Michael McGlynn and the Anúna International Choral Summer School

 For those of you who are big Michael McGlynn/Anúna fans, especially you here in the US (yes, I also have readers all over the globe- the biggest base is in Russia, a bit surprising to me), I'd like to let you know that Michael will be at Dallas ACDA promoting his Anúna International Choral Summer School. The folks I have met who attended the first offering of this school  are all abuzz with excitement about the experience and this coming summer he has a great cast of guest teachers, including Grammy award-winning American conductor Charle Bruffy. I first met Michael when he came to Chicago for the last national conference in my hometown of Chicago when the final day happened to fall on St. Paddy's Day and the ACDA main conference hotel was also the base hotel for the gigantic Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade. Here is what Michael had to say about that day in his blog:

My experiences to date in the USA have been pretty limited or unrealistic. They usually involve moving daily from place to place on tour with my choir Anúna, or attending business meetings that don’t allow you to get a sense of a city or town except in the most superficial way.  This was one of the reasons why I was very happy to stay in Chicago for a week, although it hadn’t struck me that it was also St. Patrick’s week, and that the city has a huge Irish-American community, ably represented by my friend and local guide Eamonn Cummins.

 My non-choral moments included an architectural boat trip in sub-zero temperatures that was pretty thrilling, a sublime and unexpectedly joyful visit to Old St Patrick’s Church and a silent rugby match being beamed into a bar full of people dressed in green that were oblivious to the unfolding tragic Irish drama on the screen. There was a green river, plastic shamrocks, and hopeful tee-shirts with various slogans on them indicating that the wearer needed some form of close physical congress with you because they were pretending to be Irish for one day only. Maybe they weren’t pretending… having left a country soaking in a mire of negativity, these good-humoured and well-behaved revellers have redefined what it means to be Irish. Ireland isn’t just a place anymore. It’s a state of mind.

Michael and I have stayed in touch over the last two years and we have had some nice conversations about changes in the choral publishing world and other things. I also let him know that my nine year old boy hums Anúna songs around the house- and not my music! Oh well-haha. Recently Michael let me know he would be in Dallas and I offered to get the word out, so here is an intro from him and more info about the summer school:

Michael McGlynn

In 2012 Anúna celebrated its 25th Anniversary. Rather than have a standard "celebration" of what has to be the oddest career C.V. in choral music, I decided to define what it was that makes Anúna so unusual and unique. So, from mid 2012 to early this year we created a choral vocabulary which, surprise surprise, we call "The Anúna Technique". 

While the ideas that define it are simple, they turn many accepted concepts about choral technique on their head. The beauty of this Technique is that it is as simple or as complex as you need it to be, appealing to children and choral professionals equally.

The uniquely isolated nature of Anúna's development has resulted in the announcement of a second Anúna International Choral Summer School which will focus on the practical application of these techniques and its associated ideas.

The Anúna International Choral SummerSchool

In the past quarter century Anúna, Ireland's National Choir, has gained international recognition as one of the world's  most original choral ensembles. It is renowned for its  mesmerising sound and atmospheric stage performances. Under the guidance of composer/director Michael McGlynn, Anúna has created specific and effective techniques for both solo  and choral singers. These techniques are, in many ways,  revolutionary and yet simple in concept.
This year's Summer School will take place in the beautiful  setting of Dublin's Merrion Square. The School is suitable for solo vocalists, choral singers, choral composers, music students and choral conductors. Michael McGlynn and  Education co-ordinator/choral clinician Lucy Champion  will be joined by a panel of international vocal experts.  Topics will include : ~ Singing workshops focussing on the physicality of singing ~ Individual and group singing lessons ~ Advanced vocal & choral techniques applied practically ~ Lectures, seminars and participatory discussions ~ Social events ~ Participation in a performance with Anúna ~ Analysis and performance of McGlynn's choral music.
Michael McGlynn is rapidly becoming one of the  best-known writers of choral music today.  His musical language combines elements of medieval  and traditional music (modality, complex rhythmic structures,  ornamentation and drones) with jazz-tinged chordal clusters  and a distinctive melodic sensibility.  In 1987 he founded the choral group ANÚNA  whose repertoire features his compositions  almost exclusively. His choral music has been  recorded and performed by Chanticleer, Rajaton,  the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, the Dale Warland Singers,  Conspirare, the BBC Singers, Kansas City Chorale,  Phoenix Chorale and Cantus. He has led choral workshops in the Netherlands,  Japan, Sweden, the USA, the UK, Poland and  most recently at the Shanghai Conservatory in China.
Email summerschool@anuna.ie for further details and  registration requirements www.anuna.ie / www.michaelmcglynn.com

Boys Power Sing-Amazing Rote Singing and Drumming

Boys Power Sing!

I’m blogging live from the Young Naperville Singers “Boys Power Sing “held at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois. (Visit www.neuquamusic.org)In an effort to get more boys singing (yay- there is more to life than football, yes?), Angie Johnson’s Young Naperville Singers organization (visit www.youngnapervillesingers.org ) sponsors this event every fall and invites their own boy singers as well as any boy in the community who wants to attend (and hopefully they will want to join a Young Naperville Singers choir after the experience).
















The boys started out doing some great fun call and response and African style drumming led by Neuqua Valley High School chorus director Ryan Rimington. The event started at 9 AM and runs until 12:30 or so. There are over one hundred attentive boys in attendance- mostly in the eight to twelve year old range.

After Ryan’s call and response drumming session the boys started doing some very cool quasi-yodeling of an Austrian folk song, led by Jay Kellner, also from Neuqua Valley High School. For those of you who don’t know about Neuqua Valley, it’s one of the leading high schools in the country, both in teacher/student achievement and standards and boasts tremendous school physical facilities as well. The music department has been recognized nationally by the Grammy organization as a “Singnature” school of excellence in 2000, 2001, and 2005. So far everything has been taught by rote, by repetition, bodies are moving, and the boys are engaged and paying attention.

Shifting gears now, Ryan is back in charge, talking to the boys about what instruments they have around the house, how much fun it is to talk or sing with a microphone, and being silly with them. Now he’s taking some of the kids’ names and they are making up cool vamps/call and responses based on a kid’s name- great fun! He has continued on and actually has them singing in three parts, all by rote, and sounding very cool! Body motions and helping then feel some inner rhythms are part of the deal- and there still isn’t a piece of sheet music in sight.

Jay Kellner is back up front and has brought out about thirty male singers from the high school. They’re now singing the Austrian folk song that Jay started teaching the young boys awhile back. This gives the young boys a chance to see how much fun guys can have singing (the choir is hamming things up a bit!). They then launched into a Ladysmith Black Mombazo song. After they did this, Jay let some of the young boys try to conduct a few phrases of the song- imagine that, ten year olds getting a chance to conduct a group of over one hundred voices (and they did well).

Another change in gears- letting go of the young virile cave man drumming/ethnic folk thing and learning the very sweet, yet fairly angular melody of “Let me call you sweetheart”. This went well and fine doing the melody in head tones “loohs”, but when Jay introduced the lyrics young boys were giggling and gagging—“love”, “sweetheart”?-- kind of icky, right? Actually a pretty humorous moment, but Jay stuck with it and they learned the tune!

A break for pizza, juice, and a cool game at the lunch tables with the HS boys supervising nicely (my son Aidan especially liked interacting with the HS boy at his table), and then back to more singing and fun.

Finally, around 12:15 there was a quick run-through of all the mini-tunes and then a mini-concert for the 200 or so parents and siblings reassembled to listen and then take their boy home. The program went really well, the audience really appreciated everything , and it really was amazing- in three hours over one hundred young men, many with almost no singing experience learned (without sheet music) enough songs to put on such an entertaining mini-concert full of fun and positive energy- quite incredible. Let’s hope that a fair number of these boys now join Young Naperville Singers or at least consider joining their school choir.

Congratulations to Ryan Rimington and Jay Kellner for their inspired leadership during the day and also to Angie Johnson and the Young Naperville Singers organization for putting on this event, now in its ninth year.

Let’s all of us music leaders around the country do our part to get more and more boys and men singing. It’s only a recent US societal phenomena that playing or just being a couch-potato observer of highly competitive sports seems to have become an obsession in the minds of boys and men. Not that long ago singing was considered very manly, very virile. We need to get back to that viewpoint and refuse to give in to the idea that the only manly thing there is out there for boys and men to do are embracing sports where now only winning matters and succumbing to the mindset that winning at all costs in the business world is also an honorable thing. I actually get up on my soapbox at any of my guest conducting gigs and talk about this- even if I’m in front of a women’s choir (I ask then to recruit the boys/men in their life into joining a choir). We can turn the tide if we all work together and talk about it! If we ignore this issue, we will not have male singers for our mixed choirs before long- we all have to work on this NOW for the sake of the future.

I’m going to next look into what Charles Bruffy has done for awhile out in Phoenix and try to blog about his big men’s and boy’s power singing event as soon as I know more about it. And if any of you know of similar events, let me know about them please.

Thanks for reading,

Paul

Another guest blog by composer Reg Unterseher from NW ACDA

More from Reg Unterseher reporting from the NW ACDA Conference in Seattle

Please visit Reg's website at www.reginaldunterseher.com

Reg says:

I am reminded that when the level of performance at these events overall is high, my tolerance for performances that are merely good is quite low. I am not alone in that respect. I am a little disappointed in myself for that. But only a little. My ears are full! I am not going to be able to get to all the concerts tomorrow, even though they all look like they would be worth going to.

I got to the first concert session late, just in time to sort of hear (from outside the door) Carol Stenson’s South Salem High School choir sing your "Mashed Potato/Love Poem". The audience was clearly getting it, and loved the choir. Also in the same concert session was a well-programmed, beautifully sung set by the Western Washington University’s Advanced Women’s Chorale with Tim Fitzpatrick. Of particular note was the Magnificat by Christina Donkin. It was sung in a circle, with 4 singers in the middle, with their backs to each other. The quartet sang with remarkable expressive and tonal unity, all without being able to see each other, and without a conductor. They were deeply musically connected, listening in an absolutely focused way that was riveting. Also, the standing in the round truly produced a particular color and depth to the sound that was remarkable.

The afternoon concert session started with the Alla Breve Women’s Chorus with Marcia Patton, made of mostly alums and mothers of the Casper Children’s Chorale. I love it when people make that connection to singing for their whole lives! Community choruses sometimes don’t fare so well at these events, and come up with programs that are outside their strengths, but these women were spot on. They used music for some pieces, had the courage to sing from memory on some, and even used the folders in a creative way for some stage business.

The other standout was Sharon Paul’s University of Oregon Chamber Choir. The first thing that struck me was the healthy, clear, focused sound, the kind of singing that makes you sit back and be willing to be taken wherever they want to go. It was also another wonderful example of good programming, pieces that treated us as a normal audience, not people they had to impress somehow. They gave terrific readings of your "My Friend Elijah" and "Vending Machine" from "Play with your Food!", with just the right amount of physical movement. When they sang the Stanford “The Blue Bird,” I was absolutely transported.

The evening concert started with what may turn out to be the highlight of the whole series for me, a performance of “Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae” by Mäntyjärvi, by The Phoenix Chorale with Charles Bruffy. It is a deeply moving work, and I found myself completely wrapped up in the music itself. Not until it was over did I even begin to think about what a gorgeous choral sound, full range of colors, perfect tuning, and amazing balance it was that took me there. When the Soweto Gospel Choir came on, it was the perfect counterpoint to the Pärt, Whitacre, Gjeilo, and Lauridsen the Phoenix Chorale had sung. The singing, dancing and drumming were such a complete unit, and so full of joy and life. They did not need the over-driven amplification, which muddied things up a bit. Even so, the audience absolutely ate it up.

I am going to miss the concerts today, unfortunately, and I am sure there will be something I really should have heard. I got to hear some of the High School Men’s Honor Choir rehearsal led by Timothy Peter, and those young men sounded fantastic.

My suggestion for the next conference is to hire a whole bunch of massage therapists. If people visit enough booths in the exhibits, they get a free massage in a room with no music or sounds at all. My version of that was to go to World Spice Merchants down by Pike Street Market. Going in there and just breathing in and out gave some other senses the opportunity to balance out the aural overload that this many concerts builds up in my brain. I wish we could decree that there be no music in the lobbies and restaurants and elevators of the convention hotels while we are there, we need the break!

-- Reg Unterseher