

“Mm-mm.” I shook my head, raising my arms to create a path for him through the thick Lunar New Year crowds.

Pressed up against my left shoulder, Mr. Gan began to sing in a clear, steady baritone voice that belied his old age. “———,” sailed forth. It was only one melodic phrase and sounded undoubtedly Chinese, but it more beautiful and smooth than any I’d ever heard.

Mr. Gan turned to me, speaking in his Cantoneseaccented Mandarin, its clipped and bright cadence cutting through the noise. You’ve never heard that?

No, sorry, I haven’t. I smiled. But it’s beautiful.

Teacher Gan has a really beautiful voice.

His eyes disappeared as he laughed. Ah, I can’t hit high notes like I used to when I was young. I used to win karaoke competitions.

A flash of a memory. A pang of guilt.

Wow! My dad used to do karaoke competitions too.

He has a nice baritone voice like yours. The short walk from the break area to the calligraphy station over, we settled back in to work. Thank you for singing for me. I bowed to him as he mixed a fresh batch of ink.

It was Mr. Gan’s last day as the guest Chinese calligrapher for Disneyland’s Lunar New Year festival and I was his host. I’d met him on the first day of the festival and was pleased to be able to finally practice the Mandarin I’d started learning in earnest during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr. Gan’s singing caught me by surprise. Later, I recalled the event to my lead who reacted with her usual over-the-top exuberance (“that’s so cool I’m so jealous I want him to sing for me too!”), but buried in the pit of my stomach was a coiled spring of embarrassment and discontent.

He had asked about me and I said I was a musician.

But what was the name of the song he’d sung? What kind of song was it? He’d asked me what kind of songs

Y

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 11

I sang, then named what I assume to be two genres, but I didn’t understand. This was supposed to be my area of expertise, but I had been left speechless. I was, as the young people would say, shook. iv. hen I was young, my dad led the church choir— there’s a photo somewhere of him holding me while conducting—and my mom played the violin.

She stopped playing a long time ago. Dad never quit singing.

Those karaoke contests he participated in? I was dragged along with gritted teeth and furrowed brow, armed with earbuds and a horrible twelve-year-old attitude. I can still smell the grassy sun-baked lawns of city parks and community centers densely populated with Chinese folks. Folks I felt I had nothing in common with. Everyone would be dressed up—dark-haired men in dark suits and women with dyed perms. It was 3 p.m. on a Sunday. It was always 3 p.m. on a Sunday.

The sound of the music was outdated. Awkward synthesizer strings and electric drums were pumped out of JBL speakers propped up on their large stands, sometimes leaning precariously on soft grass. The sounds were somehow both too bright and too dull, too loud and too boring, but most of all, too unfamiliar.

It didn’t fit in with my Schumann, John Williams, Backstreet Boys, or Weezer, so it went into a box, tucked away with my Chinese vocabulary and my opinion of moon cakes (yes custard and red bean, gross egg yolk).

My dad won once. He brought home a three-tiered trophy. He was so proud. My sister and I barely looked up.

“Who cares?” Did I say really that?

“Be nice!” My mother definitely said that.

Not a week later, the top of dad’s trophy broke off as he was moving it from the shelf above the TV. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t. My dad stopped going to karaoke competitions.

W

Recapitulation A’ n my first year of teaching, I learned how to pronounce the “X” in “Xitlali,” why so many boys go by the name Chuy, how to do a proper grito, and what the differences between cumbia, banda, mariachi, and corridos are. I also learned a good deal about some delicious food.

“Mrs. Cosley, you’ve never had pozole?”

“Mrs. Cosley, you’ve never had mazapan?”

“OMG, you’ve never had champurrado!?”

I

12 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

Somewhere in the deep digital universe there are videos of me opening a mazapan in class for the first time, surrounded by a dozen cooing and gasping faces that burst into cheers when I triumphantly pick up the crumbly peanut candy in one unbroken piece. I started stocking big bottles of Tapatío for students to add to their lunches, and discovered they were eating far, far too much Maruchan. One Christmas, one of my chamber singers was given two boxes of the instant noodles by their secret Santa. It was so popular, they did it year after year.

“You get healthy breakfasts and lunches for free!” I reminded them daily, but hot Cheetos and Maruchan remained the dominant food group, so I introduced them to Shin Ramyun, Nongshim, and Sapporo Ichiban. Duvalin and Pocky coexisted in peaceful strawberry-chocolate harmony, giving diabetes to all the choir students of Room… I don’t even remember what the room number was anymore. It was never important.

The band lived next door, the band teacher was my best friend, and we coexisted in the space between our rooms.

Once in a while we’d hear murmurs of, “Why do we have to do Spanish songs? If I wanted to hear Spanish songs, I’d listen to my parents’ music.” These students were also finding themselves in between.

“Because it’s a great song,” I found myself saying, or “it’s for the Día de Muertos festival,” and “it’ll make your parents happy.” Eventually, despite the complaining and pouting, when the beat started and the trumpet sounded and the singers belted out their words, everyone smiled and danced and the community came to life.

B’ n 2020 my father suddenly had a lot of time to sing at home. For hours a day, he began to practice in the downstairs bathroom of my family’s house in Florida, recording into a Chinese karaoke app which tracks pitch, creates a video, and adds far too much reverb.

I’d frequently receive texts from my mother and sister saying, “Dad is singing loud again!” followed by a sheepish “but he’s happy and getting better.” From my dad I’d receive links to videos with, “Check out this song I learned! I think you’ll like this singer.”

Despite my poor attitude, my dad has always supported my music education, buying me new instruments, taking me to the Colburn school twice a week for lessons during my sophomore year of high school (he worked in LA and would come home from work just to turn around and drive me back), and paying for college. He’s my biggest fan, and I have long

I

California Choral Directors Association

struggled with how to show my appreciation. The least I could do was to be as encouraging to my father as I was to my students, and literally anyone else. I started giving him a “good job ” whenever he shared his music, and “liking” his pictures when he posted that he took my mom to see a concert at their local performing arts center (the Dr. Philips Center in Orlando).

Dad’s also singing in a proper church choir again—“we’re the youngest people in the choir!”—and he happily tells me about their director—“he’s a very nice young man and he’s so good! Younger than you, married and a high school choir teacher too, but he wants to quit—and the songs they sing—“have you heard of this person? We are singing a song by John Rutter, it is beautiful!”

I’d never properly considered that my parents could be my greatest assets to learning how to live in the in between. They were experts. Mom grew up in post-Cultural Revolution China, her parents part of the “lost generation,” and she immigrated to the United States at age nineteen. Dad came for graduate school following his compulsory military service in Taiwan.

Both of them left their families to create a new life.

For the brief amount of time we lived in Hong Kong I attended an American school, so I couldn’t relate the experience of leaving your country behind.

I was a product of the “leaving behind.” Until last year, I couldn’t even recognize the Chinese characters for “music.” Until Disney asked if I’d be able to translate for guest groups, it had never even occurred to me that I didn’t know the words for quarter note.

Soprano? Treble clef? Major or minor keys? To be honest, I still don’t remember these vocabulary words.

They don’t exactly cover this in Duolingo, or if they do, I haven’t gotten that far yet.

“I love folk music!” I’ve always said. It’s even in my Postcrossings profile. But Asian folk music? Japanese song—Sakura. Chinese song—Mo Li Hua. At least the Korean one isn’t the name of a flower—Arirang.

Why can I name and sing more Irish tunes than Chinese ones?

Tired of being in between, I asked my father, lifelong singer and lover of history and art: what should I do?

“Google it. Look on YouTube.”

Thanks, dad.

“Chinese folk music.” Search.

Try again. Click on one of the many albums called Chinese Traditional Music and Folksongs. Click. Click.

Click. Close window.

Harsh, strangled, whiny, weird. The sounds of my childhood come back like a knife twisting in an old wound. Even my mom used to make fun of this kind of music. Everything feels slightly out of tune, and flutes

Leading the Way

and plucked guqin create a floating atmosphere so light it’s disorienting. Yet it’s also somehow so loud it triggers a headache. Singers create sounds that can only be recreated by scrunching your nose, showing your front teeth, puckering your lips, and opening your eyes wide like a ghost. Or they’re revolutionary songs, nationalist anthems sung by large choruses. I had to rethink my query.

Enter David, a fifteen year-old violin student who took music theory lessons with me on Zoom. He was born in China and moved here just a few years ago, and he’s probably the smartest kid I’ve ever met.

“Oh! You might like these people,” he says immediately, typing into the chat the names of several Chinese musicians and links to YouTube videos. His giant black gaming headphones bob up and down as he types. As I start to search for the musicians he’s mentioned, I realize my fatal error. Okay, not fatal, but something I hadn’t taken into account.

Searching in English on English platforms yields biased results. To know what songs Chinese people listen to, it’s best to search in Chinese. For example, I grew up with my mom listening to popular Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng who was at the height of her fame in the 70s and 80s. She died in 1995 at the age of 42 from an asthma attack but is still largely considered the undisputed queen of mandopop. No one has reached her level of fame since. Her English name is Teresa Teng. In Chinese, it’s Deng Li Jun, or Teng Li-Chun to reflect regional dialects. In Chinese characters, it’s 鄧 麗君. Searching for any one of these can yield slightly different results, but they all seem to point to Wikipedia first, interestingly enough.

When it comes to names, most search engines now can cross reference data to figure out who you’re looking for, but titles are a different story. Typing in a title like “qing ai de ni” using an English keyboard or using a Chinese keyboard yields different results, even when using the same Latin letters. It’s like trying to find a specific English song called “Angel.” Many artist names are Anglicized or written in Pinyin (Latin letters used to represent Chinese sounds), but titles—less likely. It makes finding a particular song for TikTok or Instagram videos challenging. It also makes finding sheet music nearly impossible!

“It’s okay, your Chinese is already very good,” my parents reassure me, when I voice my frustrations.

“You’ll never be fluent in Chinese anyway.”

Is that supposed to make me feel better? But they aren’t wrong. Things take time, and we don’t always get our answers, but, as my kung fu teacher would say, “the important thing is that we stay in the question.”

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 13

Coda began training in tai chi at a martial arts school five months ago. One night, a suicidal nihilist came in and spoke with my teacher for an hour, looking for a reason to live, a purpose. He hated the world and everything in it. Dammit, he sounded like me. My kung fu brother and I silently listened and practiced our forms. When the man finally left with no answers, we wondered what he might do.

Teacher said, “He’s not going to do anything yet.

He came in once before some four years ago and attended maybe one tai chi class, saying the same things. The fact that he came back now… he’s been living in the question. That’s exhausting. But he has a kid now. So what? You stay in the question, you work on the puzzle, practice, train. Maybe that’s the point.”

Every day, teachers do the mostly thankless and seemingly impossible. A good friend of mine asked, “Why am I here? What am I even doing?” It seems like everyone asks that once in a while.

There is a qigong exercise in the Eight Treasures (or Brocades), called “separating heaven and earth.”

As one stands with palms facing away from each other, pressing up and down, looking towards the hand outstretched to heaven, the mantra is to acknowledge

I

14 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

that we are all in our proper place on our journey.

Switching hands to look up in the other direction, we affirm that others are also in their rightful places on their journeys.

We are listening, learning, never finished. We are complex, beautiful, flawed. We are determined and curious, staying in the question, finding our place in between.  Jessica Cosley began her musical journey as a pianist at age four, then passed through various realms of instrument families, choral education, and audio engineering, until she ended up in all places at once and with a master’s degree in English. she is most happy when supporting people in any capacity—Currently, as music director at Brea Congregational Church, faculty at Orange Coast College, guest talent coordinator at Disneyland Resort, and a collaborative pianist.

California Choral Directors Association

SUMMER CONFERENCE at ECCO July 31 - August 3, 2022 registration begins April 2022 more information at www.calcda.org Professional Development led by Dr. Judy Bowers and Tesfa Wondemagegnehu

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 15

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California Choral Directors Association

ALL-STATE HONOR CHOIRS

by Susie Martone and Angelina Fitzhugh hank you to everyone who made the return to an in-person All-State a reality this year. We were T overwhelmed with the artistry we witnessed in rehearsals

and on stage, and we’re so grateful for the growth our All-State students experienced. It took a huge team of people to make this event possible - guest directors, collaborative pianists, managers, chaperones, families, and all of the directors who prepared and supported their All-State students! We appreciate each and every one of your contributions.

A survey went out in early March to All-State students, parents/guardians, and directors to help us plan for next year’s event. We take your feedback seriously and are

Leading the Way

already working to improve the All-State experience. The 2023 All-State Honor Choirs will take place at CASMEC in Fresno from February 16-18, 2023, with guest directors Ms. Connie Drosakis (Junior High SATB), Dr. Lynnel Joy Jenkins (High School SSAA), Dr. Jefferson Johnson (High School TTBB), and Dr. Betsy Cook Weber (High School SATB).

We are hopeful for a return to the traditional regional honor choir model in the fall of 2022. Please keep an eye on your e-mail and the CCDA All-State Honor Choir website (calcda.org/all-state) for an update on the fall events, including audition information, by the end of the school year. 

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 17

Artistic and Academic Excellence School of Music BACHELOR OF ARTS BACHELOR OF MUSIC MASTER OF MUSIC ARTIST DIPLOMA

Graduate Degrees Music scholarships & graduate assistantships available → Composition → Performance → Conducting → Vocal Chamber Music → Pedagogy Choral Faculty → Nicholle Andrews Voice Faculty → Melissa Tosh → Marco Schindelmann → Donald Brinegar

→ Christopher Gabbitas

→ Patricia Gee → Cynthia Snyder

WWW.REDLANDS.EDU/MUSIC

SM-21-005 Cantate Ad r2.indd 1

18 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

5/25/21 10:57 AM

California Choral Directors Association

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Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 19

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, 2022 music.usc.edu/choral

MUSIC.USC.EDU

20 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

@USCTHORNTON

California Choral Directors Association

California All-State Music Education Conference CASMEC 2023 in Fresno

Call for Interest Sessions and Performing Ensembles Be a part of our state conference! CCDA is looking for outstanding performing ensembles and insightful interest sessions that will inspire us all at next year’s conference. Please consider applying!

Interest Sessions Applications will open in April and will be accepted until August 1. We would love to have sessions for educators of all levels.

Performing Ensembles Applications will open in April and will be accepted through June 1. (Elementary, Secondary, and University/ College level ensembles are welcome to apply.)

Study Music in L.A. At LMU Music, we offer a personalized approach to music education, housed in stateof-the-art facilities in the second-largest U.S. music market. Offering concentrations in Contemporary Styles and Practices, Instrumental Studies, Vocal Studies, Theory/ Composition, Musicology, Ethnomusicology, and Conducting, Dr. T. J. Harper, Director of Choral Activities

cfa.lmu.edu/music

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Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 21

Apply online LA YOUTH PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Summer Music Festival 2022 at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Honor Choir Audition High School SATB Summer Honor Choir Middle School SATB Summer Honor Choir Elementary School SSA Summer Honor Choir Adult SATB Summer Honor Choir For more information Visit https://layouthphilharmonic.com/

22 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

California Choral Directors Association

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 23

SEEN & HEARD Clockwise from near right: Julie Dana conducts her final concert at Fresno City College (photo by Mark Tabay); the San Diego Chorus performs with director Kathleen Hansen; the USC Chamber Singers visit Kylemore Abbey in County Galway, Ireland; and 21V, a new Bay-Area professional soprano/alto ensemble of all gender identities, debuts with director Martin Benvenuto (photo by Don Fogg Photography). Turn the page for more!

24 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

California Choral Directors Association

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 25

Above: Suzanne Brookey (festival host), Jennifer Stanley, Nate Bailey, Brandon Harris, Jared Pugh, and Janna Santangelo celebrate after a March 21 SCVA festival at the Baldwin Park Performing Arts Center; below: students from Grand Arts and Torres East LA Performing Arts Magnet (directors Drew Lewis and Melissa Rios) collaborated to sing “God Bless America” at SoFi Stadium for the LA Bowl.

26 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

California Choral Directors Association

Vocal Music

See yourself in music …

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 27

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) Lori Marie Rios and Bryan D. Walker*, in honor of Shirley Nute, Don Brinegar, and Bruce Mayhall President’s Circle Platinum ($500-$999) Dr. Daniel Afonso Jr.*, in memory of Dr. Ginger Covert-Colla President’s Circle Gold ($300-$499) Anthony and Cassie Arnold Buddy James, in honor of Joseph Huszti Duane and Linda Lovaas * John Sorber*, in memory of Clark Skogsberg Dr. Jonathan Talberg *

President’s Circle Silver ($100-$299) Jenny Bent Lauren Diez Mary Hamilton Brandon Harris Yewon Lee Albert Mabeza Dr. Chris and Tina Peterson* Lynn Spafford Dr. Angel M. Vázquez-Ramos and Jody R. Vázquez * Sponsor ($50-$99) Alissa Aune Mike and Julie Dana*, in honor of my students, now colleagues Angelina Fitzhugh Jennifer Gaderlund Dr. Jennifer Garrett

Joshua W. Small and Gerardo D. Ramirez Olga Spriggs Carolyn Teraoka-Brady* Supporter (up to $50) Andrew Kreckmann, Sacramento State Susanna Martone Emmelyn Montoya Molly Peters, in honor of Lori Marie Rios David Vanderbout

* Founder’s Circle

VISION FOR THE FUTURE ANNOUNCES TWO NEW AWARDS Vision for the Future Creativity Grant Supporting ideas that focus on “creating opportunities promoting excellence” Vision for the Future Equity Scholarship Intended to support and encourage choral directors who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) Thank you to Chris Peterson, Christy Rohayem, and the CCDA Diversity and Equity Committee for developing these new scholarships.

Visit www.calcda.org to learn more about how to apply or how to donate!

28 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

California Choral Directors Association

Save the date for the premier one-day vocal jazz workshop for teachers and students!

CSU LONG BEACH (Host - Christine Guter)

Vocal Jazz for every voicing, style & ability

LAS POSITAS COLLEGE (Host - Ian Brekke) AUGUST 2022 | vocaljazzacademy.com

ANCHORMUSIC.COM Dozens of arrangers, hundreds of charts!

Owner/operator: Matt Falker (Director, 2022 California All-State High School Vocal Jazz Ensemble)

Leading the Way

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 29

News and notes

from around the state BAY AREA In-person conferences are back, and we couldn’t be prouder of our Bay Area representatives! Between CASMEC and ACDA Western, we heard Bullis Charter School, the San Jose State University Choraliers, and Choral Audacity perform. We also had wonderful presentations from Jenny Bent, Justin Montigne, Corie Brown, Jeffrey Benson, and Angelina Fitzhugh. While we were in Long Beach, Dr. Charlene Archibeque was recognized as the official conference honoree, and in Fresno, Ken Abrams received the 2022 CCDA Choral Director of the Year. Congratulations, Charlene and Ken! We also owe a huge thank-you to Susie Martone and Angelina Fitzhugh for coordinating the All-State Honor Choirs.

Spring brought many performances to the Bay Area as well! SJSU debuted their Latin American Choral Festival, “Son de la Vida,” which included workshops on style, culture, repertoire, and performance practice, paired with the return of their high school and junior college invitational festival and a finale concert.

In May, the Santa Clara Chorale and Santa Clara University Choirs, led by Scot Hanna-Weir, joined the San Jose Chamber Orchestra to present the premiere of “Kohelet” by SCU alum Henry Dehlinger.

Five San Jose-based community choirs joined together for the 12th annual concert to benefit Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence. The choirs included were Orchard City Community Chorus, Serendipity, San Jose Military Veterans Chorus, Resounding Achord, and Rainbow Women’s Chorus.

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

In June 2022, The Choral Project, led

by Artistic Director Daniel Hughes, celebrates their 25th anniversary, albeit a year late because of the pandemic.

CENTRAL COAST REGION Congratulations to the Cal Poly Women’s Chorus, who performed at CASMEC, and the singers from the Stevenson School who sang in the Gospel Honor Choir at the ACDA Western Region Conference. Kudos to Willow Manspeaker, Honor Choir Co-Chair and choir director at Stevenson School.

SING!, the children’s chorus program funded and operated by the Music Academy of the West, was re-launched in January. This free after-school program is open to kids in grades 1-6 from Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Carpinteria, with approximately 210 students from 33 schools. The SING! students performed with the London Symphony Orchestra on March 26.

CENTRAL REGION In March Burt and Polly Vasché participated in a video interview with a local arts information network, telling how they became involved in music and how the choral art has affected their lives. One of Polly’s Downey High School Choir grads serves as co-host of the program. The interview may be accessed on YouTube or Facebook under “Mistlin Gallery/ Expose Yourself to Art.” In the greater Modesto area, Anastasia Legatos-Jacobs has recently taken a new position with the Waterford Schools, teaching K-12 Vocal and Instrumental music.

30 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer

The Central Region was well represented at CASMEC this past February 17-20. Julie Dana served as the CCDA State Conference at CASMEC Chair, Dr. Ángel M. Vázquez-Ramos presented and served as the logistics liaison, and John Sorber and Ryan Clippinger held a successful Choral Leadership Academy. The Fresno State Concert Choir directed by Dr. Cari Earnhart and Clovis North Women’s Chorale led by Heather Bishop gave inspiring performances that were celebrated by educators around the state!

Congratulations to Cari Earnhart, program chair, on successfully leading a team of dedicated choral educators through the pandemic and to our in-person ACDA Western Region Conference. The Clovis North Singers (Heather Bishop) also traveled to Long Beach as a featured choir in the Conference. The Bakersfield College Choirs (Dr. Jennifer Garrett) were featured in “Stories of the Pandemic” during the conference for their virtual performance of Andrea Ramsey’s “Stomp on the Fire.”

This year’s CMEA Choral Educator Award was awarded to Julie Dana (Fresno City College). In addition, Julie was recently elected as the new ACDA Western Division PresidentElect. Congratulations Julie!

The Kern County Music Educators Association awarded Patrick Burzlaff (Centennial High School) the Music Educator of the Year Award, and Ingrid Borja (James Curran Middle School and Sequoia Junior High School) the Choral Educator Award for the 2021-2022 school year.

California Choral Directors Association

Jenepher Lapp, past director of the East High School Choirs in the KHSC, was inducted into the East Bakersfield High School Hall of Fame in March. Congratulations Jenepher!

Bakersfield College (Dr. Jennifer Garrett) also hosted the return of the Bakersfield City School District’s Middle School Choral Festival on March 10.

SOUTHERN REGION Congratulations to the Southern Region ensembles who performed at our recent conferences! CASMEC featured Ayala High School (Robert Davis), while Western Region ACDA featured CSULB’s Pacific Standard Time (Christine Guter) and Bob Cole Chamber Choir (Jonathan Talberg), Angel City Chorale (Sue Fink), Tonality (Alexander Lloyd Blake), Vox Femina (Iris Levine), Mt. San Antonio College (Bruce Rogers), Laude/First Congregational Church of Los Angeles (David Harris), and the Spirit Chorale of Los Angeles (Byron Smith).

Jolla Symphony Chorus), Dr. John Russell (San Diego Master Chorale), and Dr. Keith Pedersen (Point Loma Nazarene University, La Jolla Presbyterian Church). Recordings are posted on CCSD’s YouTube channel. CCSD brought its Beer Choir San Diego chapter back from the pandemic with a “For the Love of Beer” gathering featuring Skylarks doo-wop quartet led by Julie Chan and traditional beer choir selections featuring Gina Seashore (Ramona Community Singers) on accordion.

San Diego Kids All Sing was hosted by both CMEA-Southern Border Section and SCVA on Saturday, May 7, with guest clinician Melva Morrison.

NORTHERN REGION Dr. Ron Slabbink from College of the Siskiyous reports that they “returned to in-person singing this semester and are building community through music once again! The groups are sounding great, and oh yeah, the youngest singer in vocal jazz is 64 years younger than the oldest… how’s that for some intergenerational music making!?”

Congratulations to Miguel Chicas, recipient of the 2022 CCDA Early Career Choral Director. This award is presented to a choral music educator who demonstrates great promise to the choral profession in California. Miguel was also awarded the 2022 Teacher of Promise Award in the Irvine Unified School District.

Dr. Don Kendrick, director of the Sacramento Choral Society & Orchestra, was elated to return to in-person performances on May 14 with Verdi’s Requiem, which includes their debut in the newly renovated SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center (formerly The Sacramento Community Center Theater) and on brand-new Wenger choral risers.

FAR SOUTH REGION

Daniel I. Paulson from Sacramento City College was excited to return to in-person choral performances this Spring. SCC decided to continue to provide virtual recordings of our performance on our newly formed “watch page.” Check out their recitals, concerts, and performances at scc.losrios.edu/music/watch. SCC was also the recipient of a $10,000 grant this past fall. This money will be used as part of a scholarship program for incoming vocal and choral students.

The Choral Consortium of San Diego presented San Diego Sings! Festival 2022 on April 2 at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, chaired by Ruthie Millgard. This biennial event showcases San Diego/ Tijuana’s diverse choral culture through individual choir performances and massed choir sings, including the audience.

Bach Collegium San Diego (Dr. Ruben Valenzuela, Artistic Director) performed El Mesías: Messiah for a New World, the world premiere of Handel’s Messiah in its new Spanish translation, a newly commissioned Spanish libretto by Mario Montenegro of Tijuana, Baja California. Messiah has been a mainstay of the BCSD season throughout their history. A complete performance in Spanish brought together Valenzuela’s longtime goal of a dynamic, historically informed performance in keeping with Messiah’s ongoing history of a work that adapts, is malleable, and responds to the world around it.

CCSD’s “Conversations with Conductors” series continued with Juan Carlos Acosta (SACRA/ PROFANA, Village Community Presbyterian Church), Dr. Arian Khaefi (San Diego State University, La

Leading the Way

Dr. Andrew Kreckmann from Sacramento State reports that the University Chorale performed Bach’s “Aus der tiefe” (BWV 131) and Ives’s “Psalm 90” with chamber musicians to a very pleased audience. The University Singers and Choral Union (directed by Dr. Brett Judson) also successfully finished their third concert with in-person audiences. The ensembles combined for a May 8 performance of Beethoven’s Mass in C. 

Thanks to our Regional Representatives (Andrew Kreckmann, Northern; Kristina Nakagawa, Bay Area; Jennifer Garrett, Central; Carolyn Teraoka-Brady, Central Coast; Tina Glander Peterson, Southern; and Yewon Lee, Far South) for collecting and sharing news from their areas! Send your news to your regional representative if you’d like to be included in a future issue.

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 31

32 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

California Choral Directors Association

Top Five for your Choir:

POP & A CAPPELLA R Anabel Martínez Pauline is currently in her

5th year at Los

Amigos High School in

Fountain Valley,

and her

6th year of

teaching music. In these years, she has had the opportunity to work with students of all grade levels, and guide them to be their best selves through courses such as

Choir, General

Music, Show Choir, Inclusion Choir, Vocal Jazz, Mariachi, History of

Rock and Roll, and

Life After High School.

eturning to in-person learning this year brought our choir program both excitement and a new set of challenges to overcome, specifically regarding voicing and variation in students’ musical experiences. Whether or not our classrooms look like the traditional SATB choir, I believe in providing students with a worthwhile music experience, even if our approach to the voicing has to be a bit unconventional. Below were some of the pop/a cappella songs my choirs enjoyed this year, and I hope our creative solutions inspire you as you select music for your choirs in the future.

Hal Leonard Corporation 263580 We used this as a closer for our first concert by having our choirs with emerging musicians sing the choruses and our more experienced singers take over during the more complicated verses. The verses are in SA/TB unison call and response and the choruses are written in harmony with manageable ranges for each voice part. This was a student favorite for our first concert and a welcome rerun when we used it for recruitment performances later in the year.

Curtis Mayfield, arr. Robert T. Gibson It’s All Right Two-part, SSA, SAB, SATB with piano and optional SoundTrax Alfred Music Publishing, 48962 I have found success with the two-part version of this song in my choirs that started the school year having a difficult time singing in unison and singing in English. The repetition helps students gain confidence in their pronunciation and musicianship. This has proven to be a great transition piece into two-part harmony with a mix of call and response, homophonic passages, and a few polyphonic phrases to challenge their musicianship.

Kevin Olusola, Kirstin Maldonado, Audra Mae, arr. Roger Emerson Take Me Home SSA, SAB, SATB and piano with optional Instrumental Accompaniment Hal Leonard Corporation, 00155799 This song was a great introduction to a cappella music for my top ensemble. We sang the SAB version to accommodate our unique voicing situation. The texture of the instrumental track is minimal (snaps and simple piano chords to keep the tempo and the tonal center), which allowed for the experience of a cappella with the support of accompaniment that helped students unify their internal pulse and tuning.

Glen Ballard/Alan Silvestri Hot Chocolate Two-part, three-part mixed, SATB with piano and optional SoundTrax Hal Leonard Corporation 262249 We used the three-part mixed version of this piece as an inclusive closer to our winter concert. Musically, it is a great introduction to jazz harmonies for students of all experience levels. The form and words are repetitive, which made the musical challenge attainable for my emerging musicians who were working on their English pronunciation.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, arr. M. Brymer When You’re Home SSA, SAB, SATB and piano with optional instrumental accompaniment

Leading the Way

Jason Robert Brown, arr. Mac Huff Sanctuary SSA, SAB, SATB and piano with optional instrumental accompaniment Hal Leonard Corporation 00368082 This is a great piece not only to challenge your choirs musically but also emotionally, with the opportunity to heal though some universal challenges we face as humans like isolation, separation, and identity, especially in this post-quarantine era. The varied textures throughout the song allow students to practice different elements of their musical artistry, like diction, blend, vocal placement, and dynamics.

I had some of my altos sing tenor to balance out the voice parts and it was worth voicing my students in an unconventional way for them to experience singing this piece. 

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 33

Top Five for your Choir:

Ethnic & MULTICULTURAL I Anthony E. Arnold has been teaching music for

27 years. He

started his teaching career in

Elmhurst,

Illinois at Timothy Christian Schools 1995-1997 after

from

graduating cum laude with a degree in music education from

Azusa

Pacific University. Two years later, he settled in

San Jose, where

he taught five years at

Valley Christian

Schools. His choirs at Miller Middle School in the

Cupertino Union

School District have performed for the

ACDA

National Conference, the

ACDA Western

Regional Conference, CCDA State Conference, Davis Symphony Hall, the

World Choir Games

in

Cincinnati, OH, and Carnegie Hall, twice.

t’s been a hard year trying to re-teach students who are battling a lot of emotions with a teacher battling a lot of emotions during this pandemic. Hopefully, these five choices can provide some great experiences to re-invigorate you (and) your students to building beautiful programs, concerts, and memories together again.

Rosephanye Powell Pete, Pete Two-part with piano, percussion, and soundtrack Hal Leonard Corporation 08744680 From the country of Ghana, this is an amazing arrangement by Dr. Powell to start a school year off, and an outstanding opportunity to find and feature strong singers in your group.

This work is an outstanding opportunity for educators to introduce their students about the rich musical history and culture of this West African country and how it shaped the melting pot of America.

Fred Sturm and Blair Bielawski Nzembo na Mvula Zamba SATB with piano, percussion, and soundtrack Heritage Music Press 15/2681H From the country of Congo, a transcription from an original field recording of the Bambuti Tribe of the Ituri Rainforest. Blair Bielawski takes Fred Sturm’s work and creates a vocal kaleidoscope filled with call and response, syncopation, and beautiful harmonies. The English translation halfway through the song provides context and understanding to your vocalists and audience. The highlight for me in this piece is the well-written interplay between the vocalists and added percussion catapulting you to the steering ending.

Rogers. My middle school students loved this piece! Beautifully interwoven between choir, flute, and piano, the theme, “how good and pleasant for brethren to dwell together,” is very fitting to bring your students together in a world full of violence and division.

Loreena McKennitt, arr. Jon Washburn Tango to Evora SATB or SSAA a cappella with percussion Walton Music WW1297 I remember the first time I heard the recording to this song. I was simply amazed! This piece is one of my favorite choral pieces and I was fortunate enough to have some talented Middle School students to pull this song off. Depicting a scene from the country of Portugal, the choir provides the rhythm of a guitar, the clapping of flamenco dancing, and a soaring soprano that will leave you just mesmerized. My students absolutely loved this song and so will yours. A true choral classic!

B. Wayne Bisbee Shojojee SATB a cappella with percussion Santa Barbara Music Publishing SBMP276 This piece of music provides a light, humorous piece based on a Japanese story of raccoons with big stomachs around a Japanese temple.

The percussion provides a wonderful interaction with the story giving context for the story as your choir pats their stomachs, pon po-co pon noh pon. It will surely bring smiles to your students who sing it and your audiences who hear it. 

Neil Ginsberg Hine Ma Tov SATB with piano and flute Santa Barbara Music Publishing SBMP286 I was introduced to this song at the 2019 Choirs of America performance at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Dr. Eugene

34 • Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022

California Choral Directors Association

Top Five for your Choir:

COMMUNITY & PROFESSIONAL any professional and community choirs have just recently resumed in-person M performances. As we continue to rebuild and

Dr. Brandon Elliott is the

Artistic Director of

Choral Arts

Initiative, a professional new music chorus based in

Orange

County. He is also the Director of Choral & Vocal Activities at Moorpark College.

He also serves as a music consultant for themed entertainment clients and is an

ABA-

certificated paralegal.

Brandon has studied at

CSU Fullerton,

University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of

Music, Berklee

College of Music, and USC. In his spare time, Brandon takes his dog, Bruckner, on long hikes and volunteers as a

Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused and neglected children in the foster system.

Leading the Way

reintroduce ourselves to our communities, I wanted to share some repertoire and resources that can help us all engage our audiences through the themes of reconnection, travel, and wandering.

Dale Trumbore Returning SATB, SSAA, or TTBB a cappella Graphite Publishing “Returning” presents a timely text by poet Laura Foley. The poem speaks of watching and waiting for the return of wild geese. The work has a simple and repeating refrain sung by the audience. When I performed this with Choral Arts Initiative, several audience members loved being part of the music-making process. The work is accessible for professional choruses and community choirs alike.

Dianna Witkowski Oração da Viajante SATB with piano MusicSpoke Marketplace If you struggled to pronounce the Brazilian title, fear not! Dianna provides a complete translation and IPA guide for the work. The text captures a tender prayer spoken by a traveler who asks for grace and strength from the “Mãe querida” (“dear Mother”) to have an open heart, hear music, see beauty, and feel love. This piece offers a beautiful flair of variety on any program with clear jazz influences.

The music has enough chromatic intricacies to provide a fun challenge for most community choirs.

“Sometimes I am again convinced that there is nothing in the world as wonderful as music”).

This piece feels like a major work, but it’s accessible due to its instrumentation. There are a cappella and accompanied sections that allow you to showcase your choir while also letting them feel supported by the warm sounds of the marimba. The work also features a substantial solo for your star soprano.

Juhi Bansal Light Shines SATB and piano MusicSpoke Marketplace This beautiful work offers a secular meditation on finding hope through difficult times— something I know we can all relate to now, most especially our audiences! The impressionistic piano part allows you to showcase your collaborative pianist and the solo lines give plenty of opportunities to showcase individual voices. At just under 10 minutes, this is a beautiful centerpiece option for your program.

Audience Outlook Monitor WolfBrown Did you know that you could increase your audience turnout by about 10-15% if you still offer physically distant seating options? If you aren’t familiar with the Audience Outlook Monitor from WolfBrown, it is full of rich data that can help guide decisions as community and professional choirs emerge from the pandemic crisis. Visit them online at www. audienceoutlookmonitor.com. 

Jordan Kuspa What Color is the Dawn?

SATB divisi and marimba MusicSpoke Marketplace This ~35-minute cantata captures the words of Klara Wojkowska as she traveled the world on a Watson Fellowship. The text is beautifully illustrative and begs to be set to music (e.g.,

Cantate • Vol. 34, No. 3 • Spring/Summer 2022 • 35

Top Five for your Choir:

MUSIC IN WORSHIP fter an incredibly difficult few years, it was made evident that music truly is a saving A grace. The following repertoire suggestions

Christy Rohayem is the director of choirs at

Mt. Eden High

School. She received her bachelor’s degree in music education and vocal performance from

San Jose State

University. Christy serves on the board of

CCDA

as the chairperson for music and worship and leads the committee on social justice. She has a passion for

Middle

Eastern music and has completed her masters in music education from

San Jose State University.​

are selections that I have turned to in times of confusion and healing, and staples that would serve any choral library. Now that live singing has returned, these are fantastic and accessible transitional pieces for conductors and ensembles getting back into learning and performance practice.

May Erlewine, arr. Corie Brown Never One Thing SSA and piano, cajón, and body percussion Hal Leonard Corporation Dr. Brown’s arrangement of “Never One Thing” celebrates the vast array of simultaneous identities women experience and own. The arrangement builds upon the original unison melody, and is written to feature a true alto section. It is a real earworm that I keep turning back to as a reminder to acknowledge and accept all of the parts of myself. “Never one thing, no, not one thing at all!”

Troy Roberston In Meeting We Are Blessed SSA and djembe Hinshaw Music, Inc. The vocal ranges of the lines in this song are accessible and written extremely well for the voice. I’ve done this particular arrangement with a mixed SATB choir, which works well for an unbalanced ensemble. I had the high tenors sing soprano 1, the baritones since soprano 2, and the basses sing the alto line.

You can also find this piece arranged for SATB and TTBB choirs. It is a fantastic a cappella piece that travels well and is soul nourishing for conductors and singers alike.

repetitive but rhythmically intricate lines, making it challenging yet accessible for different levels and for learning by rote. The description reads, “We are our grandmother’s prayers, our grandfather’s dreamings, and the breath of our ancestors. We are filled with imagination and hope, big dreams and endless possibilities. We are different, yet we are all the same. We are one.”

Sten Kallman Wangol SATB and percussion Walton Music This Haitian folk song speaks to the voodoo spirit Wangol. The text translates to: “Wangol, you are leaving. When will I see you again?

The country is changing.” Despite the energetic vitality, the text offers a bittersweet quality to this piece. It reminds me that people live inside many realities, and that we can mourn loss and change while still being hopeful for progress.

Trad. Hebrew, arr. James Desjardins Hina Ma Tov Two-part with piano and solo violin Boosey & Hawkes, Inc The text of this round translates to “behold how good and how pleasing if people could dwell together in complete unity.” The melodies are stunningly beautiful and perfectly capture the sentiment of the text. This is a great arrangement for teaching a round in a manner that feels substantial and organic. It is expertly written for the voice and shares a message that is particularly special to ensembles now that we are able to perform in person together again. 

Ysaye M. Barnwell We Are SATB Musical Source The text of “We Are” speaks of generational relationships and unity in a beautiful and poetic way. This a cappella piece features

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CCDA BOARD Directory EXECUTIVE BOARD President Chris Peterson (562) 453-9851 cpeterson@fullerton.edu President-Elect Arlie Langager (858) ­774-­0412 alangager@miracosta.edu

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

Senior High School Stacey Kikkawa (714) 626-3984 skikkawa@fjuhsd.org

Music in Worship Christy Rohayem (510) 908-3047 crohayem@gmail.com

Community College Kellori Dower drkellori@gmail.com

Pop & A Cappella Anabel Pauline apauline2@ggusd.us

College & University Corie Brown (541) 743-6335 corie.brown@sjsu.edu

SSAA Choirs Lauren Diez (714) 904-1035 laurendiez415@gmail.com

Student Activities Alan Garcia garcia_al@auhsd.us

TTBB Choirs Albee Mabeza amabeza@prioryca.org

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Vocal Jazz Andreas Preponis apreponis@fullerton.edu

Community & Professional Choirs Brandon Elliott belliott@vcccd.edu

EVENT CHAIRS Summer Conference at ECCO Alissa Aune sorcerermusic@gmail.com

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