Greetings! I’m very excited to share this issue of Melisma focused on gender issues in the choral ensemble. Riikka Pietiläinen-Caffrey, Delaney Hanon, and Lorenzo Silva offer an insightful article that raises our awareness of the implications of the language we use in rehearsal. Ben Riggs’s article discusses the potential for mentoring relationships between men’s and boy’s choirs and…
WHO TAKES CARE OF THE CONDUCTOR? Rehearsals are underway, concerts are coming up, and nearly every choir director on the planet has something big in December. Concerts, special events, and worship services typically take place outside of the 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday workweek, and many people work a full-time teaching job and also direct a community or…
Choir screams gender. From the traditional to the modern day, from choir dress codes to vocal parts, from the hypermasculine fear of singing to the choirboy image. A great many changes are needed to make choral spaces more gender-inclusive, and one of the first steps is to use language that will include all singers. Recently,…
Growing up in rural West Virginia, there wasn’t a wealth of musical opportunities for a young man like myself. I was fortunate to be enrolled in piano lessons, but the school I attended lacked music classes and ensemble opportunities. Singing was especially mysterious and unapproachable—I was absolutely certain that I could not sing! When I was…
When recalling my first guest conducting experience with a treble-voice choir in Bemidji, MN in 1998, my thoughts were that I would love to work with a similar group every day. Little did I know that I would have the fortune to work with the women’s choir at North Dakota State University every day—well…actually every other…
Iowa Thursday, December 1, 2016, 6:30 p.m. Ludwig van Beethoven: Choral Fantasy, Franz Schubert: Mass in Ab Major University of Iowa Choirs & Symphony Orchestra Voxman Music Building Concert Hall Iowa City, IA https://arts.uiowa.edu/events/ui-symphony-orchestra-and-choirs-featuring-uriel-tsachor-piano/2016-12-01 Free admission Friday and Saturday, December 2 and 3, 2016, 6:30 p.m. Simpson College Madrigal Christmas Dinner Simpson College Campus – the…
