Interview with Paul Salamunovich
Paul Salamunovich is a highly noted conductor who has contributed greatly to the world of choral music. He is internationally known and recognized having conducted numerous choral festivals and clinics throughout the world. He has been the music director of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in North Hollywood, CA since 1949 and is renowned for his work with sacred music, especially Gregorian chant. In 1969, the Vatican honored him with a Papal Knighthood in the order of St.Gregory. He was named Music Director Emeritus of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, in 2001, after serving as its director for ten years. During his tenure, the chorale received a Grammy nomination for Best Choral Performance. Paul Salamunovich has provided the choral music in many feature films and television productions, including “First Knight,” “Air Force One,” “A.I.,” “Sum of All Fears,” “XXX,” and “Peter Pan.” It was a great pleasure and honor to conduct the following interview with this famed conductor.
Simco Formalwear
by Michael Leppert
When you are on stage, your performance is a combination of sound and sight. When you look your best, you feel your best and the audience perceives the subtle difference between a performer who is at ease and one who is not, therefore experiencing the entire performance differently.
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For fast, reliable, extremely affordable custom-made performance formal wear and service relating to it -- for both men and women -- Simco, one of America’s oldest, most-trusted names in formalwear is the resource. Based in the Chicago area, Simco was founded with the intention of restoring the lost art of making fine performance apparel. Simco’s designers follow the concept of simplicity and elegance and their designs are both modern and timeless, giving testimony that design is concealed in apparel simplicity. If they have teachers, they are the fine designers and craftsman of the past century. Simco uses only the highest-quality raw materials and their attention to detail and dedication to simple lines allows the performer an understated, quiet look, causing the audience to be aware of the performer’s voice – not her dress. Simco offers free 30-day fabric swatch samples to ensure that your dress is made from the fabric you desire and they even offer custom alterations and changes on a per-order basis! Just contact them with your wishes and they will do their best to accommodate them!
The Perfect Sound
by Mikey McGuire
It is a well-known fact throughout the choral community that men are beginning to become spots of blue in a sea of pink, or the minority compared to the many women in most choirs. Men just don’t seem to be in the running anymore, and choirs of the 21st century are beginning to suffer. Choral directors are nervous, watching as the once-steady flow of men diminishes into a rather slow drip. This is obviously a major problem, but will time be able to untie this nasty knot, or will it just grow bigger and bigger?
SmartScore 5 by Musitek
By Lennon Leppert and Michael Leppert
SmartScore 5 optical character reading software is an excellent asset for any choral director, conductor, school music department, private music teacher, music librarian – or serious music student, of course. It enables the user to scan in a page of music, transpose or manipulate the music onscreen, then play it back or print it out. SmartScore can convert the finished music to MIDI (.MID) files or to formatted pages via MusicXML (.XML) for importing into Finale, Sibelius and many other music notation software packages.
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Being able to see the page of music and hear it played at the same time is one of the study requirements for learning arranging, orchestrating, conducting and composing in college music courses. SmartScore 5 makes it possible for a student to obtain a piece of sheet music, scan it into the computer and then follow the onscreen music while it is being played back -- again and again -- of course.
SmartScore 5 is the best program I, Lennon, have encountered for recognizing sheet music, transferring it to a digital format and then allowing the user to work with the digital version for other uses. It uses cutting-edge OCR technology for excellent results – far beyond any other similar program I have used.
Traveling With Your Choir
by Maddy Star
Attending the 2003 International Children’s Choir Festival with my choir in Canterbury, England, was one of the greatest experiences of my life. From the very second I arrived in England, I entered a whirlwind of music and friends.
Our dormitory, in a building that resembled a castle, was pleasantly situated facing Canterbury Cathedral. On several occasions, my roommate and I would sit in the windowsills of our room and breathe the summer air while listening to someone singing down the hall.
Each time our voices joined in concert, beauty rang off high ceilings in the magnificent Canterbury Cathedral and then in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, bridging the cathedral's vast history with our choir. Notes flowed from our bodies to the walls of the majestic structures that had stood for centuries and had heard so many voices before ours. Those cathedrals are part of me now, just as our performances are part of their history.
Passports is one of the oldest and most-experienced educational travel companies in the United States. Its founder, Dr. Gilbert Scott Markle, is generally regarded as having created the out-bound American student travel industry in the mid-1960s with the seminal company American Leadership Study Groups.
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Markle, a former Fulbright scholar and Yale PhD, was teaching philosophy at the time at Clark University, in Massachusetts. ALSG grew rapidly, and was soon sponsoring the overseas travel of thousands of high school and college students, and their teachers.
Passports sends small, medium-sized and large groups of travelers all over the world. Although the most popular tours focus on culturally-important European destinations such as London, Paris, Rome and Madrid, travel to places like Russia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Pacific rim countries like Viet Nam is possible as well.
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The Chorus of Westerly
by Michael Leppert
The Chorus of Westerly, in Rhode Island, was founded in 1959 by George Kent, who continues to direct the choir and also possesses the excellent distinction of having their performance hall named after him while he is still able to enjoy the honor! The hall has been praised by such diverse artists as Yo-Yo Ma and Pete Seeger for its peerless acoutstics. The Chorus of Westerly has built a reputation as one of New England’s finest choral groups and hosted the MDR KinderChor of Leipzig in February, 2007.
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In 1993, after using the site to produce a one-week summer choir camp for 26 years, Mr. Kent and his wife, Lynn, purchased the venerable 300-acre grounds of a very old former girls’ summer camp -- Camp Ogontz (near Lisbon) in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Through the generosity of the Kents and volunteers of two choirs in Westerly, Rhode Island, Christ Church and its sister group, the Chorus of Westerly, in pulling Camp Ogontz from the brink of ruin and development, The Chorus of Westerly is today able to sponsor an annual summer choral Symposia at the Camp which always includes stellar guest choral conductors to educate the lucky directors and singers in attendance, illuminating the ancient art of group song, one of the oldest Western art forms.
Youth Music Outreach
by Linda Foster
Music students dreaming of a summer adventure that will stretch them musically and spiritually can fulfill their dream at the Youth Music Outreach Summer Music Camp scheduled for July 9 – 21, 2007 in the beautiful Santa Barbara hillside. Held on the Westmont College campus, YMO’s Summer Music Camp offers a unique two-week residential experience combining top musical training with deep spiritual commitment. This exciting non-denominational program is designed for intermediate and advanced musicians, ages 12 – 18. Students will have the opportunity to play some of the top concert and jazz band compositions, take classes in music theory and history, participate in chamber ensembles, and potentially take master classes by some of the top young professionals on the West Coast.
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Youth Music Outreach is based on the foundational truth that all things are done for and through God. The YMO vision is to be a place where students can freely express their love for Christ while working with the musical talents God has given them. The YMO program challenges students to be a voice that proclaims Christ’s love through their music and way they live their lives. In harmony with YMO’s vision, Summer Music Camp students will perform a variety of concerts for church services, retirement homes, and other community events around the Santa Barbara area and will participate in group and quiet Bible devotions each day.
