Los Angles Master Chorale High School Choir Festival
Founded by the Master Chorale Associates in 1989, the 21st Annual High School Choir Festival will be held on April 16, 2010 and will bring together more than 25 schools and 900 students for a day of singing under the baton of music director Grant Gershon. This year, the Festival will be a part of the “Americas and Americans” Festival at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The Festival includes a year-long mentoring process between the choir directors and the Master Chorale’s music director. Participating ensembles prepare the Festival selections on their own throughout the year. In the spring, students attend an area rehearsal where they rehearse the selections with fellow students as well as participate in a master class facilitated by members of the LAMC Chamber Singers. On the Festival Day, all participating ensembles arrive at the Walt Disney Concert Hall where they perform the selections as a massed chorus of voices. Participating ensembles may also audition to be featured in the Showcase of Choirs, where they are featured center stage to an audience of their peers.
For more information, visit www.lamc.org.
Dr. Phil Foundation Launches Little Kids Rock Across America
The Dr. Phil Foundation has launched Little Kids Rock Across America with a $500,000 donation designed to restore, revitalize, and enhance musical programs in schools in 10 cities across the country. The program brings music education to school children from grades K through 12 in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Tampa, and two additional cities to be named by the end of 2009.
A CD featuring some of the school children’s original compositions was distributed to the press and is available on the Little Kids Rock Web site. Fender is a corporate sponsor of Little Kids Rock and has also donated to the program.
For more information, visit www.littlekidsrock.org.
ACDA and ChoralNet Merge
ChoralNet board of directors has approved a motion to dissolve the non-profit corporation ChoralNet, Inc. and merge ChoralNet operations with the American Choral Directors Association, which went into effect on January 1, 2010.
The ACDA members who are not already using ChoralNet forums will begin to do so as ACDA moves to use ChoralNet as its main form of communication. With new resources available, ChoralNet will add new features more quickly and branch out into new online endeavors. because the volunteer work that has sustained Choralnet has been sustained by volunteer staff and augmented by staff in the national headquarters of ACDA and by ACDA’s network of elected and appointed leadership.
To find out more, visit www.choralnet.org.
CMA Donates to Nashville School Music Programs
The Country Music Association has donated $1,066,632 its largest music education donation to date to Nashville public schools through its Keep the Music Playing campaign. The CMA Music Festival will Keep the Music Playing in Nashville’s public schools with a charity initiative that will support music education through a partnership with the Nashville Alliance for Public Education.
The donated dollars come from proceeds made during the CMA Music Festival, which finds major country stars performing (and waiving their performance fees) at LP Field and at other downtown spots each June. The CMA has now donated more than $3.3 million in recent years to support area music education through a partnership with the Nashville Alliance for Public Education.
That money has been used to build music labs, to purchase more than 2,500 instruments and to help endow the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Words and Music program, which assists language arts and music teachers with classroom instruction in songwriting basics. At a time when music education funding is being cut across the nation, the CMA’s donation is helping to ensure that students are able to play music at school.
To find out more, visit www.cmafest.com.
OrchKids Receives $1 Million Gift
OrchKids, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s educational initiative launched last year at an inner city school, has received a $1 million gift from Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker. The Baltimore philanthropists were among the early supporters of the project, which received its initial seed money of $100,000 from BSO music director Marin Alsop. Currently, more than 150 pre-K to second-graders are part of the OrchKids program at Lockerman Bundy. The Meyerhoff/Becker gift is estimated to cover 50 percent of the expenses over the next four years, as more grades are added to the program; more than 300 students are eventually expected to participate.
For more information, visit www.bsomusic.org.
