Steven started this great idea about 9-10 year ago-- a week long bootcamp for aspiring choral composers/arrangers to start a new piece or two from scratch, hit the ground running, write like maniacs every day AND hear their sketches sung every day by Steven's fine professional group, the Princeton Singers. This was Steven Sametz' and Lehigh's invention, and it went really well the first year, from what I heard.
The next year, 2002, Steven got Oxford University Press (USA), at that point run very ably by Chris Johnson, to collaborate. Oxford (with some of the decisions being made by the UK management) decided to expand the event by adding in a "festival" adult choir to the composer element in hopes of drawing more people and more income to the event. For a few years this was the format, but the festival choir element never really took hold, as many quality amateur singers in the area (and there are a lot, this is Bethlehem Bach Choir country) already had pretty strong allegiances to singing at the Berkshire Festival off and on.
But in the meantime Steven had great guest composer mentors such as Libby Larsen, Bob Chilcott, and so on working with the aspiring composers and things really took off. Oxford was able to discover some, at that point, totally unknown composers such as yours truly (I attended 2002 and 2003 to compose, and 2004 to work on my conducting with Nicholas Cleobury), Reg Unterseher, Jon Rommereim, Ellen Voth, Valerie Crescenz, Jonathan David, and a whole bunch of other very talented folks. Oxford was able to, in short time, add about 40 quality pieces into their catalog from the composers at the event, no small accomplishment by the composers or by OUP.
However, things kind of unraveled. As I said, the festival choir element never really gelled, although people like Nick Cleobury and Tom Hall gave it their all (hey, I just rhymed) and Oxford UK seemed to grow weary of the event and/or lack of income. They finally pulled the plug on their support which to me totally sucked (yeah, I can say that, it's my blog). To me, this was OUP UK not respecting (or jealous of?) OUP USA as run by Chris Johnson-- a real shame that they decided to not respect Chris' vision for what OUP USA Music Department could achieve.
I believe Steven Sametz did the event at least once or twice since then with its original intent, as a composer/professional choir workshop for new choral compositions. I'm thrilled that Steven and Lehigh went back to their original idea and did that.
I am also thrilled to see that Steven, Lehigh and now ACDA are collaborating on this event this summer. I wish them all the success in the world and for any of you aspiring choral composers/arrangers of any age- PLEASE sign up and attend. I guarantee you that it will be worth it- the chance to work with Steven, Chen Yi, the Princeton Singers, and the collegial atmosphere you will find there will be life-changing for you.
And finally, I will never forget the amazing sessions we had with Bob Chilcott one summer- Bob's tiny handwritten immaculate notes he prepared for seminars, his supportiveness, his earnest and intense beliefs about the intent of musical composition, and for sure his ability to blow off some steam and amuse all of us with insanely funny King's Singers stories- what a blast.
So... here is the link to ACDA's page about this event. Go, sign up already!
http://acda.org/index.php?q=summer-choral-composers-forum
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