|
||
For more than thirty years, Dr. Warland served as Music Director of the incomparable Dale Warland Singers, building one of the finest choral ensembles in the world. In 2003, the Dale Warland Singers’ recording, Walden Pond, which features the works of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Dominick Argento, was nominated for a Grammy for best choral performance. Dr. Warland has received numerous ASCAP awards for adventurous programming, and a special award in 2002 from Chorus America and ASCAP for his "pioneering vision, leadership and commitment to commissioning and performing new choral works at the highest level of artistry.” In 2001, Dr. Warland received the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, in recognition of his lifetime achievement as a choral conductor and his continued contribution to the arts in Minnesota and in 1995, received the Michael Korn Founder's Award from Chorus America, previously awarded to such legendary conductors as Robert Shaw, Margaret Hillis, and Roger Wagner. Dr. Warland is in great demand as a guest conductor, lecturer, composer, and clinician. He has conducted countless choral ensembles throughout the world, including the Swedish Radio Choir, the Danish Radio Choir, the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Israel's Cameran Singers, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, and Seattle’s Opus 7. He has also rehearsed and prepared choirs for performances of major works in collaboration with notable conductors and composers including Robert Shaw, Edo de Waart, Leonard Slatkin, Neville Marriner, and Bobby McFerrin. At Kryzstzof Pederecki's request, he has prepared the St. Luke Passion for major choruses in Los Angeles, Caracas, Stuttgart, and the Oregon Bach Festival. Dr. Warland has also been featured as a guest conductor at Carnegie Hall, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and the Zimriya Festival in Jerusalem. Committed to sharing his expertise about the choral arts throughout the world, Dr. Warland has served on the jury for the Eric Ericson Award in Sweden, was a faculty member for the All-Japan Chorus League National Competition in Fukuoka, Japan, lectured on American music at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and served on the artistic staff of the Tolosa Choral Festival in Spain. In addition, he has acted as co-chair of both the choral and recording panels of the National Endowment for the Arts. Highly respected as a teacher and choral pedagogue as well as a conductor, Dr. Warland served for 19 years as Director of Choral Music at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College, a master of music degree from the University of Minnesota, and a DMA from the University of Southern California. He has also received honorary doctorates from both Augustana College and Macalester College. Don’t miss the opportunity to work with Dr. Warland and to read through a wealth of new choral literature with choral colleagues in a relaxed and informal setting. Summer Institute brochures will arrive in your mailboxes this spring; information will be on line as well. For additional information, contact WA-ACDA president-elect Linda Hamilton at piko@msn.com Put the dates on your calendars now and plan to register early. We look forward to having you join us in Tacoma in July!
|
||
Good Music Collections for Smaller Church Choirs |
||
Songs for the Journey (Sets I-IV), Edwin T. Childs, arr. (Alliance Music Publications, Inc., 1994-1995, cat. #AMP 5003, AMP 5004, AMP 5005, AMP 5006) Each volume in this series contains four familiar hymns in creative settings by Edwin T. Childs, a former student of Samuel Adler at Eastman Conservatory, and current professor at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Childs’ setting of “This is My Father’s World” in Set I is especially nice. The Morning Star Choir Book, Paul Thomas, ed. (Concordia, 1957, cat. #97-6287) A Second Morning Star Choir Book, Paul Thomas, ed. (Concordia, 1965, cat. #97-4702) A Third Morning Star Choir Book, Paul Thomas, ed. (Concordia, 1970, cat. #97-4972) These three collections contain excellent pieces for unison and two-part choirs by a variety of composers, including Bach, Pachelbel, Mozart, Vaughan Williams, Willan, and Distler. Many of these are adaptations of solos or duets from sacred works, which work quite well as choral pieces. Several are scored for 1-2 obbligato instruments as well as keyboard. An excellent and affordable series for both children’s and adult choirs. Sing This Holy Day: 10 Anthems for Two-part Mixed Voices, Hal Hopson (Harold Flammer, Inc., 1986, cat. #GE-5027) In this collection, Hal Hopson has arranged five choral movements by Handel, as well as several familiar hymn tunes. Two of the selections can be used either as S/A or SA/TB works, while the remaining are specifically intended for two-part mixed voices. Sing a New Song to the Lord: Nine Anthems for Any Combination of Voices in Two Parts, Dale Wood, ed. (The Sacred Music Press, 1990, cat. #CS 898) Walter Ehret, Jeffrey Rickard, Dale Wood, and Eugene Butler are among the eight composers represented in this collection. In addition to keyboard accompaniment, one anthem is scored for trumpet and one for an obbligato instrument, and parts for both are included in the collection. Familiar hymn tune arrangements as well as original compositions are included in this compilation. |
||
| RENÉ CLAUSEN CHORAL SCHOOL OFFERS SCHOLARSHIPS
High school choral conductors completing their first or second year may apply for free tuition at the René Clausen Choral School to be held July 24-28, 2005 on the campus of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. "We wanted to create an opportunity to reinforce
new conductors and
provide them with collegial inspiration from the Choral School Last year’s scholarship recipient Sandra Howard of Kennett Senior High School, Conway, New Hampshire commented that “everything was valuable, effective and a great privilege to work with composer Dr. Clausen.” The other 2004 scholarship recipient, Steven D. Mick of Apollo High School, St. Cloud, Minnesota mentioned the Choral School “had a huge impact on me as a conductor, educator and my choral ensembles benefited.” In addition to all of the great material associated with the Choral Now in its eighth year, over 600 choral conductors from 43 states and four countries have participated in the René Clausen Choral School. As opposed to a workshop format, Dr. Clausen has specifically created a "choral school" with more lecture hours and intense content to increase the participant's knowledge of style, literature, performance practice issues, and conducting and rehearsal technique. Three graduate semester hour credits are offered. For complete information including registration forms
and comments from last years' participants, visit our web site at |
 Rene Clausen |
|
| Tell
Me There’s More to Hear & See-“yahamba” by Russell Seaton, R & S Chair for Multicultural Music |
||
I’ll admit it’s a great tune and wonderful way to engage and introduce students to music of another culture. Most of us have taught Siyahamba (if not, follow us lemmings), but have you ever felt stuck in a rut when it comes to selecting new and interesting multicultural music? Do you find yourself wondering, “What else is there that my choir can handle?” It takes time and effort to find music of another culture that is both edifying, educational, and let’s face it, doable. But with many composers and publishers that specialize in multicultural music and strive to make available music that may be more obscure in today’s world, it is becoming easier to embrace the richness of music from other lands and perform it with great success. In my sixth year of teaching, I have discovered that students hunger
for something new. They jump at the opportunity to learn a new Earthsongs Publications – www.earthsongsmus.com We all know this publisher. You can usually count on hearing an Earthsongs piece at any concert. Ron Jeffers and others who have developed and strengthened Earthsongs into the powerhouse of multicultural publications that it is have done incredible things in transcribing and notating music from the heart of other cultures. They supply diction tapes/CDs for all languages as well. Musica Russica – www.musicarussica.com Russian, Ukrainian, Estonian and more! I had the pleasure of talking with a sales agent at their booth at this year’s American Choral Director’s National Convention and was enthralled by the amount of music available for all voices. And the best part… not every Russian piece requires a bass to sing a C below the bass clef! I found some great treble music and children’s music that is VERY helpful. They also offer tapes/CDs of the songs spoken language at $15.00. These tapes can be duplicated at no extra charge. It’s time I try Tchaikovsky for Trebles! Santa Barbara Music Publishers – www.sbmp.com Another company we all know, Santa Barbara has become a leader in multicultural music recently. Not only do they carry composers such as Eric Whitacre and David Childs, they are also spreading out to embrace composers raised and educated in cultures with little to no western influence. They have many CDs and sound recordings available for purchase. Transcontinental Music Publishers – www.etranscon.com “The World’s Leading Publisher of Jewish Music since 1938.” Many of us, myself included, are timid when it comes to presenting Jewish music. It is specialized, and the language may be easy to read, but it is difficult to pronounce correctly. This site offers help to those whom might otherwise turn away from the performance of Jewish music. Diction tapes, huge catalogue, this site has it all. World Music Press – www.worldmusicpress.com Where would we be without the WMP? Diversity and a broad range of cultures are offered and you can search by continent or by country. Laurendale Associates – www.laurendale.com Interested in Czech music? Laurendale offers a list of possible songs ranging from SA to SATB in its Czech Choral Series. It also features music from other origins. Emory University – http://www.pitts.emory.edu/theoarts/multi/country.html This site will get you to almost anywhere you want to go. A great resource for handpicking any culture you are interested in. Good luck and remember, the resources for accomplishing a piece of music are out there. Talk to your local ESL program (English as a Second Language) and they can help to point you in the right direction, if language has become a thorn in your side. And let’s not forget about our own culture. A teacher of mine once told me that “multicultural music includes music from our own country. We are a melting-pot… let us embrace the cultures that we come face to face with every day.” |
||
| Rehearsal Plan: Think Like A Financial Planner by Ann Brueggemeier, Jazz Chairperson, WMEA Board (reprinted by permisssion from Voice Magazine, Washington Music Educators Association) |
||
While this philosophy has—after a little trial and error—become a habit for me in my financial life, it is only recently that it occurred to me that it has some applications in my classroom. Too often I get fixated on the repertoire being prepared for the upcoming performance and brush aside long-term fundamentals as something “I’ll get to later.” Nowhere does this end up costing me so much as in my vocal jazz ensemble. My general pattern has been to spend all of our class time preparing the ensemble vocal parts and then I’ll ask my students if any of them are ready to take that big solo space we’ve never quite gotten around to. Not surprisingly, none of them are. Or, as I am determinedly balancing and tuning chords, if I remind the tenors for the twentieth time to make sure they only descend a half-step in measure 42 I get blank stares, and rather than taking the time to back up and talk about intervals, I end up pounding their part for them—again. What I realized was that in my classroom I was doing
the equivalent of paying bills and going on a huge shopping spree at
the first of the month, only to find that I have no money left for my
retirement savings. I would spend all of our class time on the immediate
needs—getting
through the concert, preparing for the festival—and not set aside
any class time on long range musical development. Finally, after grudgingly
spoon feeding parts and grimacing through a few years’ worth of
ill-prepared improvised solos, I got smarter last year and started taking
a portion of my daily class time and “investing” it into
long-term concepts. I also decided to involve the students in the process
of deciding which investments to make. We started by examining our weak
points. In the case of my group, Camerata, they pinpointed improvisation,
knowledge of music theory and general knowledge of jazz artists and styles
as areas they needed to improve upon. We took a few minutes to come up
with a plan of attack to address each of these areas. We called them “The
Camerata Rules,” wrote them on a poster board and hung them up
in the classroom. For the sake of giving a concrete example of what I’m
talking about, here is a copy of the current “Rules.”
THE PLAN:
Weekly Schedule: The class goes through the first three of the “every day” steps—warm-ups, scales, ear training. Then we might jump to the tricky “B” section of our ballad and work it for intonation for three or four minutes, ending by running through the ballad from beginning to end. Then I might have the students listen to a signature cut by Ella Fitzgerald or Miles Davis. Once we have done the “every day” steps, we will have a more typical rehearsal of some of our other tunes. Since it is Tuesday and we have decided to spend time improvising every Tuesday, I will save 10-15 minutes at the end to do an improv exercise—maybe something as simple as trading fours, in pairs scattered around the room, to a Jamey Aebersold track. This is a lot to pack into a 53-minute class period, but the students are voracious about going through this routine they have helped establish. The opening “every day” steps go really quickly and most days we are able to get it all in. Obviously, these rules pertain to the individual goals and needs of my group, but a method like this could be adapted to any type of ensemble. Not only does this set of “rules” ensure that we will make our long-term goals, it means that we are meeting several additional music EALR’s each day. To keep our focus fresh and to address the growth of the group, we usually take a day to evaluate and make new “Camerata Rules” about once every two to three months. Now, they all know as well as I do that with fundraisers, upcoming performances, trip planning and forms that need to be turned in, too many days can get gobbled up with announcements and business. So, we made a rule that we would begin absolutely every class by going through steps 1-5. If we have to flex on the weekly schedule we can do that, but just as I never fail to put some money into my 401(k) on the first of the month, no matter how tight the month is going to be, the students and I have agreed that we will never miss making this daily investment towards our future. |
 |
|
language,
a new musical structure, a new story, and a new facet of human existence.
And yet, we as educators often steer away from music due to its difficulty
level and even perhaps the language itself. I have done it myself: found
a great piece of music, checked out the structure, thought my kids would
love it, and put it away. Why? Well, for one, Mongolian is hard to read!
And have you ever tried ancient Celtic?!? Never fear, there are some
great resources out there. I have to admit, I like the research. I love
to dive into other cultures and discover how much I don’t know
about this world, and that along with my students, I can learn so much
more through choral music. But for those who shy away from the Sturm
und Drang of research, I hope that the sites and information below is
helpful and shortens your “search-experience.” They are merely
a stepping-stone, and each site has links that will enhance your ability
to find fun and educational multicultural music.