News & Views Friday, April 26, 2024

Stanton’s Sheet Music is pleased to announce our 18th annual Excellence in Choral Literature Clinic on Saturday, August 27, 2011! This session was designed to help you select concert and contest literature from some of choral music's most distinguished composers, featuring the best in new music for mixed, treble, and men’s choirs at all levels of difficulty. Registration fee includes a complimentary packet of over 30 titles. Come join us to discover beautiful music and share ideas with colleagues and friends! For more information, please check out our video below, contact us by email, or call us at 1.800.426.8742.

Click here to watch video

Every now and then a great textbook comes along that just can’t be beat. Such is the case with JAZZ PEDAGOGY, The Jazz Educator’s Handbook and Resource Guide.

Written in 2002 by Dick Dunscomb and Dr. Willie Hill, this book continues to be the benchmark “go to” book for newbie teachers and veterans alike. Granted, some of the references to technology and specific big band arrangements are a bit outdated, the rest of the book is chock full of applicable material from advocacy to the nuts and bolts of rehearsing a band.

A weakness that all jazz educators will confess to is a propensity to “teach to what you know”. Nowhere is this more apparent than when dealing with rhythm sections in a big band. The practical background of many jazz educators is a wind instrument and the rhythm section becomes the elephant in the room that is almost an afterthought. Directors rehearse important things like intonation and rhythm but end up ignoring the ALL important jazz concepts like form, time and feel. Those aspects of jazz all trickle down from the rhythm section and effect the performance of all members of the ensemble.

Anyway… off of my soapbox now! JAZZ PEDAGOGY is the resource I go to at the start of every school year to review what to do with my rhythm section to get them up to speed in a hurry. The students appreciate it too! Once they hear what happens when you use the correct voicing or play the correct style, they’ll begin to understand their responsibility and place in the ensemble.

JAZZ PEDAGOGY… get it today from Stanton’s Sheet Music!

The Jazz Guy

As you prepare for your first concert of the school year, Stanton's Sheet Music suggests that you consider one of these outstanding selections for your high school choir:

From master arranger Jack Halloran, who gave us Witness, Camptown Races and many other all-time favorites, comes a previously undiscovered arrangement of The Gospel Train.  This arrangement displays Jack’s mastery of the a cappella sound and his ability to make a piece connect with the audience.

Exciting choral writing, strong rhythmic textures, and dramatic dynamic contrasts all characterize Hold Steady with the Gate, an exuberant original spiritual from Greg Gilpin.  Optional solos for all parts offer opportunities for individual singers to shine in this incredible show stopper that is certain to bring audiences to their feet.

Add some zest to your next concert and pull out all the stops with this playful, hoedown-like arrangement of Old Dan Tucker.  The inventive accompaniment sparks new life into this well-known tune and enhances the ever-present creative choral writing.

With an optional part for snare drum, the original spiritual On My Way to Jordan features a steady walking-tempo and an uplifting text. “When we cross that river to the other side, what a meeting it will be.”

In this contemporary setting of Sure on This Shining Night, the beauty of James Agee’s iconic text is reflected in rich choral sonorities and an engaging accompaniment.  An exquisite choice for more advanced ensembles.

For more suggestions, check out our video below, or contact us!

Click here to watch video

Evenings at the Opera: An Exploration of the Basic Repertoire is a collection of essays based on Jeffrey Langford‘s lectures at the Manhattan School of Music and inspired by his pre-performance talks at the Metropolitan Opera Guild. It presents a unique view of the stylistic development of nearly 200 years of opera history (from Mozart to Britten), with special attention to the question of how the genre’s competing components of action, music, and text combine to make effective music drama. Taking a thematic (rather than a purely historical) approach to this exploration of selected works from the standard repertoire, Langford engages the reader in the fundamental question of how the shifting aesthetics of opera from one composer to another, one country to another, and one era to another have resulted in vastly different solutions to the problem of how to make a dramma per musica (drama in music), as the Italian inventors of opera first called it. Going beyond mere plot synopsis, he guides the reader through analysis of specific issues of musical form, style, and technique to shed new light on the perennial question of “how opera (sometimes) works.”

For more opera and classical vocal resources, please contact Stanton's!

Please join us for a Stanton's Sheet Music sponsored Sacred Organ Reading Clinic! Brian Johnson, organist at Broad Street United Methodist Church, will be our featured clinician, and will be presenting music at various difficulty levels from some of the most popular publishers. Spend the morning listening to new selection for Advent and Christmas along with many other recommendations for your church services.

Stanton's Sacred Organ Reading Clinic, Saturday September 10th, 2011
Broad Street United Methodist Church
501 East Broad Street
Columbus, OH 43215

Registration begins at 8:30 am
Clinic is 9:00 am-12:30 pm
Cost: $10.00

For additional information or to pre-register, please contact the Stanton's keyboard staff at 614-224-4257 ext. 3.

As a music educator, have you ever wondered what you could do to be more successful? Have you ever wondered if there was a resource available that had all the essentials; the secrets that would help you guide your students to become highly proficient, independent musicians? Your search is over!

The Secrets of Sight Singing Success by Nick Long boils down all the methods, approaches, and mountains of research into an enjoyable, easy, and even entertaining read. From building rhythmic and tonal vocabularies to classroom management, The Secrets of Sight Singing Success covers it all. Let’s face it, as a music educator, you’re busy! You’ve got lots to plan for and lots to do each and every day. At the same time, you want to keep improving and expand your horizons in order to help our students succeed. If you will only take the time to read and implement the secrets of the 4S philosophy, you will find much success and enjoyment in the years to come.

To supplement your teaching, try Solfege Circles - a must for any choir director, elementary music teacher or student of music education.  Available in both Standard (diatonic with altered tones) and Pentatonic sets, they're perfect for classroom display on any magnetic surface (magnets included) or as tabletop manipulatives. 

For more quality sight singing resources for your choir or classroom, please contact us!

Are you and your students already fans of “Freddie the Frog” and all of his adventures by Sharon Burch. Now there is a new resource available to help better integrate Freddie with your music classroom lessons

BEYOND THE BOOKS: TEACHING WITH FREDDIE THE FROG
Teaching Tips, Tools and Assessment
Teach with Freddie the Frog® and kids fall in love with music! And now, teachers can go ‘beyond the books’ and expand musical learning with a valuable resource and CD-ROM. Teaching tips, tools and assessment strategies include: 14 sequential lessons, teacher tips to keep the wiggliest kids captivated, reproducible student flashcards, assessment strategies and reports, 25 educational coloring pages, interactive whiteboard activities, Freddie the Frog Clip Art, and more!

Also available (but too new to picture) is the Eli the Elephant puppet! Now you can include Freddie’s best friend in the storytelling and fun whenever you use these books in your music classroom.

Contact us for more information on these and other elementary music products.

OK, it’s time for some dessert! Actually, it’s always time for some dessert!

This recipe is pretty close to the one served up at The Cabin Restaurant about 50 miles west of New Orleans. It goes especially well with that special blend of chicory and coffee from the Cafe Du Monde, which can be purchased in gourmet food stores or online.

Here it is!

Ingredients
3 eggs
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/8 tablespoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 (9 inch) unbaked pie crust

Directions
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees (175 degrees C).
2.Beat eggs until frothy; add butter, sugar and flour. Beat until smooth.
3.Stir in buttermilk, vanilla, lemon juice and nutmeg; pour into pie shell.
4.Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until center is firm.

Top this with some seasonal berries and mmm!!! ’nuff said!

To enhance your delightful and delectable dessert experience, put the CD The Marsalis Family – A Jazz Celebration on the old virtual 21st century turntable. Featuring all of the Marsalis family musicians under the leadership of Papa Ellis, this is the essence of good jazz and authentic but contemporary N’awlins music.

Then… after a long nap, grab your axe and workout with Jamey Aebersold’s Volume 100 featuring all of your Dixieland standards.

The Jazz Guy
Stanton’s Sheet Music

Stanton's Sheet Music is pleased to announce our Top Choices for Young Bands (grades 0.5-2.5) for the upcoming, 2011-2012­, school year!  We have listened to and rated all of the new concert band titles, and are excited to recommend this collection of the most fun, interesting, and educationally worthwhile pieces.  You can view and listen to the complete list by clicking on the Top Choices (Gr. 0.5-2.5) tab on our concert band webpage.  While you're there, be sure to check out our Back-to-School tab featuring some useful tools to help you get the most out of your program this year.

 In other concert band news, the ongoing upgrades to the CB music categories continue with the Pop, Patriotic, & Novelty category being reorganized into more useful groups and enhanced with many more titles.  We still have the Christmas & Holiday, and Solo, Section, and Ensemble Features categories to go.  Also, be sure to check back soon, as we will be announcing our Top Choices for High School Bands (grades 3-5) around the beginning of September.

 Thanks for reading and best of luck with the new school year!

Plan to attend:

Stanton’s 11th Annual
Sacred Piano Reading Session
with Mark Hayes
Saturday, August 13, 2011
2:00-4:30

Stanton’s Sheet Music
James E Strouse Workshop Hall
330 S. Fourth Street
Columbus, OH 43215

For more information on this FREE session, please contact our keyboard department!

Stanton's is pleased to welcome back Mark Hayes as our clinician for the August Church Choral Music reading session! Hayes’ personal catalog of over 700 vocal and instrumental compositions is widely acclaimed and performed across the nation. He is well-known for his unique choral settings which draw from such diverse styles such as gospel, jazz, pop, folk, and classical to achieve a truly “American sound.” His music can be found in the music libraries of the finest churches and universities in the country, and he is in increasing demand for choral clinics and concerts.

Click to watch video

Your registration includes a packet of over 40 new choral anthems that are hand-picked from the hundreds published each year. We look forward to seeing you on August 13th for a wonderful morning of singing with one of the nation's most sought after church music experts.

Plan to attend:

Piano Teacher’s Clinic
with Melody Bober
Friday August 12, 2011
9-12:30

Stanton’s Sheet Music
James E Strouse Workshop Hall
330 S. Fourth Street
Columbus, OH 43215

For more information about this FREE session, please contact our keyboard department!

This is the day is a beautiful setting of verses from the psalms commissioned from English composer John Rutter by Westminster Abbey for the wedding of HRH Prince William of Wales and Catherine Middleton.  It was first performed on 29 April 2011 by the combined choirs of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal, in the presence of the royal family, and was broadcast live to millions across the globe.  With elegant melodic lines and warm harmonies, This is the day is perfectly suited to performance at a wedding or special occasion, and would make a joyous addition to any concert or service.

For more distinguished choral repertoire, please contact us.

Click here to watch video

The National Endowment for the Arts' American Masterpieces: Choral Music initiative is designed to celebrate our national musical heritage by highlighting significant American choral composers and their works of the past 250 years.  Stanton's Sheet Music is proud to present this series highlighting the composers and their works featured in this groundbreaking project.

(from NEA.gov)
Decades ago Time magazine called Ned Rorem (born 1923) “the world's best composer of art songs” and few have challenged that judgment since. Though he has written exceptionally fine orchestral music (his suite Air Music won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for music), his songs and choral pieces seem destined to remain his best-known legacy, in part because they are so performer-friendly, but most importantly because audiences find them full of striking and beautiful ideas.

He was born in Richmond, Indiana, then moved with his family to Chicago as a child. He began piano lessons and was enchanted by Debussy and Ravel. His later studies were at Northwestern University School of Music, The Curtis Institute, and The Juilliard School. Along the way, he served briefly as Virgil Thomson's copyist and studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood.

From 1949 to 1958 he lived in France, composing and writing his diaries. Uniquely, Rorem early on became just as famous for his literary efforts - which now total 14 books of music criticism, lectures, and his frank personal diaries - as for his music. His inner life has thus become perhaps the most public of any composer in history.

His outstanding choral works, many with organ accompaniment, encompass a variety of anthems, canticles, motets, and hymns. Among them are “Shout the Glad Tidings,” a setting of an 1826 hymn text, the Three Motets on texts by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the beautiful anthem of peace, “Sing, My Soul, His Wondrous Love.”

Selected Works:
A Whitman Cantata
Canticles, Set I
Canticles, Set II
In Time of Pestilence
Sing, My Soul, His Wondrous Love
Three Motets
Three Poems of Baudelaire

For more distinguished choral repertoire suggestions, please contact us.

The best-selling series of books and CDs, Teaching Music Through Performance, has quickly become the indispensable resource for music educators searching for the best possible music at all levels.  Each book includes analyses of select pieces and insights from national leaders in the field.  Recordings by top ensembles make this series truly invaluable.  With multiples volumes available for Band, Choir, Orchestra and Jazz, every music educator will find repertoire guidance and inspiration.

Some of the newest additions to the series are Teaching Music Through Performance in Choir, Volume 3 and Teaching Music Through Performance in Middle School Choir.  Volume 3 is ideal for those seeking a deeper understanding of the preeminent music available for high school and college choir, and also to learn from leaders in the choral profession.  Topics covered include male choirs and male singers, commissioning, teaching strategies in the choral rehearsal, articulation, and the power of gesture.  Also included is a thorough analyses of almost 90 of the most significant works for choir ever composed, including information on the composer and composition, historical background, technical requirements, stylistic considerations, musical elements, suggestions for additional listening, and a guide to selected references.  The final section of the text contains a detailed study and guide to the choral masterwork, Antonio Vivaldi's “Gloria,” including an extended history of the work, analysis charts, and rehearsal strategies.  The corresponding CD contains premier recordings of many of the works presented in the text.

Teaching Music Through Performance in Middle School Choir is one of the most comprehensive resources ever published for middle school choir directors - written, researched, and compiled by conductors and educators with a wealth of teaching experience.  Topics covered include assessment, independent part singing, selecting and preparing quality repertoire, the inner journey of a young singer, and comprehensive musicianship.  As in the previous volumes, resource guides for 80 of the best works in print for middle school choirs of all ability levels are also included, and the corresponding CD is another valuable resource.

For more high quality resources for the choral music educator, please contact us.

There are literally hundreds of pieces written and published for flute that could be considered standard repertoire, but in order to keep this article at a reasonable length, we will begin by featuring only a few pieces.

As young flute students mature in their abilities to handle more and more difficult music, many may have played through standard pieces such as Mozart's Concerto # 2, Poulenc's “Sonata,” Hindemith's “Sonata,” and of course Telemann's “Suite in A minor.” All of these pieces have a substantial place on the list of “standard repertoire,” but there are other pieces that bring a certain difficulty level found in more modern composition: Chaminade's “Concertino,” Vaughan Williams' “Suite de Ballet,” Prokofiev's “Sonata in D major,” Muczynski's “Sonata for Flute,” and Rutter's “Suite Antique.”

Mastering standard repertoire pieces helps young students to build knowledge of the literature itself. Each piece aids students in developing style, expression, phrasing, tone and technique as they study and gain more abilities on their instrument. Other pieces such as Mozart's Concerto in D major, Handel's “Seven Sonata and Famous Largo,” and Telemann's “Suite in A minor” add to a student's ability to perform with a sense of period-appropriate style.

As high school students prepare for college auditions and continue on as music majors, they will likely have a chance to prepare many of these pieces. Encouraging your students to become familiar with these standards as soon as they are able will give them a “head-start” in their musical career!

Conspirare was founded in 1991 as the New Texas Festival to present a summer classical music festival in Austin, Texas. Since then, the organization has grown rapidly to become an internationally recognized, professional choral organization that combines outstanding vocal artistry with innovative programming. Led by founder and artistic director Craig Hella Johnson, Conspirare is comprised of two performing ensembles and an educational program. Inspired by the power of music to change lives, Conspirare engages audiences in extraordinary musical experiences through world-class choral performances and recordings.

Explore the inspiring music of Conspirare with your choir with one of these exciting octavos:
Been in de Storm/Wayfaring Stranger
Dawn
Gitanjali Chants
Hard Times
In the Rifted Rock I'm Resting
Light of a Clear Blue Morning
Lo How a Rose/The Rose
Mirabile Mysterium
Motherless Child
Requiem
Ruth
Sim Shalom
Soon Ah Will Be Done/I Wanna Die Easy
Thou Shalt Know Him When He Comes
Will There Really Be a Morning

For more stirring music for your choir, please contact us.

Featuring talented clinicians from several major publishers, Stanton's summer choral clinics are a fantastic way to jump-start your school year! Pre-Registration is now closed, but you are welcome to register at the door the day of each clinic.

Elementary/General Music Clinic
Wednesday August 3, 2011
Clinician: Cheryl Lavender

The John Jacobson Workshop
Thursday August 4, 2011
Clinicians: John Jacobson & Mac Huff

The Joy of Singing
Friday August 5, 2011
Clinicians: Rollo Dilworth, Mac Huff, John Jacobson, Stan McGill & Audrey Snyder

Stanton's Super Session
Saturday August 6, 2011
Clinicians: Greg Gilpin, Mary Lynn Lightfoot, & Jen Sper

Also in August 2011:

Sacred Choral Reading Session
Saturday August 13, 2011
Clinician: Mark Hayes
(no pre-registration for this session)

Excellence in Choral Literature
Saturday August 27, 2011
Clinician: James Gallagher

For more detailed information regarding any of these clinics, contact the choral department at 1-800-426-8742, extension 1.