BriLee Music provides quality choral music for the junior high/middle school
|
|
|
National Endowment for the Arts awards $22.5 million to arts groups, writers across the US
The Washington Post
Share
   
The National Endowment for the Arts is announcing $22.5 million in grants that will support projects in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Endowment Chairman Rocco Landesman announced the 863 grants that will go to organizations and individual writers. The bulk of the grants will go to nonprofit organizations engaged in the arts.
More
Hurry up . . . and wait
by Greg Shapley — TCDA Church Vice-President Share
 Thanksgiving is here, and church musicians know what that means — Christmas is upon us! Most of us have been planning the Christmas season since July or August. I have to admit, I have zero Christmas spirit when it's 108 degrees every day in the Metroplex. But the reality is, our work takes months of planning and preparation, and we don't want to hurry through it.
Our culture continues to push Christmas earlier each year. The ghost of commercial Christmas has nearly swallowed Thanksgiving whole, and if it weren't for Halloween standing guard, Santa, elves and reindeer would probably land on the department store floor by Labor Day.
The Sunday after Thanksgiving marks the first Sunday of Advent, or a time of waiting for the coming of Christ. In a liturgical church, the four Sundays proceeding Christmas are the four Sundays of Advent. A time for waiting, anticipating, imagining.
But we're not a culture who likes to wait for anything. Patience is a virtue your grandmother may have mentioned once. . . . Today, we're always in a hurry. Give us our venti organic espresso NOW, and to go, please!
The time from Thanksgiving to Christmas is a roller coaster drop. The challenge is to find a few moments for reflection on the coming of Christmas and what it means for us now — to reacquaint ourselves with the wonder of Christmas, free from commercial tinsel or even the hectic pace of concerts, church services and programs.
When we were children, everything about Christmas was magical. The magic is still there, but it comes to us differently. It comes in the waiting and the watching; in the crisp stillness of a December evening at sunset; in the love we are willing to give and receive. Christmas comes to us when we turn off the rush around us and open our hearts and reconnect with God's love.
2012 TCDA Church Festival Chorus featuring Ken Medema
Last summer's Church Festival Chorus was a wonderful experience for so many! This year, we welcome singer, pianist and composer Ken Medema as our clinician.
Though blind from birth, Ken demonstrates his extraordinary musical vision to a growing number of loyal fans across the nation and around the world. He has performed actively for over 32 years, and his musical genius challenges the mind and enraptures the heart. His gifts will inspire and enrich our worship at TCDA, and we're so excited to welcome him to our convention as he performs with the TCDA Church Festival Chorus.
The Church Festival Chorus will begin registering singers sometime after the holidays. Please look for information regarding registration on the TCDA website and in your email inboxes in early 2012.
Oklahoma State University choral conductor on getting to know his students
The Oklahoman
Share
Whether teaching in kindergarten, high school or college, instructors place a high priority on getting to know their students. And while a typical class might number two dozen students, how does one face such a challenge with a group four times that size?
More
Shades of Praise choir raises voices of hope, joy, peace
The Times-Picayune
Share
Ten years ago, Shades of Praise gave its first performance on the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers. Its mission — to create gospel music through an interracial choir — immediately expanded to embrace world peace.
More
Choral Arts Society's skilled homage to 20th-century classics
The Washington Post
Share
The Choral Arts Society of Washington paid homage to 20th-century musical works that have become classics of the 21st-century repertoire. The event included performances of Igor Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms," Morten Lauridsen's "Lux Aeterna," Leonard Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms" and excerpts from Sergei Prokofiev's cantata "Alexander Nevsky." The concert at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall also marked the 47th year that Norman Scribner, founder and conductor of Choral Arts, has led it to become one of the premier choruses of Washington. Scribner retires at the end of this concert season.
More
Choir sings its way to a better life
Glendale News-Press
Share
In Uganda as a teenager, James Ochan lost both of his parents to AIDS. Then his grandmother died a few days after he went to live with her, leaving him and his two sisters with their uncle, who died a month later.
More
Connecting El Sistema programs in the US
Createquity
Share
Who knew little kids playing Tchaikovsky in Latin America could inspire national institutional partnerships in the United States? Last month, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced a new Masters of Arts in Teaching degree, in partnership with the Longy School of Music and Bard College, to position high-level musicians as socially-conscious, engaging teachers in El Sistema-inspired programs in the U.S.
More
Choir director shapes young voices despite losing hers
Port Orchard Independent
Share
The first concern centered on her life. It then shifted to her livelihood.
South Kitsap, Wash., resident Stephanie Charbonneau began studying piano and singing in choirs at age 3.
But a lifetime of honing her craft nearly came to an end when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which wrapped around her vocal cord. She had her first surgery in May 2007.
More
|
|
|
Mobile version