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The Voice

Chorus America's award-winning quarterly magazine, The Voice, highlights chorus news, artistic initiatives in the choral world, and advice and commentary on the business of running a successful chorus. The Voice is distributed to nearly 2,000 choral leaders throughout North America. It is published in Spring, Summer, and Fall/Winter; ISSN 1074-0805. Browse articles and past issues in the tabs below. Editor, Liza W. Beth

Advocacy 101

Are you interested in getting more involved in advocacy work around the issues that matter to you, your chorus, or the choral field at large? Here’s where to start.

(See also: Advocacy Resources)

Waiting to Take Wing: Premieres Deferred

In the Summer 2020 issue of Chorus America's magazine, the Voice, we published a number of special features that highlighted the choral community's response in the wake of COVID-19. Among countless affected performances during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic were eagerly anticipated world premieres—works such as Damien Geter’s African American Requiem with Portland, Oregon’s Resonance Ensemble (for more, see Secular Requiems) that explore timely and meaningful topics and involve collaborations, often spanning long periods, distances, or both. We asked several choruses about their premieres that were put on hold and their developing plans to find a way to share these new pieces of music with the world.

New Works for New Times: Summer Voice Feature on Composers

In the Summer 2020 issue of Chorus America's magazine, the Voice, we published a number of special features that highlighted the choral community's response in the wake of COVID-19. This section spotlights composers who have risen to the moment by creating new work in direct response to the pandemic, some in unique fashions.

Voice Magazine, Issue 43.4 - Summer 2020

This special Virtual Conference issue of the Voice features a Chorus Connections section focused on creative responses to COVID, articles on artistic director transitions and secular requiems, and an interview with Virtual Conference plenary speaker Nina Simon.

 

Singing of Loss, Saving through Memory: The Healing Power of Secular Requiems

Music’s prominence in the sacred sphere has shaped some of the most enduring genres of choral music in Western culture, such as the requiem mass. For more than a century, composers have found resonance in the requiem outside its traditional religious framework — a resonance that has acquired new intensity in recent years. Here is a look at four American composers of today who have adapted the idea of the sacred requiem to secular expressions that commemorate loss and encourage healing. Their music responds to a wide spectrum of inspirations—and perhaps has even more relevance in a world coping with suffering and loss in a new way.

Visions of New Leadership: Lessons from Five Artistic Director Searches

Several choral music organizations find themselves seeking or transitioning to new artistic leaders at a time when shifting circumstances call on them to consider challenging new directions, not the least of which is the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of these challenges, what are choruses in transition thinking about the kind of leadership they need? How do they manage to find it? How will they and their new artistic directors define and achieve success next season, not to mention seasons beyond?

How to Be Of, By, and for All: An Interview with Nina Simon

Nina Simon’s work as an author, change leader, and activist is all about creating more open, generous, community-focused organizations. She is the founder and CEO of OF/BY/FOR ALL, a nonprofit organization that provides tools to help civic and cultural organizations matter more to more people. Today, over 50 organizations are using the OF/BY/FOR ALL framework to build relationships, relevance, and impact in their communities.

Voice Magazine, Issue 43.3 - Spring 2020

Feature articles in the 2020 Spring Voice include:

  • Building Audiences for Children and Youth Choruses
  • Responding to the Border Crisis in Song
  • How Can We Keep Them Singing?  Older Singers and Their Place in the Choral Community

To open the magazine in full screen view, click on dashed box icon on the lower right hand corner.

Responding to the Border Crisis in Song

These days, news from the U.S.-Mexico border is fraught with tension. Increased U.S. restrictions on asylum-seekers have left hundreds of migrants from Central America and elsewhere stranded on the Mexican side of the border, and relations between the two countries have been strained. In response, various cultural and human rights groups are reaching across the border to help stranded migrants and to reinforce the historic bonds between the two countries. Among them are a handful of choral music organizations, including two choral initiatives centered on the San Diego-Tijuana border region.

Board Term Limits: What’s Best for Your Chorus?

Do your board members serve for prescribed terms? Two years? Three years? Do you limit the number of terms they can serve? After checking with choruses across the U.S.—emerging and mature, staffed and all-volunteer, and in varying stages of evolution—consultant Susan Howlett discovered that some chorus boards have term limits, some do not, and others have them but enforce them inconsistently. She explores what might be best for your chorus.

A Century of Affirming African American Musical Identity

(NANM board members in 1941, Foster Memorial Hall, Pittsburgh. Pictured are Blanche K. Thompson, Josephine Inness, Henry L. Grant, Mary Cardwell Dawson, Clarence Hayden Wilson, and Florence B. Price. Photo credit: Carnegie Museum of Art, Charles "Teenie" Harris Archive)

Voices of Change: Building a More Inclusive Choral Community

A panel discussion at the 2019 Conference capped off Chorus America’s inaugural “Voices of Change” program—an effort to foster more collaboration and inclusiveness in the Philadelphia-area choral community and provide leaders with education on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Now the time has come to identify insights from this cohort that are relevant to choruses elsewhere. What might choral leaders expect when venturing into DEI discussions and attempting to build new connections in their choral communities? Voices of Change participants, facilitator Nicole Robinson, and Chorus America staff reflect on what was gained over the course of the year, as well as seeds planted that will take continued work to nurture.

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