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Conference Highlights

  • Featured guest clinicians Andrea Ramsey & Anthony Trecek-King (bios below)
  • Opening Concert featuring Parkside Harmony, Yellow Breeches Quartet, and Gettysburg Children's Choir
  • "Choir for All" Honor Choir, conducted by Andrea Ramsey
  • Middle School Honor Choir, conducted by Anthony Trecek-King
  • World premiere performance of the 2023 winning selection from the ACDA-PA Choral Composition Competition
  • Collegiate Conducting Masterclass
  • Reading sessions for all repertoire & resources areas
  • Interest sessions
  • Full group sing of selections from the Singing City Songbook, a compilation of commissioned works in various voicings created in honor of the 75th anniversary of Singing City Choir of Philadelphia
  • Recognition of ACDA-PA award winners at the banquet
  • ACDA "After Hours" social event
  • Discounted on-campus housing at Messiah University

Featured Guest Clinicians:
Andrea Ramsey & Anthony Trecek-King

Andrea Ramsey

Dr. Andrea Ramsey enjoys an international presence as a composer, conductor, scholar, and music educator. Her teaching experiences range from work with adolescent and children’s voices to high school and collegiate voices. She enjoys regular opportunities to conduct all-state and divisional level honor choirs, festival events at Carnegie Hall, and serves as a principal conductor for the Pacific International Young Women’s Choral Festival in Eugene, Oregon. Before leaping into full time composing and guest conducting, Andrea held positions in music education and conducting at The Ohio State University and the University of Colorado, respectively.

An ASCAPlus award-winning composer, Andrea believes strongly in the creation of new works. Her compositions are available with traditional publishers and also through MusicSpoke, a digital sheet music marketplace. She enjoys residency collaborations with ensembles and festival choirs, some of which have included: the Allegro Choirs of Kansas City, Ithaca College, and the Crescent City Choral Festival in New Orleans.
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As a scholar, she has presented for state, divisional, and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, the 6th Annual Symposium on Sociology in Music Education, as well as The Phenomenon Singing Symposium in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada. She has co-authored articles published in the Choral Journal, as well as the Journal of Research in Music Education. A native of Arkansas, she has experienced in her own life the power of music to provide a sense of community, better understanding of our humanity, and rich opportunities for self-discovery.

Anthony Trecek-King

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Anthony Trecek-King has cultivated an international reputation as a choral conductor, scholar, pedagogue, and media personality. He is passionate about cultivating artistically excellent ensembles that explore socially relevant issues through emotionally immersive programs, challenging both artists and audiences to feel and think. Dr. Trecek-King has recently been appointed as both an Associate Professor of Choral Music and Director of Choral Activities at The Hartt School, University of Hartford and a Resident Conductor with the Handel and Haydn Society.

Ensembles under his direction were integral to projects that have won a Pulitzer Prize (Madam White Snake, Zhou Long), received a Grammy (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Boston Modern Orchestra Project), and earned the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from Presidential Committee on the Arts (Boston Children’s Chorus). Dr. Trecek-King has worked with a variety of artists and ensembles including Leslie Odom Jr., Melinda Doolittle, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Seraphic Fire, Keith Lockhart, John Williams, Gil Rose, Simon Halsey, Yo Yo Ma, and Roomful of Teeth. He has led performances in world-renowned venues including Boston Symphony Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall in New York City, Royal Albert Hall in London, and the Sydney Opera House. In addition to his conducting work, he is currently the host of the classical radio show “The Silent Canon” which airs on KNVO 90.7.  He can also be seen on-air and online on the Emmy nominated WGBH television series Sing That Thing, and two TEDx Boston talks. He holds a B.M. in Cello Performance from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, an M.M. in Orchestral Conducting from the Florida State University, and a D.M.A. in Choral Conducting from the Boston University. He currently lives in the Boston area with his partner Melanie (of Thinking is Power) and their cat.

Opening Concert

Parkside Harmony

Founded in January of 2015, Parkside Harmony is one of the newest choral ensembles in Hershey, PA, proudly joining an already thriving arts community in The Sweetest Place on Earth!  Welcoming musicians from across the mid-atlantic area, they recognize the importance of community and fellowship, while supporting their mission of encouraging life-long singing!  

Under the direction of Sean Devine and Vince Sandroni, Parkside Harmony has performed all over South Central PA, as well as festivals across the US - including Las Vegas, NV, Nashville, TN, and Orlando, FL.  In December of 2019 the group was honored to appear as the opening act for the GRAMMY award-winning Pentatonix, and later that same month were invited to perform at the world famous Carnegie Hall in New York City!  

Bringing a fresh style and diverse repertoire to the Barbershop Harmony Society’s competition stages, they are 5-time Mid-Atlantic District champions and 3-time International bronze medalists (2017, 2018, & 2022).

Schumann Quartet
(Central PA Voice Faculty Ensemble)
performing
Schumann’s Spanisches Liederspiel, Op. 74
​and other solo works

Gettysburg Children's Choir
Matt Carlson, artistic director


​The Gettysburg Children's Choir provides access to a choral program of the highest quality for young people in grades three through twelve from all cultural and economic backgrounds. We achieve a level of artistic excellence necessary to perform at various regional and national settings and serve as a model for diverse and quality choral literature and vocal training in the field of children's choral music.

Chamber Chorale is our high school ensemble that performs joint concerts throughout the year with Gettysburg Children’s Choir. Our singers come to us from public and private schools throughout South Central Pennsylvania, and many have been with our organization since third grade. Students in the Chamber Chorale are frequent performers in PMEA Festivals and ACDA Regional & National Honor Choirs.

Matt Carlson is Artistic Director of the Gettysburg Children's Choir. Mr. Carlson teaches vocal music in the Bermudian Springs School District (York Springs, PA). He is a graduate of Gettysburg College (B.S. Music Education) and Michigan State University (M.M. Choral Conducting). In his current position at the Bermudian Springs School District, Matt teaches secondary choral music and serves as music director for the spring musical. In 2017, he received the Outstanding Young Conductor award from the American Choral Directors Association of Pennsylvania.

Group Sing

In celebration of its 75th anniversary, Singing City Choir of Philadelphia has commissioned 24 composers to write short works to create the Singing City Songbook. This compilation is intended for community singing everywhere—its themes echo the human experience, with messages of unity, hope, love, and the ties that bind.

Members of Singing City will join summer conference attendees to lead a group sing of selections from the Songbook after the awards banquet on Monday evening.

If you would like to support Singing City by purchasing your own copy of the Songbook, click the image to be directed to Singing City's online store.
ACDA-PA: American Choral Directors Association of Pennsylvania
Independent voices joining to form a common theme.