Meet your new board; talented volunteers who make Washington ACDA successful
by Linda Hamilton, WA-ACDA President

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

It is an honor and privilege to begin my two year term as President of Washington State  American Choral Directors Association.  I have HUGE shoes to fill as our wonderful past president, Leslie Guelker-Cone steps aside.  Leslie has been an incredible mentor and friend who continues to set the standards very high for our organization. Thank you Leslie for your wonderful contribution to our organization.

ACDA is extremely blessed to have a group of high quality, professional, dedicated and talented leaders in our state.  I never realized the hours of commitment and hard volunteer work it took to keep this organization alive and successful until I got involved with the board.  The people I   met, the conventions I attended, and the choirs I heard inspired me beyond measure. They gave me the energy to continue working in the classroom and eventually get involved with ACDA leadership. 

I feel fortunate to be able to introduce you to your 2005-2006 Washington ACDA Board.  Use their expertise, get to know them, and maybe someday you will want to be a part of our ACDA family.

The Past President is Leslie Guelker-Cone who I already mentioned. Once again, thank you Leslie for your leadership and tenacity on this board!  You are fantastic! 

We have Leora Schwitters who is our President-elect for 2005-2007.  Leora  is a fantastic choir director who is  extremely organized.  She is going to do a great job as WA ACDA President and she will also be planning, organizing and running the annual WA ACDA Summer Institute. 

Next on our board is our Treasurer Rob Dennis who has kept us fiscally sound for the past many, many years.  Thanks Rob for your continued support!

Our newsletter editor, webmaster and note-taker at board meetings is the ever incomparable Ken Pendergrass.  He is witty and fabulous at what he does.  Watch for our “on-line” version of the WA ACDA newsletter that Ken puts out every quarter. 

Marc Hafso is new to our board this year as our Eastern Liaison and we are so excited!  He is the director of choirs at Whitworth College and immediately added some new and exciting ideas to our board.  We welcome Marc to our board.  

Another newcomer to our board, but certainly not to teaching is the fabulous Joel Ulrich, who has taken over the R & S position for High Schools.  A seasoned director and professional, we are so fortunate to have him on board! 

Russ Seaton, our Multicultural guru continues on in his second term.  Russ always brings fascinating ideas and suggestions to our board and we look forward to that area continuing to grow and inspire others. 

Diane Johnson begins her first term as the 2 year College R & S.  Diane is a committed and dedicated professional in the area as well as a fantastic singer and musician.  We are very happy to have her on our board! 

Steven Zopfi continues on our board for a second term.  He is the R & S for Student Activities and  is extremely helpful and supportive to others on the board when it comes to projects and activities.  We are glad that Steven has continued on to serve again. 

Our Men’s Choir R & S is Tim Fitzpatrick.  Tim always brings energy and enthusiasm to our board meetings and is always available to help out. 

Ron Mallory will be joining our board this year for a first term as the Music in Worship R & S chair.  Ron is from Shepard of the Valley Lutheran in Maple Valley.

Dawn McCormick brings lots of energy to our board meetings as our new Jr. High/Middle School R & S Chair.  Dawn teaches in Cashmere, Washington and we welcome her to the board. 

Judy Filibeck continues on as our Jazz R & S Chair.  Judy is recently retired from public education but is a fabulous jazz choir contact person. 

Our College and University R & S representative is Kathryn Lehman who teaches at PLU.  She is in her second term at this R & S position and loves to work with this level! 

John Hendrix is new to the board this year as the Community Choirs R & S Chair and will bring great insight and experience to this area. 

And then Janet Reiter continues on the board as our Western Liaison. Janet teaches at Clark College and brings a great love of choral music to the table. 

As you can see we have a fabulous board of creative, talented, busy professionals!  We all are busy but we all know how important it is to keep our organization alive and thriving.  We look forward to serving you as your board and please feel free to contact your specific area of interest. If you are wanting information to get involved you can contact Linda Hamilton at piko@msn.com.

ACDA 2-yr college choir festival May 22, 2006
By Diane Johnson-Two-year College R&S Chair

Please join us in Mt. Vernon, WA at Skagit Valley College for this year’s 2-yr college choir festival. Tim Fitzpatrick from Western Washington University will be our clinician as we once again join together to celebrate choral music in the two-year college. The festival will take place in the beautiful and acoustically spectacular McIntyre Hall. We will begin at 1 p.m. and end at 6 p.m. If your group would like to remain and perform in the evening in a concert open to the public, you are welcome. If you need to get back home, that will work too.  I am very excited to sponsor this event. McIntyre Hall is truly a very special place to sing and Mt. Vernon is a wonderful departure point for Victoria or Vancouver, BC if you are interested in making this festival part of a larger tour.

For registration information, please contact Diane Johnson at 360-416-7655 or, even better, email me at diane.johnson@skagit.edu and I will send the information to you.  The registration fee is $200/college. I look forward to hearing from you and hearing your group at the festival!

Rebecca Rottsolk and Beth Ann Bonnecroy to
co-direct new women's choir in Seattle

Rebecca Rottsolk and Beth Ann Bonnecroy are forming and will co-direct a new women's choir in Seattle. Talented, chorally-skilled singers who enjoy challenging repertoire are encouraged to audition. 

Auditions will take place between February 18 and March 1st.  Music and practice CDs will be distributed in early March, with the expectation that notes will be learned by the first rehearsal.  The choir will rehearse Mondays in April and May, and present a series of concerts in early June. 

Please consider participating in this new group, and invite and encourage the motivated women you know to audition as well.  Questions and requests for an audition time should be directed to Rebecca at rrottsolk@cablespeed.com or Beth Ann at bonnecroy@aol.com.

Meet our 2006 WA-ACDA Summer Institute headliner: a conversation with Sharon J. Paul
By Sara Boos- Children’s Choirs R & S Chair

Sharon J. Paul will be the guest clinician at the 2006 WA-ACDA Summer Institute in Tacoma.  She will present two sessions entitled “Brain-Friendly Rehearsal Techniques: Tips for Increasing Student Engagement” that explore research on how the brain learns, retains, and recalls information and how it can be applied to teaching and rehearsal techniques for singers and students of all ages.  Her second session, “Life After Notes: Finding the Magic Beyond the Page,” investigates interpretive possibilities such as weight, duration, phrasing, and color in a wide variety of choral literature. 

Dr. Paul is the Chair of Vocal and Choral Studies and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Oregon, a position she has held since 2000.  She earned her D.M.A. in choral conducting from Stanford University, an M.F.A. in conducting and performance practice from UCLA, and a B.A. in music from Pomona College.  From 1992-2000, she was the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) and represented the United States at several international choral festivals and conferences.  In June 2000 the SFGC was the first youth chorus to win the Margaret Hillis Achievement Award for Choral Excellence, presented by Chorus America.  From 1984-1992, Dr. Paul served as director of choral activities at California State University, Chico, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in conducting, choral literature, and the humanities.  Dr. Paul was awarded the Outstanding Teacher Award at CSU, Chico in 1991. 

It was in her second year of teaching at Chico State that Dr. Paul first became interested in the topic of brain research and its applications.  Hoping to inch closer toward tenure, she agreed to teach a humanities class.  She realized that, in order to teach the class successfully, she had to figure out how to teach a lot of information in a short amount of time.  Dr. Paul found answers at a lecture given by a bio-psychologist who talked about brain research and education—that is, how to teach based on how people learn.  For Dr. Paul it was a “life-changing hour.”

Dr. Paul has made it her mission as an educator to “empower the singers to bring everything they can to the music.”  It’s easy for singers, she says, to be passive and only do what the conductor tells them to do.  For Dr. Paul, the key question is, “How do you teach students to give 100%…to bring all of their interpretive as well as physical skills to the music before the conductor even says anything?”

Dr. Paul was inspired to become a choral educator by Donald Brinegar, whose first year of school teaching was Sharon’s last year of high school.  He was the teacher who “lit a fire” in her and helped her to fall in love with choral music.  Dr. Paul has been teaching for twenty-two years, and she’s “still learning how to do things better.”  She advises both new and experienced teachers to be “patient with the process” and to know that “we’re all still learning.”  At whatever developmental level your students are, she counsels, “make the best music you can.”     

Although Dr. Paul misses her work with the San Francisco Girls Chorus, she enjoys the challenge of working at the university level with graduate students and advanced ensembles.  The singers in her 24-voice Chamber Choir, for instance, use only tuning forks in rehearsal and “never touch a piano.”  The Chamber Choir will perform at the ACDA Northwest Division Conference in Portland in March 2006.  In addition to conducting three choral ensembles at the University of Oregon, Dr. Paul teaches conducting, advises graduate students, oversees the vocal studios and choral program, and performs “crisis management” as needed.  Dr. Paul appears frequently as an adjudicator, clinician, and honor choir director through the United States.  Recently she as conducted the Northwest Division Treble Honor Choir in Boise, Idaho, and directed All-State Choirs in Hawaii, California, and New York.      

The human spirit - a response to "Dealing with the Flake Factor"
By Diane Johnson – Two-year College R & S Chair

When Howard Meharg sent me a copy of Jeff Seaward’s article, “Dealing with the Flake Factor”, I was anxious to discover what life was like in another community college music program. As I read through the article, I found myself nodding in agreement time and again, but also thinking of the students I work with everyday who do not fit the “flake” mold. This essay is dedicated to them.

“In the family of University, Community College is the little sister who went into social work.” As an instructor in the Community College system, I have the privilege to work with a most diverse student population, each student an amazing story that I am allowed to be part of, even if only for a few short years. I share with you one such amazing story.

Linda sang with me in a youth chorus from the time she was eight years old. When she signed up for classes at Skagit Valley College I was thrilled because I knew she was the type of student I wanted - dedicated, an excellent sight-reader, a strong leader in her section. Unfortunately, her first year was difficult, and she was not able to continue in the music program. I would see her on campus and every-time the choir would sing, she would sit in the audience with tears in her eyes. Her passion for music is strong and I knew she would make her way back into the program.

Fall of 2004, she returned. Everything was on track and I had my wonderfully dedicated section leader back. Winter quarter we were creating a jazz version of “A Midsummer-night’s Dream” when she came to rehearsal with a large lump (pulled muscle?) on her neck/throat area. She said it had appeared overnight. After two months of tests, it was concluded that she had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and would require six months of chemotherapy followed by radiation treatments. We cried.

Her dedication never wavered. She never missed a rehearsal. She scheduled her treatments so that she would have the energy required to make it to and through rehearsals. The rest of the students didn’t dare miss a rehearsal. If Linda could make it, the rest of them certainly could. We were a family, a scholastic family of singers who had more than just a musical goal. She became a true inspiration to us all.

It is now one year later, and we are again in a show. Linda has one of the leading roles and her cancer screenings are clear. Her hair is growing back in and she is still the alto section leader. She is a constant reminder to me of how special our students are, and while all of their stories are not as dramatic as hers, they are all equally as important.

I love my students! And yes, some of them are flakes. They have even driven me to the edge of sanity, a time or two. However, the flakes are far outweighed by the Linda’s in my program and together we work to achieve our common goal of uplifting the human spirit through outstanding choral performance.

An article from the Northwest Notes archives
By Priscilla Baldock- Women’s Choirs R & S Chair 

The article you are about to read was re-printed by permission from the Winter 2000 Northwest Notes. It was written by Howard Meharg, longtime editor of NW-Notes and was based on from Neil Postman’s book "Conscientious Objections." I’ve kept this copy of NW-Notes in my "you may need this someday" files at school and I regularly pull it out and read it to my students. They all listen politely, to my reading and my commentary, and my hope is that many of them also "hear" what is being conveyed and use the principles therein as they make their way through life. Here is "A commitment to Athenian values.”

"Neil Postman talks of our ancestor; not our biological ones, but of two groups of people who lived many years ago. The first group lived in a city they called Athens. They were noted for considerable accomplishments such as the alphabet, literacy, political democracy, philosophy, logic, and rhetoric. They came very close to inventing what we call science. They composed great epic poems, wonderful songs, and created plays still used today.
The Athenians started what we call today the Olympics. None of their values stood higher than that in all things we should strive for excellence. They believed in reason and in beauty. They believed in moderation. It’s hardly possible to speak on any subject today without repeating what some Athenian said on the matter 2,500 years ago.

The second group lived in Western Europe about 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths. They were great horsemen. This may be the most positive thing one could say about them. The Visigoths were ruthless and brutal marauders. Their language was coarse and what little art they had, grotesque. They overran the Roman Empire, destroying all in their path. They burned books, desecrated buildings and smashed works of art. From them we have no poetry, no theater, no logic, no science, no humane politics. They ushered in the Dark Ages and it took a very long time to recover.

An Anthenian is an idea. A Visigoth is an idea. We choose either to live a set of values based on the Athenian or based on the Visigoth.

An Athenian cherishes language and holds knowledge in esteem. An Athenian reasons, experiments, questions and is moderate in temperament and in his dealings with others. An Athenian admires, beauty, exalts life, and finds joy in learning and accomplishment of all kinds. Manners and courtesy are vital. Violence is an act against the very social order.

To a Visigoth, one word is as good as another. A Visigoth’s language is satisfied with a cliche. A Visigoth centers his life around himself. Good manners are stupid. History is yesterday’s newspaper. Popularity is all that counts for there is no other measure of excellence.

Most of us rush to claim allegiance to the Athenian way, for there is little to be said favorably for the Visigoth. The very analogy, however, sets us up for placing people into categories, them versus us. The problem is that the Visigoth and the Athenian live side by side in each of us. We all struggle with self interest (our tax bill, for example) and the public good. We struggle with a personal schedule rooted in self-interest as opposed to involvement in public service. We’re caught in the web of the popularity scam, serving up only "what people will like."

Communication media and entertainment provide some prime examples of a total sellout to popularity (Visigothian). Television shows featuring violence and police work, "The Jerry Springer Show," "professional wrestling”, the tabloids at the checkout stand, all illustrate the tasteless, the banal, the violent, the Visigoth.

Over and over, despite the banal, we can find examples of giving, of serving, of courtesy, and of holding others in high esteem. I heard a great example lately at a Rotary Club meeting at which a Rotary team told of their work in rural Mexico helping in the construction of a public building serving hundreds in an area of poverty. Other examples abound. And the nature of the business in which we work draws us to an Athenian view. We fight a battle on the fine line of appearing snobbish and yet holding to the highest of standards. Oh, there is a battle! I don’t know what it would take to make the Athenian within us and our society overcome the Visigoth. I can only hope that each of us continues to renew our commitment to those higher values which place honor and beauty, service, moderation and love of learning at the top of those forces which guide our actions."

This article by Howard Meharg was written only seven years ago, but during those seven years we have all seen this battle between the Athenian and the Visigoth intensify in our own American culture and throughout the world. It should be ever on our minds that the fall of many great empires was due in no small measure to the weakening of these values from within their own gates.