Summer 2021

Conference content will be available to attendees until October 31, 2021
on the Whova online conference platform/app. Log in to access session
handouts and archived videos.

REGISTRATION HAS CLOSED SO THAT PARTICIPANT INFORMATION CAN BE UPLOADED TO THE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE APP BEFORE AUGUST 1. THANK YOU TO THOSE JOINING US ON THE WHOVA PLATFORM THIS WEEKEND!

Schedule-at-a-Glance
(scroll down to see more details)

Sunday	August 1	Monday	August 2
1:00-1:15PM	Welcome & Group Sing	8:00-9:00AM	Reading Sessions
1:20-2:20PM	Speaker Session A (Powell) AFRICAN-AMERICAN SPIRITUALS, GOSPEL MUSIC AND ETHNIC ANTHEMS: IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?	9:10-10:10AM	Speaker Session C (Clark) DISABILITY AS CREATIVE SOURCE: INCLUSIVE CHORAL PRACTICE & UNIVERSAL DESIGN
2:30-3:00PM	Concert Session	10:20-11:20AM	Interest Sessions A: (details below) Withington - JUST INTONATION Hirokawa - UNDERGROUND RAILROAD Ohrt - COMMISSIONING Rardin - GESTURE
3:20-4:20PM	Speaker Session B (Powell) Q & A WITH ROSEPHANYE POWELL	11:30AM-12:00PM	Concert Session
5:00-6:30PM	ACDA-PA Board Meeting	12:00-12:45PM	Meet & Greet
7:00-7:30PM	Awards Ceremony & Concert Session	1:30-2:30PM	Speaker Session D (Clark) FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE: TOWARD AN EMPOWERING CHORAL MUSIC
7:40-8:40PM	Reading Sessions	2:40-3:40PM	Interest Sessions B: Natter - CHORALWORKS Coffey - CULTURE OF CARING Scott - NEW TEACHING PRACTICES Reiff - HOSPICE CHOIR & COVID
9:00-10:00PM	Social Hour	3:50-4:50PM	Interest Sessions C: Posada - INTENTIONAL WARM-UPS Hill - SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTION Voth/Kane - MENTAL HEALTH Meade/Beaton - STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Concert Sessions by Pennsylvania Choirs

Lincoln University Concert Choir – Camilla Horne, conductor
Susquehanna Chorale – Linda Tedford, conductor
The Bel Canto Youth Chorus of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem – Joy Hirokawa, conductor
Muhlenberg College Chamber Choir – Chris Jackson, conductor
Central Bucks High School-West Chamber Choir – Joseph Ohrt, conductor
Nazareth Area High School Nightingales – Kelly Rocchi, conductor
Lebanon Valley College Concert Choir – Kyle Zeuch, conductor
Swarthmore College Chorus – Joseph Gregorio, conductor

Interest Sessions

Click on the + sign next to the title for more details about each session.

SPEAKER SESSION A - Rosephanye Powell
Sunday, August 1, 1:20-2:20pm

African-American Spirituals, Gospel Music and Ethnic Anthems: Is There a Difference?

This session will provide insights into the distinguishing characteristics and performance practices of African-American spirituals, ethnic anthems, and gospel music. Dr. Powell will use several of her works to demonstrate the distinctions.

SPEAKER SESSION B - Rosephanye Powell
Sunday, August 1, 3:20-4:20pm

Q&A with Rosephanye Powell

SPEAKER SESSION C - Andrew Clark
Monday, August 2, 9:10-10:10am

Disability as Creative Source: Inclusive Choral Practice & Universal Design

Cambridge Common Voices is a neurodiverse chorus made up of students from the Harvard Choruses and the Threshold Program at Lesley University, a transition program for young adults with diverse learning challenges. Founded in 2018 by Harvard’s Director of Choral Activities Andrew Clark, Cambridge Common Voices operates at the intersection of inclusive music education, disability justice, and a neurodiversity paradigm. The ensemble roots its work in Universal Design for Learning principles, reimagining concepts of choral practice through positioning disability as a liberating source of creativity and pedagogical ingenuity. Members of the ensemble will share their experiences, values, and inclusive methods that can inform our work in every choral setting.

SPEAKER SESSION D - Andrew Clark
Monday, August 2, 1:30-2:30pm

Funds of Knowledge: Toward an Empowering Choral Music

Critiques of conventional choral pedagogy point to the repression of individual voices, hierarchical power structures, coercive methods, the fetishization of “sound,” craft, and technique, and a culture of compliance and monologue. In an art form reliant on unity and consensus-building, how might we reimagine a more empowering and creative practice that truly lifts every voice? This session will apply the frameworks of Adaptative Leadership and Funds of Knowledge in reimagining a choral music that aims to share power and promote cooperation, interdependence, compassion, and creativity drawn from the unique and collective wisdom of our singers. Students from the Harvard Choral Program and Cambridge Common Voices will share their perspectives and experiences.

INTEREST SESSION A
Monday, August 2, 10:20-11:20am

Enhancing Intonation and Aural Skills in the Choral Environment – Part Two: Preparing to Teach Just Intonation
Andrew Withington

It was a privilege to present part one of this interest session at the ACDA-PA Summer Conference last year. During part one, the effects of different tuning systems on the choral sound were demonstrated, and how just intonation (an approach where notes are tuned to the natural overtones of the voice, rather than a tempered instrument, such as the piano) could be used to significantly enhance the intonation and aural skills of singers. Part two will go into more depth and during this interactive, hands-on session, participants will be given the tools to determine the just intonation of notes and assign corresponding tuning symbols to scores. This session will also offer an approach to teaching just intonation in a systematic, easy-to-learn way.

Stand Up: Singing the Underground Railroad into the 21st Century
Joy Hirokawa

This session will describe the Stand Up curriculum developed and implemented in the 2020-21 season for the Bel Canto Youth Chorus. Using traditional spirituals as well as music by contemporary African American composers and artists, this program:
• develops understanding of the story of enslaved people escaping to freedom on the UGRR;
• connects the story of enslaved people to contemporary issues of race and equity;
• features repertoire written or arranged almost exclusively by African American composers.

While told in a sequential story line, the focus is on the human characteristics required by those escaping enslavement to survive - their strength, endurance, resilience, bravery, and dignity. As the UGRR passed through our geographic area, we connected to our local role in the UGRR. Historic and contemporary inspirational quotes connected the past struggles of enslavement with the issues of racism and inequity that we face today. These are incorporated into the programmatic sequence.

Exploring New Horizons: Commissioning Music for Your Choirs
Joseph Ohrt

This session will give a comprehensive foundation of the philosophical and pragmatic aspects of the commissioning process. Engaging someone to write music for your choir can be an awesome and rewarding experience. It can also be a scary endeavor if you have never been through it before. Some of the things that we will discuss are: why commissioning is important, how to choose a composer, how to tailor the work to your needs, and how to create a contact so that communication is clear.

Now is a perfect time to consider fostering new art and broadening your horizon. Consider commissioning a new work for your choir this year. Create something special to celebrate, heal, or acknowledge your singers and community.

The No-Babble Zone: Bending (and Breaking) Pattern to Enhance Gesture
Paul Rardin, Temple University

Mimes have a term for making extraneous or meaningless physical gestures: “babbling.” Do we babble when we conduct? Do our patterns look more like autopilot than artistry? Do we work harder physically than we need to? This session offers ideas for altering (and sometimes breaking) patterns to better reflect the music we’re conducting. Learn how compression, negating, melding, and sculpting can enhance your gestural artistry. Jerry Blackstone’s words can be our guide: “We must shape the pattern to the music, not the other way around.”

INTEREST SESSION B
Monday, August 2, 2:40-3:40pm

ChoralWorks - Rehearsal Tracks on Smartphones for Free
Rob Natter

The ChoralWorks web app makes interactive rehearsal tracks with high-quality piano sounds easy to produce on smartphones and computers. Directors can create and distribute these tracks using free resources. Singers can isolate their own part, or combine them with others to facilitate their learning. ChoralWorks can help singers learn music more quickly, letting directors use valuable rehearsal time for making music.

Creating a Culture of Caring
Matthew Coffey

How would your rehearsals look different if your students knew that both you and their peers truly cared for them? Such a culture and community can have a profound effect on your program in many facets including, but not limited to, student engagement, recruitment, and retention. In this session, Coffey will present several easily implementable strategies for creating a program culture that will empower your students to love, encourage, support, and accept one another.

Building excellent musicians: New teaching practices for the choral classroom
Kym Scott

When teaching young singers, choral educators are often caught up in the important aspects of teaching notes and rhythms, aligning vowels, and creating a healthy vocal tone. What if we were to take some time out to teach our singers how to be better musicians? By helping our young singers to listen more effectively, we are creating musicians who will struggle less with intonation and rhythm, allowing future choral rehearsals to run more efficiently, and for students to take those skills into all musical endeavors. With a fundamental grounding in Kodaly methodology, this session will present practical ways to build excellent musicianship skills that will not only assist with the learning of traditional, western repertoire, but will also facilitate the learning of non-western music.

Leading and Growing With a Hospice Choir in the Time of COVID
Nathan Reiff

COVID's impact on a choir whose mission is to sing for the dying has been particularly intense. This session will explore ways in which JourneySongs, a volunteer hospice choir based in Newton, Massachusetts, has adapted and even thrived during the pandemic. In the process, members have had to come to terms with an uprooting of the traditional tools and approaches JourneySongs uses, at a time in which the work of the choir feels more vital than ever before.

INTEREST SESSION C
Monday, August 2, 3:50-4:50pm

Intentional Choral Warm-Ups: Skill Building & Accountability
Eric Oliver Posada

A rehearsal typically begins with a warm-up that ranges from breathing and vocalizing to stretching and movement. We must ask ourselves: Have our warm-ups grown stale? Can these skills transfer to our choral repertoire? Am I consistently assessing and giving feedback? Through various warm-up exercises, Dr. Posada will identify each targeted skill while diagnosing issues and proposing solutions.

This topic is crucial to the development of singers, choirs, and directors. Ironically, it is also a subject that remains a collective mystery. My primary objective is for middle school and high school choral directors to return to their home schools and reinvent their current warm-up routine. Warm-up exercises should be treated akin to repertoire rehearsals via constant assessment, immediate feedback, and effective solutions. Consequently, these exercises will build vocal technique, aural skills, musicianship, and awareness in singers that will transfer to the choral repertoire and rehearsal. To achieve my goal, I will use the convention audience to provide tangible examples of my methodology. I shall use a varied collection of warm-ups from familiar exercises to specific drills that encourage voice building skills, chord tuning, vowel unification, open/closed vowels, dynamic contrast, consonants and enunciation, simple and advanced kinesthetic movements, and stretching.

EXTRA! EXTRA! A session on internal and external social media promotion of the scholastic music program
Dr. Matt Hill

We live in an age of technological immediacy in communication. The cell phone is the new television, and is the vehicle through which our musicians and audiences are going to become aware of what we do.

With a heightened awareness of social media’s hold on communication, we must become strategically active on social media platforms for the purposes of: internal communication, ensemble recruitment, relationship cultivation with community organizations, and advertising for our concerts/events.

This presentation provides practical strategies for using social media channels to promote auditions, performances, highlight current and alumni musicians, branding annual events, the difference between 'pages' and 'groups' for internal and external promotion, uses for monthly newsletters, possible sponsor relationship engagement, among other topics.

"Standing tall": Addressing mental health through a choral collaboration
Ellen Gilson Voth and Jennifer Kane

In this session, Dr. Jennifer Kane and Dr. Ellen Gilson Voth describe their partnership as conductor/composer in creating a new choral work to help singers engage with mental health awareness. In the wake of a suicide of a young, close family friend, Dr. Kane sought to commission a new choral work to combat the stigma that surrounds mental illness, which often prevents people from asking for help. Singers in the Handel and Haydn Society Youth Chorale, and their families, wrote and contributed personal texts about the value of life; Dr. Voth incorporated these texts into a new work, "Standing tall". In this session, Dr. Kane and Dr. Voth share how material was created; how a sensitive topic was handled with young singers; and ideas for similar collaborations. Small groups discussion will focus on ways ensembles can engage in mental health advocacy, empathy, and community building.

Student Spotlight: Practical Advice for Grad School Auditions and Job Interviews
Joy Meade and Morgan Beaton

Featured Guest Clinicians:
Rosephanye Powell & Andrew Clark

Dr. Rosephanye Dunn Powell has been hailed as one of America’s premier women composers of choral music. She has an impressive catalogue of works published by some of the nation’s leading publishers, including the Hal Leonard Corporation, the Fred Bock Music Company/Gentry Publications, Oxford University Press, Alliance Music Publications, and Shawnee. Dr. Powell is commissioned yearly to compose for university choruses, professional, community and church choirs, as well as secondary school choruses. Dr. Powell’s works have been conducted and premiered by nationally-renowned choral conductors, including, but not limited to, Anton Armstrong, Philip Brunelle, Bob Chilcott, Rodney Eichenberger, Tom Hall, Albert McNeil, Tim Seelig, and André Thomas. Her work has been auctioned by Chorus America and her compositions are in great demand at choral festivals around the country, frequently appearing on the regional and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, as well as Honor Choir festivals. Dr. Powell’s compositions include sacred and secular works for mixed chorus, women’s chorus, men’s chorus, and children’s voices. Dr. Powell serves as Professor of Voice at Auburn University. She holds degrees from The Florida State University (D.M. in vocal performance, University Fellow), Westminster Choir College (M.M. in vocal performance and pedagogy, with distinction), and Alabama State University (B.M.E., summa cum laude). Dr. Powell served on the faculties of Philander Smith College (AR) and Georgia Southern University prior to her arrival at Auburn University in 2001.

Recent commission and premiere highlights include: With What Shall I Come (SATB), composed for the St. Olaf Choir 2015 Winter Tour in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Dr. Anton Armstrong, conductor, and premiered at Carnegie Hall; Why We Sing (TTBB), composed for the 2014-2015 touring season of Cantus Vocal Ensemble; Bright is the Ring of Words (TTBB), composed in celebration of the 125th Anniversary of the University of Pittsburgh Men’s Glee Club, (March, 2015); The Lord Is My Light and My Salvation (SATB), composed for the NCMEA High School Choral Section for the 2014 North Carolina Honors Chorus; The Cry of Jeremiah, a four-movement sacred work for narrator, chorus, organ and orchestra, commissioned by the American Guild of Organists, premiered at the Lincoln Center, NY (May 2014); I Want to Die While You Love Me (SSAA), composed for the 2013 Women’s Choirs Commission Consortium of the American Choral Directors Association; Great is the Lord!, composed for the Downtown Minneapolis Churches for their February 2013 Choral Festival (MN); I Will Sing, commissioned and premiered by the Oxford Civic Chorale, Oxford, MS; Arise Beloved, commissioned by OurSong (Atlanta, GA) one of four works premiered as part of the group’s choral cycle “And Nature Smiled,” performed at the internationally-acclaimed Spivey Hall; Christmas Give, a suite of five songs for SATB and orchestra, composed for the Baltimore Choral Arts Society Christmas CD “Christmas at America’s First Cathedral” released by Gothic Records; and Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit, arranged for The Sofia Chamber Choir “Vassil Arnaudov”- Bulgaria, Southeastern Europe.

In 2011, Dr. Powell served as an arranger and co-editor, along with her husband Dr. William C. Powell, for the release of I’m Gonna Sing: Twelve Spirituals for Upper Voices published by Oxford University Press (London). Other recent commissions include, but are not limited to, Christmas Give, a suite of five songs for SATB, composed for the Baltimore Choral Arts Society Christmas CD “Christmas at America’s First Cathedral” released by Gothic Records (2010); Be Glad in the Lord composed for Philip Brunelle and Plymouth Congregational Church (2009); Hope Come True, a suite of five songs for SSAA and SATB composed and arranged for MUSE Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir (OH), and premiered by MUSE and Central State University Chorus; Rejoice!, for chorus, organ, trumpets, and timpani composed for the 50th Anniversary of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Auburn, Alabama; Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit, arranged for The Sofia Chamber Choir “Vassil Arnaudov”- Bulgaria, Southeastern Europe. Children of the Rainbow, an original work, composed for the Columbus (OH) Children’s Choir and the 2005 Children’s Choral Festival of African-American Music; Pete, Pete arranged for the Montgomery Academy Middle School Chorus for the 2005 Alabama Music Educators Association State Conference; Sicut Cervus composed for the 25th Anniversary of the Texas Collegiate Women’s Choral Festival; Still I Rise composed for Vox Femina, Los Angeles, CA; and Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child arranged for the 35th anniversary of VocalEssence (Minneapolis, MN, 2003).

An accomplished singer and voice professor, Dr. Powell’s research has focused on the art of the African-American spiritual, the art songs of William Grant Still (dean of African-American composers), and voice care concerns for voice professionals (specifically, music educators, choral directors, and choral singers). She travels the country and internationally presenting lectures, song demonstrations, and serving as a workshop clinician, conductor, and adjudicator for solo vocal competitions/auditions, honor choirs, choral workshops and festivals. Recent commitments include Melbourne International Singers Festival (AUS); the New York State School Music Association (Rochester); the Georgia Music Educators Association Conference (Savannah); Middle Tennessee Vocal Association Treble Honor Choir (Nashville); the World Choir Games (Cincinnati, OH); the Italian Feder Gospel Choirs Workshop (Milan, Italy); Alabama Music Educators Association High School Honor Choir (Montgomery); Samford University (Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts) (Birmingham, AL); South Carolina Music Educators Association State Conference (Charleston); AGO National Conference (Nashville, TN); Summer Sing Choral Workshop and Tuning at Tahoe Music Directors Workshop (Lake Tahoe, NV); and Capital Area Music Association (Harrisburg, PA).

As a researcher, Dr. Powell’s recent articles include Keeping the “Choir” in Showchoir published in the Amercan Choral Directors Journal; William Grant Still: His Life and His Songs and The African-American Spritual: Preparation and Performance Considerations both published in the prestigious NATS Journal of Singing. She served as the editor and wrote the introduction for William Grant Still: An Art Song Collection which is published by William Grant Still Music.

In 2009, Dr. Powell received the “Living Legend Award” presented by California State University African Diaspora Sacred Music Festival in Los Angeles. She was listed in the first edition of the international publication Who Is Who in Choral Music. And, she has been included in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers and Outstanding Young Women in America in recent years. Dr. Powell is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), the College Music Society (CMS), the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) and the Music Educators National Conference (MENC).

Andrew Clark is the Director of Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer on Music at Harvard University. He serves as the Music Director and Conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, the Harvard Summer Chorus, Cambridge Common Voices, and teaches courses in conducting, choral literature, and music and disability studies in the Department of Music.

Clark’s work with the Harvard Choral Program empowers individuals and communities through active engagement with choral music: fostering compassion, community-building, and joy. As an artist-educator devoted to advancing equity, justice, and access to the arts, Clark has developed community partnerships with youth music education programs, correctional institutions, health care facilities, overnight shelters, senior-care communities, and other service organizations operating beyond the normalized conventions of arts practice. Clark has organized Harvard residencies with distinguished conductors, composers, and ensembles, including Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Lorelei and Antioch ensembles, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Maria Guinand, Harry Christophers, Craig Hella Johnson, and Maasaki Suzuki, among others.

Since arriving at Harvard in 2010, Dr. Clark has led the Harvard Choruses in performances at the Kennedy Center, Boston Symphony Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Metropolitan Museum of Art, and venues across the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. His choral-orchestral performances with the Harvard Choruses have received critical acclaim, ranging from the Baroque era to seminal 20th- and 21st-century works. Clark has commissioned and premiered over fifty compositions and recently launched the Harvard Choruses New Music Initiative, supporting the creative work of undergraduate composers.

His choirs have been hailed as “first rate” (Boston Globe), “cohesive and exciting” (Opera News), and “beautifully blended” (Providence Journal), achieving performances of “passion, conviction, adrenalin, [and] coherence” (Worcester Telegram). He has collaborated with the National Symphony, the Pittsburgh and New Haven Symphonies, the Boston Pops, the Handel and Haydn Society, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Boston Philharmonic, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Trinity Wall Street Choir, the Washington Chorus, Stephen Sondheim, Ben Folds, and the late Dave Brubeck, among others.

Prior to his appointment at Harvard, Clark was Artistic Director of the Providence Singers and served as Director of Choral Activities at Tufts University. Clark continues his work as a founding faculty member of the Notes from the Heart music program near Pittsburgh, a summer camp for children and young adults experiencing disabilities and chronic illness. He earned degrees from Wake Forest, Carnegie Mellon, and Boston Universities, studying with Ann Howard Jones, David Hoose, and the late Robert Page. He lives in Medford, MA, with his wife Amy Peters Clark, and their daughters, Amelia Grace and Eliza Jane.

Conference content will be available to attendees until October 31, 2021 on the Whova online conference platform/app. Log in to access sessionhandouts and archived videos.