Why attend Conferences, Conventions and Workshops?
Well, for me, it was 1973. I’d been teaching seven years, and resisted going anywhere for anything extra, due to the amount of time my jobs consumed that would take me away from my family. I was teaching high school and also a church choir, plus having some private students. Elaine and I were already expecting our son, and planned on another child in a few years.
People had talked to me about MSVA [later MSVMA] and ACDA, but I resisted. Why do I need those? But in the spring and summer of 1973 I relented, attending the ACDA National Convention in Kansas City, and the MSVA Alma Summer Workshop. I was hooked. Who could stay away from things like:
1. ACDA-Roger Wagner talking to the assembled choir directors in Kansas City, including a remark that some people may think all you need is desire to sing in a church choir. Not so, said Roger: “God has perfect pitch!”
2. MSVA-Giff Richards leading the session at the Alma Workshop on voice placement, including discussions on the vocal lift to determine voice type, and not just range and quality. It changed the whole approach of this piano player turned choir director. I still deal with accompanists who merely tolerate my suggestions for singing better in tune, including better breathing, proper registration, lifting of the eyebrows, etc., when their gut reaction is to tell the singers to “just sing the right notes.”
3. Summer Workshop at Oakland University-Paul Salamunovich leading rehearsals and a performance of the Duruflé Requiem, during which the choir folk had the greatest trouble following him, since he wasn’t directing beats, but phrases in chant style. They did much better in the Haydn “Te Deum.” But in the end Duruflé trumped Haydn.
4. MSVA-Ed Lojeski talking about doing music for film scores, where one had to know exactly how many seconds each piece was, and plan the flow and arrival moments mathematically.
5. Singing with Robert Shaw twice, once at the Meadowbrook Festival at Oakland University in 1967 [OK I relented early] including performances of the Beethoven 9th Symphony, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and J. S. Bach’s St John Passion, and a second time at the 1971 Blossom Music Festival at Kent State University, where 40 of us sang in a performance of the Haydn “Creation”, and no one missed a note, since we all could read well. The entire time was spent on other musical and textual issues. What a dream experience for a young choir director.
6. Singing for John Wustman [also at the Meadowbrook Festival, this time in 1969] and being told one shouldn’t rightfully sing Schubert’s Ave Maria in Latin, since it’s a German art song about the earthly Mary [OK—I know German], translated into German from a Walter Scott poem, and not a liturgical setting for use in the Mass, as is the Bach Gounod “Ave Maria.” Well, at least one couldn’t sing it in Latin in a Catholic Church until Jackie Kennedy requested it for her husband’s memorial service. How would anyone find out such things, if one stayed home? And I also learned, from John Wustman, that one is supposed to play “all the notes” in Schubert art songs. I was accompanying a young lady, and was faking some of the parts I was not up to doing literally.
7. ACDA—hearing William Dawson and Jester Hairston speak about experiencing the spiritual. I’ll never feel the same about Hairston’s “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” after his telling of how it was to have one’s children sold into slavery, and never see them again.
8. MSVMA/ACDA—experiencing myriad choral directors and composers, conducting their own pieces at the Alma and, later, MSU and Lansing Conventions, and ACDA regional and national conventions. Where else would one sing for Anton Armstrong, Jean Ashworth Bartle, Jerry Blackstone, Gil Jackson, Joseph Jennings, Craig Hella Johnson, John Leavitt, Richard Mathey, Helmut Rilling, Ned Rorem, John Rutter, André Thomas, Dale Warland, and the like?
9. MSVMA—having my middle and high school students experience the expertise of Michigan and nationally recognized experts in the MSVMA Honors Choir programs. How can one have those experiences at home? At the risk of sounding sappy, it’s almost like the person who says he/she can experience God alone on a mountain top. Maybe so, but how much better is it to have that experience in church situations with other seekers?
10. MSVMA—conducting an Honors Choir, an ensemble at the Michigan Music Conference, my Madrigal Singers perform and having multiple students sing at the Youth Arts Festival, by virtue of being chosen as Youth Arts finalists, and even having one win it. These things don’t happen if you stay in your own backyard.
11. Who can forget, who was there at the 1981 National ACDA New Orleans convention, singing with Robert Shaw J. S. Bach’s “Dona Nobis Pacem” in that amazing cathedral a day after hearing his “Missa Solemnis”?
12. And how about when the Moses Hogan Chorale burst on the national scene at the ACDA National Convention in Washington D.C.?
13. Probably the best of the best, however, was at an Ohio ACDA Workshop at Bowling Green State University where Keith Hampton and Weston Noble attended each other’s sessions and shared their thoughts about each other with all of us. That made me go out on a limb and invite Keith to Grosse Ile to work with my church choir. To my utter surprise, he accepted. It was one of the most inspiring worship services we’ve ever had.
14. How about the inspiration of hearing Carol Barnett’s “Bluegrass Mass” performed by the Philip Brunell Ensemble at the Michigan ACDA Fall Conference at Calvin College several years ago? ‘Twas enough to give me the courage to perform it with the Grosse Ile Chorale two years ago.
15. And now that I’m retired from the public schools, I still attend five conferences and workshops a year. When someone asks me “why are you here?” I can easily answer that I still have a church choir, three community choirs, several private students. All of them need the latest and best music available to perform. I still love to learn from the amazing musicians that present at these conventions, conferences and workshops, plus I get to hang out with my choral colleagues and eat at some of the country’s finest restaurants. Who would give it up? Not me. I’m going to keep going until I can’t.
