Graduate Choral Conducting
The Graduate Choral Conducting Program at The University of Arizona features a wealth of conducting experiences and an academic preparation that will lead to a successful career in choral music. Each student is assigned one of the university’s choral ensembles and a body of repertoire which they rehearse from the beginning through performance every semester the student is in residence. This invaluable mentored experience provides a wealth of podium time in a wide variety of choral settings, from small select mixed choirs of music majors to single gender choirs and large choral ensembles of non-major singers.
Regular applied conducting instruction takes place using the Recital Choir as a laboratory choir, enabling the student to deal with a wide variety of styles and genres that have been explored in the Choral Literature and Techniques seminar. This coordination of academic study combined with the applied experience provides conducting students the means to fully grasp the concepts of musical style and how to elicit these style features from their ensembles.
The Choral Literature and Techniques course, the foundation of the academic study of choral music, provides a four-semester sequence of literature, style and techniques designed to provide the student a thorough knowledge of the choral repertoire. The syllabi are organized by genre-type and demonstrate the origins and developments of each genre-type and enable the student to analyze the score both visually and aurally. In addition, one semester is spent dealing with rehearsal techniques, score reading, hearing for the conductor and problem solving for each level of choir that may be encountered.
Graduates of The University of Arizona with MM and DMA degrees in Choral Conducting have gone on to teach and conduct at colleges, universities, schools, churches, community groups and professional arts producing organizations. To date, the program boasts a 100% placement record in colleges and universities around the country of the DMA graduates who have sought such positions.
The Graduate Choral Conducting program at UA is the only program in the county to produce a finalist in all three of the last ACDA Conducting Competitions, taking first-place honors in 2005. In addition, both doctoral and masters level students have been published in The Choral Journal and in the most recent GIA publication, Teaching Music Through Performance in Choir.