OCDA PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION REPORT - Brandon L. Moss

OCDA PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION REPORT

Brandon L. Moss, OCDA President

By the time you read this, you will have already been through an incredible half-year of teaching— virtual, hybrid, and everything in between. Teachers are a steady presence in our students’ lives, and this year, our adaptability is a big part of what we model. I know you have spent countless hours learning new teaching models and technologies in order to prepare for this year, and I commend you for your commitment to your students.

Likewise, the Ohio Choral Directors Association is committed to you as a choral professional, providing support and resources during this time and beyond. This past fall, we offered New Directions, a webinarbased professional development series on topics of interest and relevance to our state’s choral directors. In September, Marci Major and Hannah Knauss discussed Choral Connections: Prioritizing People & Process; in October, Marques L.A. Garrett presented Beyond Elijah Rock: The Non-Idiomatic Choral Music of Black Composers; and in November, Kelsey Burkett and Mario Clopton-Zymler moderated a Town Hall meeting on Anti-Racist Practice and Decolonization of Choirs. We will present more webinars throughout 2021, so watch your email and our website, www.ohiocda.org, for more information.

At our fall board meeting, our board approved two new standing committees for Diversity and Professional Development. I look forward to working with the new chairs and their committees on ways that OCDA can best and most effectively represent and offer initiatives for all choral directors throughout our state, regardless of where they teach or what type of program they have. These committees are recommendations of our Visioning Committee, which is looking to assess OCDA’s outreach as we move into the future. If you have ideas for these new standing committees, please email me at brandonlmoss@gmail.com.

During this entire year, OCDA, through our national partnership with ACDA, is granting $5 memberships to all collegiate student members, so if you work with preservice choir teachers, please encourage them to take advantage of this offer!

Also, in February, OCDA will offer a virtual reading session via J.W. Pepper’s ePrintGo app. Selected by our Repertoire & Resources chairpersons, the focus of the titles in this session with be diversity and music by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) composers. More information will be available on our website.

Finally, our 2021 summer conference and its honor choir events are still programmed to happen as of this writing. We will evaluate the situation with regard to COVID-19 in the early months of 2021 and make any necessary calls or changes then. The OCDA Summer Conference is scheduled for June 21-23 at Otterbein University. Clinicians include Janet Galván, Jacob Narverud, and Zebulon Highben. The Children’s Honor Choir, for unchanged voices in grades 4-8, is a popular part of this conference, and on June 21, we will hold the High School Men’s and Women’s Honors Choirs, directed by Sandra Mathias and Richard Schnipke. Please check our website for any updates and details, and I hope, wish, and pray that I get to see you all there!

Brandon Moss serves as Director of Choirs at Central Crossing High School in Grove City, where he teaches five choirs. He is also Director of Music and Chalice Choir at First Unitarian Universalist Church in Columbus. Moss recently served as President of OMEA District 15 and has twice chaired the Ohio All-State Choir. He holds degrees from Otterbein University and The Ohio State University, where he is completing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Conducting.