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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. |
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| Your Summer Institute Survey Responses Helped By Leora Schwitters, WA State ACDA President-Elect October 2005 |
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I just finished reading Michael Frasier’s article in the Northwest Notes entitled, “Ahhh………………… Retirement!” and I can relate! It makes me even more appreciative of those of you who volunteer your time for various things while at the same time teaching full time. While you think I’d have all the time in the world now that I’m out of public education, that time fills up amazingly fast! (But I do love sleeping in, that’s for sure!) What a successful Summer Institute we had last summer! Kudos to Linda Hamilton and everyone who helped! Since I get to plan next summer’s Institute, it was up to me to go through all your exit surveys. Virtually EVERYONE was ecstatic that J.W. Pepper arranged for us all to keep our packets this year! We had over 200 attendees for the first time ever. With Howard Meharg’s help we offered online registration and payment, and will continue that service. Hopefully, PayPal won’t give anyone problems next year. Clock hours AND college credit were offered for the first time in several years. Surveys indicated that the music in all the reading sessions was even more wonderful than ever, at all levels. Thank you, presenters, for sharing your best ideas, and thank you R & S chairs, for choosing such great session leaders! Next year, our headliner is Sharon Paul from the University of Oregon. She is highly recommended by everyone who has met her and seen her work. She will bring an educator’s background to our forum, and is sure to enrich us all. Watch for an interview with Dr. Paul by Sara Boos in our next newsletter. Suggestions from your exit surveys have elicited these changes for next year:
Thank you all for taking the time to fill those surveys out. I definitely will contact those of you who volunteered to help next summer as things become more definite. It is a privilege to work with such dedicated and wonderful people. Best wishes for a successful year!
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Greetings from the eastside of the state! My name is Marc A. Hafso and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new Eastern Liaison to the board. I hope to serve our state chapter by:
My teaching career began in the late seventies as choir director at Washington and Franklin Pierce High Schools in Tacoma. In 2003, I was appointed Director of Choral and Vocal Activities at Whitworth College in Spokane. Throughout the intervening years I served a variety of faith-based communities as choral director and gained experience at all levels of choral music education through elementary, secondary, and university teaching positions in the United States and Canada. My partner, Judy Pearson Hafso, teaches K-5 music at Saint George’s School in Spokane. We are proud parents to three daughters and a son. It is great to be back in Washington! In the last two years I have experienced the great joy of renewing old friendships and forging new relationships through choral music. I welcome opportunities that allow me to connect with other directors. Please feel free to share some of your stories with me! Warmest and best wishes for success with your fall musical endeavors. Sincerely, Marc A. Hafso Director of Choral and Vocal Activities
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| WWU High School Men's Choral Festival Real Men Do Sing! by Tim Fitzpatrick Western Washington University, Bellingham Friday, February 10, 2006 |
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The Men's Choral Festival is a day for high school-aged tenors and basses to come together in a positive environment in order to encourage their own vocal development and to share camaraderie, musical growth, and outstanding choral singing with university-aged male singers. The festival is open to all men, from individual singers to entire bass and tenor sections of beginning to advanced high school choirs. Listed below is an outline of the festival schedule: 8:30 a.m. - Registration, Performing Arts Lobby There is no cost to participants. However, all singers
will need to bring copies of the Festival Men's Choir music (learn notes
ahead): To register, send a list of names, grade levels and voice parts of participating singers to Dr. Leslie Guelker-Cone at lesliegc@wwu.edu, or mail to WWU Dept. of Music, 516 High St., Bellingham, WA 98225-9107. E-mail or call 360-650-3772 if you have questions. |
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Feeling Isolated? Make some choral connections! |
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It's October, and all of us are already immersed in our fall schedules, and that means, of course, that we are BUSY! The new school year is just a few weeks old, but our fall concerts are already drawing near. It does not take long for us to become consumed with the demands of our jobs, does it? If you are like me, it is easy to concentrate so much on my own job, my own choirs, and my own schedule, that little time is left to get out and enjoy the work of my colleagues and their fine choirs. One thing that I have done with my high school choirs has helped me to feel less isolated and more connected to our choral community, so I want to share the idea with you. It is not an especially brilliant or revolutionary idea, so I was somewhat delightfully surprised at the positive results when I first tried it. And there's the good news...it is easy to do! After just a year or two of teaching high school choirs, I became aware that many of my students almost never listened to choral music, unless I brought one of my recordings into the classroom and played it for them. (Really, now many kids do you know who have a choral music collection?) Of course, they would hear a few other high school choirs at contest time, and every year we perform a joint concert with the middle school that feeds our high school - but I wanted them to hear music performed at a higher level than a junior high or high school choir! Recordings are one way to do this, of course, but I also wanted to advocate for live music. So this is what I do: I assign a semester project. I give the students several options, but I strongly encourage them to choose one of the first two options which are: OPTION 1: Attend a choral concert and write a short report about the experience. The concert must be oriented toward serious, artistic choral literature to be approved for credit. The report must include a printed program, a paragraph about the music (literature) performed, a paragraph about the choir's technical skill (tone, diction, intonation - in other words, all the things we work on in rehearsal), and a paragraph with any other general reactions. OPTION 2: Attend a rehearsal of a high-quality choral group in the Seattle area and write a report about the experience. If a student is interested in this option, he must tell me because I need to arrange this rehearsal visit in advance. The report is similar to the performance report. I usually have two or three small groups of students who choose option 2. I warn them that this requires lots of mental concentration and that they must not be disruptive to the rehearsal in any way. The students who choose this option usually have a wonderful experience. At Opus 7 rehearsals, director Loren Ponten sometimes even invites my students to sit among the older singers and sing with them! My list of approved concerts for option#1 is a fairly narrow (narrow minded?) list. It includes most of our very fine community choirs in the Seattle area, and most of the college/university choirs. Students always come asking for approval of other events, but if it is not a serious choral concert with artistic choral literature I do not approve it. I tell them to go ahead and attend those other very worthwhile events, but a Broadway show or a solo piano recital or a symphony concert is not a choral concert. I do not approve other high school concerts because I want them to hear choral music at a higher level. I do not approve most church choir concerts, unless I know first-hand that both the literature and the performance level are comparable to the work of a university choir. I explain that I support and respect the work of all these other choirs, but for the purpose of our semester project I must limit the choices to what I know first-hand. There are many benefits, both to the young students and to the music community. Students not only get a chance to hear great choral music performed at a high level of proficiency, but they also become acquainted with some of the many fine choral groups in the Seattle area. Who knows how many of these young students will someday be singing in Bellevue Chamber Chorus, Opus 7, Choral Arts, or the Seattle Symphony Chorale? And I do not know of any community choir that is not trying to increase its outreach to a larger audience. This project helps to bring both students and parents to the concerts. Because of the obvious benefits of recruiting future singers and attracting a wider audience, most community choirs will gladly reach out and welcome students to their concerts. Some community choirs have offered free tickets or discounted prices to my students. Some even make it a regular part of their concert season to choose and invite a high school choir to perform as honored guests in one of their concerts each year. My high school choir did this last year, and got to combine their voices with the Bellevue Chamber Chorus to sing a rousing gospel selection. It is impossible to measure the impact that this had on my young singers! The best part of our semester project is reading the reports. Over the years I have read very few responses that were negative. Most students are thoughtful and appreciative as they write about the concert they attended, and every year a significant number of students write reports that are positively glowing with joy as they describe an aesthetic experience that was eye-opening and possibly life-changing. They thank me - as if I had anything to do with it. All I did was tell them they had to go if they want the "A" in choir. Great music did the rest. So, in conclusion, as your new Washington R & S Chairperson for Community Choirs, I exhort you to reach out and make connections with another choir! It will be good for everybody!
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Guest
article (reprinted by permission
from "Tactus," Western Divisional Newsletter, Karen Parthun, Editor) |
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In recent years, a curious stage habit has arisen for some choral groups wherein, at the conclusion of a concert, the entire group takes a bow. This effect usually occurs at a signal from the conductor and often follows a bow by the conductor alone. There are a number of reasons why this group bow seems ill conceived: 1. It is a visual pratfall. No matter how practiced or how gentle the attempt, it is simply not very effective. The larger the group, the more damaging the effect. Since this group gesture has nothing to do with the music making per se, but rather is related to stage presence, it seems ironic that so little thought seems to be given to the look of the ensemble at a critical place in the concert--the end. 2. A group bow contradicts the role of the conductor as the spokesperson for the ensemble. Since the last century, the role of the conductor as the ensemble leader has become clearly understood. After all, the conductor is responsible for the decisions that generate the music and is, in large measure, responsible for all aspects of the ensemble performance. In that capacity, the conductor "speaks" for the composer and for the ensemble. As the leader, he or she then should be the one to represent the group and acknowledge the audience's applause. Some have countered that the choir also deserves to be included in the bow because they have been integral to the music making. Unfortunately, this is not an issue of what the choir deserves but an issue of stage decorum and historical appropriateness. Even so, most conductors do acknowledge the choir's accomplishments (often after each piece) with a sweeping gesture that indicates their collective skill and artistry. 3. The purpose of a bow at the conclusion of a performance has historically been more than the simple acknowledgement of an audience's appreciation. It was originally a gesture of subservience and humility--a way of saying, "I am your humble servant and am not worthy of your accolades." Note the lowered head. Only secondly does it say, "Thank you for your approval." Such a gesture probably came from the court performances of the distant past when musicians received polite approval from the royal audience. Certainly in those times, everyone presented a posture of subservience in the presence of the king. It is likely that when concertizing went public, at least by the early 1600s in Italy, the gesture of humble bowing continued. The concerts of today have lost the humility aspect of the bow. It has become a statement of acknowledgement or obligatory politeness and good form rather than any statement of unworthiness. In the world of theater, including opera, each major cast member bows in turn, except for the ensemble players who bow in small groups. Usually the final curtain call has the entire cast bowing together. However, the choral ensemble is more closely akin to the world of the orchestra than the world of traditional theater. In fact, a significant amount of theater is constructed with movement, gesture, and stage blocking having the same weight and priority as the spoken line. Generally this is not true for the concert stage where the aural experience takes priority. This is not to reduce the importance of the visual aspects of a concert performance. If the visual were not important, this and other discussions about stage presence would not be necessary. But the lack of planned gesture in most classical concert performances puts the stand-up choral concert in a category with the symphony orchestra. If there is any equation here between the choir performance and the orchestra performance, one is inclined to wonder why, if the group bow is such a good thing, orchestras don't do it? Individual players, especially in concertos, always take bows, but it is important to note that in such a circumstance, the soloist is no longer part of the ensemble. Rather, he or she has stepped away from the group to do something individualistic. The implication, then, is that individuals bow rather than groups. Even the final full-cast bow of the theater is really a statement of the individual contributions of each character or groups of characters in the play. When the whole choir bows, it changes them from a true ensemble (in identical uniforms where possible) to separate people, each taking the applause for their individual contributions similar to the famous quartet from Verdi's Rigoletto. While the normal expectation of a quartet is the creation of a kind of ensemble, at no time do these characters lose their individuality. In fact, because of both the libretto and the plot needs, no true ensemble is created--merely four soloists singing together. The choral ensemble would usually work to combine the individual singers into a unified ensemble; whereas, in the case of this quartet, the individualism is more important than the group. In this sense, the gestalt of the ensemble (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts) is challenged by the implied individualism of the group bow. To sum up: Because it is such a ragged movement (and totally unlike anything else the choir does on stage); because it diminishes the role of the conductor as the representative of the entire ensemble; because it reduces the collective to an assembly of individuals; because few, if any, professional ensembles (choral or instrumental) bow together; and because the choir is acknowledged by the conductor frequently throughout the program as well as at the end, the conductor is better served having the choir stand with dignity at the conclusion of the concert rather than generating a convulsive wave. |
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