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2012 Summer Choral Composers Forum
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Choral Composers one and all!
Many of us have the desire to write, but it's hard to find dedicated time when we're not asked to juggle all the day-to-day pressing issues of life. It's difficult to take the personal time, find the quiet space, and a community of like-minded composers interested in supporting our efforts.
The Lehigh Choral Composers Forum, in association with the ACDA, offers a unique opportunity to composers of all levels to explore and develop their compositional voices in a weeklong intensive seminar held at Lehigh University's beautiful Zoellner Arts Center. The emphasis of the Forum is on the compositional process. Composers accepted into the program are asked to come with ideas, not finished pieces. In the course of the week, these ideas are developed, discussed, and tried out in rehearsals with the professional a cappella ensemble, The Princeton Singers.
Under the leadership of Steven Sametz and Steven Stucky, composers are encouraged to be adventurous. This is an opportunity you may never have again: to hear a professional ensemble read through a portion of a work one day, get feedback, rework it, and hear it another way at rehearsal the next day.
Each morning, seminars led by Sametz and Stucky help composers to develop their unique compositional voices. Afternoons, there is one-on-one time with each student sharing individual ideas with the mentor-composers. This is an environment that supports compositional risk-taking as well as building on what you already do well.
On Friday, June 29th, an informal concert of the works created in the seminar will be held at Lehigh University's Baker Hall, a 900-seat state-of-the-art concert hall. Composers come away with a professional-quality recording of their works by The Princeton Singers. This year, the works will also receive a second performance as part of the ACDA's National Symposium on American Choral Music taking place June 29-30 in Washington, DC. For this performance, which will take place on June 30th, the entire forum will go "off-site" and travel (included in course fee) to Washington, D.C.
The week also includes information and discussion on the ever-shifting world of music publication. How do we best get our works out there? How are publishers looking at new compositions? How can we best market our works to get as many performances as possible? Many works from past Lehigh Composers' Forums have been published by major publishing houses.
The seminar is co-sponsored by The American Choral Directors Association and is available for graduate credit through ACDA.
The Lehigh Choral Composers Forum is co-sponsored by Lehigh University Choiral Arts and the American Choral Directors Associations