North Dakota State University in Fargo in conjunction with the American Choral Director's Association hosted the Choral Music of the Americas Symposium this weekend May 3rd - 5th.
The blog entries over the next couple of days will serve as a collection of my thoughts for the sessions and concerts that I observed during the day. They may form the basis for a future article for the ACDA-MN quarterly publication Star of the North. The schedule is so full of interesting sessions it may take a few days to mentally unpack everything which I have heard and hopefully learned.
The days events began at 8:00 AM with a key note speech by ACDA Executive Director, Dr. Tim Sharp. The primary focus of the day was music of Latin America. Dr. William Belan of Cal-State Los Angeles presented upon the choral music of Costa Rica. Over the past thirty years, Dr. Belan has spent a lot of time contributing to and learning from the choral music community in Costa Rica. He has published over 100 Latin American choral pieces that he has either edited or arranged. Later in the afternoon, Maria Elina Mayorga and Ana Alejandra Blech presented the choral history and repertoire of Argentina. What I took away from these two sessions was there is a rich repertoire base from both the classical and folk traditions from the Latin American countries that are available for U.S. conductors to program. The pieces composed out of the sacred classical tradition provide a great fusion of classical form and indigineous rhythmic patterns. The pieces arranged from folk music or dance rhythms provide different tonal and rhythmic challenges for our students and singers to learn. Many of the folk arrangements could be programmed by vocal jazz ensembles because many of the Latin rhythms have fused with the jazz repertoire of the past half century.
Another session I found interesting from the days events included Brainerd Blyden-Taylor's presentation on Afrocentric Choral Traditions. Dr. Blyden-Taylor is the founder and artistic director of Toronto's Nathaniel Dett Chorale, a choir dedicated to the performance of Afro-centric music. He presented a packet of great spiritual literature from a variety of composers. I most appreciated his sharing some of the "forgotten" arrangements of Wendell Whalum and Nathaniel Dett. Adolphus Hailstork's "Set Me as a Seal", Ruth Watson Henderson's "Make Me a World", and Ivo Antognini's "I am the rose of Sharon" all stood out as a remarkable pieces from composers whom I have admired over the years.
In the afternoon, Dale Warland gave an interesting session on his 15 keys to improving choral tone. As a midwest educated choral director this was a fantastic session, but one that I have heard from Dr. Warland in the past. Inspiring and always a great refresher, but I won't elaborate upon it greatly here.
The evening concert was an enriching experience for the choirs of the greater Fargo-Moorhead community and many of the guest headlining conductors who came to the conference. I will elaborate upon it further on my next post.
