Stanton’s Sheet Music is pleased to invite you to the 2012 “Stanton’s Super Session,” a day-long choral reading session of new music from a variety of publishers! Pre-registration is now open – register online, or call us at 1.800.426.8742. Check out our video below for a “sneak peek” at what we have in store!
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)
Randall Thompson (1899-1984) was the pre-eminent American choral composer of an earlier generation. His music, though grounded in traditional European rules, always seems very much of its time and place, perhaps because he frequently drew upon the early folk music of New England and the Appalachian region.
He was a Yankee by heritage, born in New York City to a New England family. His father was an English teacher, and sent him to Harvard University where he studied choral music and composition. After graduation he had some private lessons with Ernest Bloch. He won the Prix de Rome in 1922. After studying abroad he returned to the U.S. and spent the rest of his career teaching at various universities, most notably at his alma mater Harvard from 1948 to 1965. Among his most famous students were Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss.
Although Thompson wrote piano music and songs, chamber music and symphonies, and even a Biblical opera, it is for his exceptionally apt choral music that he has remained most admired. His “Alleluia,” written in 1940, quickly became a staple of church choirs in towns big and small and was recorded over a dozen times in the next few decades. Thompson seemed to understand by the 1950s that his style was no longer in vogue in academia; from then on he concentrated his efforts upon community, church, and college choir ensembles – and with enthusiasm, not regret.
Among his most famous larger works are The Peaceable Kingdom, The Testament of Freedom, and Frostiana, each of which evokes stirring elements of the American experience, whether in sound, structure or textual inspiration.
Selected Works:
Alleluia
Americana
The Best of Rooms
Frostiana
The Last Words of David
The Peaceable Kingdom
The Testament of Freedom
For more distinguished choral repertoire suggestions, please contact us.
In the 1930′s, Edna-Mae Burnam began writing a series of technique books for beginning pianists. She called it “A Dozen a Day“. These collections of short, easy exercises are easy and fun to play. Mastering technique for playing the piano even at the early levels of instruction is important. It helps the player practice more efficiently and avoid some pitfalls altogether. Beginning with the earliest level, called “Mini Book”, and ending with Book 4, the concepts presented reinforce the technique as the student progresses. If you had forgotten about this series, or if you would like to know more about it, please contact us at 1800-42-MUSIC, or keyboard@stantons.com. Trivia question: There is a stick figure drawing above each exercise. Where did these come from? (Stay tuned.)
School Teachers – we’re talking your budget allotment here! In these tough economic times, you will want to make sure that you use what you have been given! If you have money left on any of your Purchase Orders, we recommend that you get it spent before someone in the office decides to pull it out from under you and buy soccer balls with it! Plus if you don’t use your allotment, there is a chance you won’t get as much next year because the clerk/treasurer sees that you don’t spend what you’ve been given, so they’ll give you less the next time!
With that in mind, Stanton’s Sheet Music has some great music with which you can finish out the school year. Whether you want serious literature or something on the lighter side, we have plenty of choral, band and orchestra music that would be perfect for your Spring Concerts, for graduation, for teaching new concepts or practicing sight-reading or just to get a head start on next year.
Check out the recommendations on our website, or call Stanton’s at 1-800-42-MUSIC (1-800-426-8742) and talk to one of our knowledgeable sales people about top notch music to finish out your budget. The music we recommend is educationally valid, the best sounding and the most highly programmable, so you can count on getting just the right pieces for your groups to get your precious money’s worth. Contact Stanton’s today!
Stanton’s Sheet Music is pleased to announce our 19th annual Excellence in Choral Literature Clinic on Saturday, August 25, 2012! 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.
John Jacobson Workshop
DATE/TIME: Thursday 8/2/2012, 9:00 am-4:00 pm
LOCATION: Franklin County Veterans Memorial
REGISTRATION FEE: $60.00 per teacher.
Students may attend this session for $40.00, however students WILL NOT receive a music packet/choreography DVD. Both fees include lunch.
Wear your comfy clothes and tennis shoes because you’re gonna get a workout! Recharge your battery, renew your enthusiasm and review the best new titles for show choir with the master of choreography, John Jacobson and special guest, Roger Emerson. You will receive all the music and choreography notes for 20 complete routines and a DVD of some of the titles covered in this session.
JOY OF SINGING
DATE/TIME: Friday 8/3/2012, 9:00 am-4:00 pm
LOCATION: Franklin County Veterans Memorial
REGISTRATION FEE: $50.00 (includes lunch)
Stanton’s has hosted this session – one of the largest in the country – for more than 25 years! The clinic features music for all levels of choral ensembles – elementary through adult – presented by clinicians Christine Bass, Roger Emerson, Mac Huff and John Jacobson. Each director will receive a packet of new music valued at over $100.00 containing arrangements suitable for both school and community choirs. You will have ample time to browse the Stanton’s on-site store and chat with the clinicians throughout the day.
Contact us for more details; call 1-800-426-8742, ex.1 for the Choral Department!
Stanton’s Sheet Music is pleased to invite you to the 2012 “Stanton’s Super Session,” a day-long choral reading session of new music from a variety of publishers! Pre-registration is now open – register online, or call us at 1.800.426.8742. Check out our video below for a “sneak peek” at what we have in store!
Close out the school year with an exciting choral medley from an iconic Broadway show! Whether you’re looking for music from a long-time theatrical standard or an innovative new production, we’ll help you find the perfect medley for your group.
Over the last few years, the Great White Way has hosted shows ranging from ground-breaking original productions (In the Heights, Next to Normal), to adaptations of popular movies (Shrek: The Musical, Mary Poppins), to Tony Award-winning revivals (Hair). Even children’s literature (Seussical: The Musical) and popular music (Jersey Boys) have gotten in on the act!
Concert and community choirs may enjoy exploring medleys of music by various Broadway composers. Try Rodgers and Hammerstein on Broadway (songs from The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Carousel and Oklahoma), Broadway Legends: Lerner and Loewe (songs from Camelot, My Fair Lady and Paint Your Wagon), Sondheim! A Choral Celebration (songs from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Into the Woods, Company and Sweeney Todd), Andrew Lloyd Webber in Concert (songs from Evita, Aspects of Love, Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Song and Dance), Applause! The Music of Charles Strouse (songs from Applause, Bye Bye Birdie, All-American and Annie) or Gershwin: A Concert Panorama (songs from Funny Face, Girl Crazy, Strike Up the Band and Oh, Kay!).
Bringing the magic of Disney movies to Broadway has also been popular recently. Younger audiences will especially appreciate Disney on Stage, featuring music from the Broadway productions of Aida, Beauty and the Beast, High School Musical, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Mary Poppins and Tarzan.
You can also take the opportunity to introduce your singers to some of the most iconic Broadway shows in history. Try a time-honored show like Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Guys and Dolls, Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma, Sweeney Todd, My Fair Lady, Chicago, South Pacific, The King & I, Oliver! and A Chorus Line. Or maybe you want to explore a “new classic” like Wicked, Rent, Hairspray, Jekyll & Hyde or Ragtime. The possibilities are practically endless!
For more music from the Great White Way, please contact us or visit us online.
In 115 Tang Tungling Tongue Twisters, enjoyable and challenging tongue twisters are set to music using every letter of the alphabet. Say them! Sing them! Use them to focus your choir’s attention! These tongue twisters are effective tools to improve diction and enunciation, while offering some amusing “icebreaker” moments. Whether used as a warm-up, warm-down or focus moment, they will taunt even the most talented in town with a tang tungling time! Greg Gilpin has written the piano accompaniment with chord symbols so your choir can move up and down the scale with ease.
For more fun resources for your choir or music classroom, please contact us!
Jazz Warm-Ups and Vocalises by Gary Walth is a perfect set of warm-ups for the vocal jazz ensemble that’s designed to enhance and stimulate the growth of each member’s vocal and choral ability. Thinking of the warm-up as a “mini voice lesson,” you can reinforce concepts with consistent encouragement, criticism, problem-solving and praise. This practical volume will help the conductor provide purposeful leadership and develop artistry in each individual through exercises that build styles such as Swing, Latin and Rock using solfege and scat syllables as well as tone and blend in ballad style. Each exercise includes a notated keyboard accompaniment with multiple modulations and professional recordings of a rhythm section and singers performing each drill on the enclosed CD.
Please contact us for more exciting resources for your jazz choir!
The author of best-selling Icebreakers and Icebreakers 2, Valerie Lippoldt Mack reflects on her career as music educator, dancer, and musician and shares valuable knowledge and experience with you in Putting the SHOW in CHOIR. Full of tips and suggestions for successful auditions, choreography, staging and lights, costumes, programming, rehearsal suggestions, budgeting, public relations and more, this resource is a must for every concert, jazz, or show choir director!
For more resources to help you put on the best performance you can, please contact us!
Featuring talented clinicians from major publishers, Stanton’s summer choral clinics are a fantastic way to jump-start your school year! We always look forward to visiting with our regular customers, matching up faces with names of new attendees, and meeting teachers new to Stanton’s from across the country.
Mark your calendar for these dates:
 |
Elementary/General Music Clinic Wednesday August 1, 2012 Clinician: Greg Gilpin |
 |
The John Jacobson Workshop Thursday August 2, 2012 Clinicians: John Jacobson & Roger Emerson |
 |
The Joy of Singing Friday August 3, 2012 Clinicians: Christine Bass, Roger Emerson, Mac Huff & John Jacobson |
 |
Stanton’s Super Session Saturday August 4, 2012 Clinicians: Andy Beck, Greg Gilpin & Jen Sper |
Also in August 2012:
 |
Sacred Choral Reading Session Saturday August 11, 2012 Clinician: Lloyd Larson (no pre-registration for this session) |
 |
Excellence in Choral Literature Saturday August 25, 2012 Clinician: James Gallagher |
Registration will open April 1st. For more detailed information regarding any of these clinics, contact the choral department at 1-800-426-8742, extension 1.
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)
Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) was one of America’s most stimulating, thoughtful, original, and long-lived composers and critics. He created one of the first really distinctive American operas (Four Saints in Three Acts), he composed distinguished film scores (The Louisiana Story won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949), he wrote witty and perceptive critiques of the American musical scene for many years, and he was still active into his 90s.
He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, into a morally strict family. He gravitated to music and was composing piano pieces with names like “The Chicago Fire” at age four. During study in France he came under the spell of Erik Satie and the Group of Six who overturned Romantic orthodoxy by mixing jazz and dance-hall tunes with serious compositional techniques. It was a perfect fit for Thomson, who found a unique style by blending this with his heritage of nostalgic middle-Americana.
His music is elegantly crafted, yet warm and human. It is richly evocative of an America half real, half imagined, but vividly recreated out of nostalgia and sincere affection. The range of Thomson’s choral music is wide. His 1934 Mass for two-part chorus and percussion is a dissonant, minimalist piece that seems avant-garde even today. Also in the 1930s he wrote incidental music for productions at John Houseman’s Phoenix Theater in New York. A planned staging of one Greek tragedy never came off, but Thomson saved his choral music as the concert piece Seven Choruses from the Medea of Euripides.
Four Songs to Poems of Thomas Campion pays tribute to music techniques of Elizabethan England. More characteristic of the Thomson most of us know are the straightforwardly simple Hymns from the Old South, Variations on Sunday School Tunes, and “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need.”
Selected Works:
Capital Capitals
Four Southern Hymns
Mass
Saints Procession
Scenes from the Holy Infancy
For more distinguished choral repertoire suggestions, please contact us.
It’s been a long time since those reading sessions at the end of last summer…come refresh your memory and your ears with our recommended choral music for finishing out the school year!
*FREE*
SPRING CHORAL READING SESSION
Saturday, March 3rd from 10-11:30
James E. Strouse Workshop Hall
Stanton’s Sheet Music
330 South Fourth St
Columbus, OH 43215
We will read selected titles for SATB, men’s and women’s ensembles appropriate for high school spring concerts and graduation. Because we will be reading music directly from our large inventory and sharing the expertise of the Stanton’s school choral staff, we are able to offer this reading session at no cost to you!
For more information, email us or call 1-800-426-8742 ex 1.
Do you ever need sheet music in a big hurry? Check out Stanton’s Digital Delivery to browse our digital sheet music library. There are pop songs, Broadway songs, sacred songs, guitar tabs, and much more!
You’ll need to download a free Scorch program that allows you to see the first page of each song you look up, and it allows you to print on your own printer. Many songs can also be transposed to whatever key you need! Just pay with a credit card, download and print.
This service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Happy browsing!
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)
William Schuman (1910-1992) ranks among the most honored and distinguished American composers, although most of his works are less well-known among the general public than those of his contemporaries Copland, Bernstein, and Barber. An exception to this is his New England Triptych, an orchestral work often paired on programs with the similarly conceived (but very different sounding) Three Places in New England by Charles Ives.
In 1943 he won the first Pulitzer Prize for music ever given. He was the first composer ever commissioned to write a work by the U.S. government. He was president of The Juilliard School for 18 years, and president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts for its first eight years. He was granted more than 20 honorary degrees in a lifetime as an educator, administrator, and composer, and had an enormous impact through his teaching and his tireless efforts to incorporate classical music into the lives of the American public.
Schuman’s catalogue is particularly rich in choral works. He was an acknowledged master of accompanied and a cappella choral music both complex and simple in scope (some pieces are written specifically for amateur singers). He made a point of emphasizing American poetry for his texts. His Carols of Death are settings of three powerful verses by Walt Whitman. On a lighter note, the choruses from Casey at the Bat (a 1976 “baseball cantata” adapted in turn from his 1953 opera The Mighty Casey) revel in the rollicking humorous verse of Ernest Lawrence Thayer, reflecting Schuman’s lifelong passion for baseball.
Selected Works:
A Free Song
Casey at the Bat
The Lord Has a Child
Te Deum
This Is Our Time
For more distinguished choral repertoire suggestions, please contact us.
Stanton’s Sheet Music suggests that you send your students into summer with some of these great popular music choices for men’s choirs. Whether you’re looking for current pop, a classic rock favorite or a Broadway novelty, we’ll help you find the perfect choice for your ensemble!
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, the cheeky and irreverent tune from “Monty Python’s Spamalot” will have everyone whistling along! It’s a concert change-of-pace that your guys will love to sing.
Here’s a rockin’ remake of the timeless ‘60s hit The Letter, perfect for the pop portion of your concert. “Give me a ticket for an airplane. Ain’t got time to take no fast train.” This arrangement has a kickin’ groove!
Featured in the film “The Blues Brothers,” Soul Man will still have your audience singing along. Use a live combo to create a powerhouse moment during your show!
For more suggestions, check out our video below, or contact us!
Copyright law and its implications affect musicians and educators every day, yet most of us have little to no understanding of it. Whether majoring in performance or education, undergraduate courses of study rarely present an introduction to the subject, let alone offer any courses that study it in detail. It is challenging to know what is permissible under the law, and what exactly is allowed under the doctrine of ‘fair use.’ Violations of copyright occur frequently in our schools mostly due to the lack of education on the subject, and, like it or not, use in an educational setting alone does not necessarily constitute compliance with the ‘fair use’ provision of the law. With increased scrutiny and debate over copyright infringement on the internet, the staff at Stanton’s would like to recommend the following resources to shed light on the subject for musicians and educators alike. They are presented in order of increasing detail, and we highly recommend The Teacher’s Guide to Music, Media, and Copyright Law for music educators. In addition, YouTube in Music Education is a great resource for those looking to use this technology to enhance their programs, but have concerns about how to do so appropriately.
Music Copyright Basics – Joel Leach
What is copyright? This seemingly simple question often causes confusion with its complex answers. In Music Copyright Basics, professor and expert copyright witness Joel Leach answers frequent questions in a straightforward, easy-to-use format. Whether you are searching for a simple answer to a common question or want a general knowledge of the copyright procedure, this book will quickly provide you with the information you want. Music Copyright Basics features: a convenient question-and-answer format; easy-to-understand answers to all your copyright questions; coverage of copyright basics, copyright submission process, copyright ownership, copyright and earnings potential, and international copyright; and a compact, portable design that keeps information easily at hand. (2003)
The Teacher’s Guide to Music, Media, and Copyright Law – James Frankel
The easy-to-understand guide for teachers using copyrighted music and media in the classroom. In this era of unprecedented access to information, teachers have a wealth of readily available resources for lesson planning, but determining what you can and can’t use legally in the classroom is a difficult task. Written by a 15-year veteran of the New Jerseypublic schools, The Teacher’s Guide to Music, Media, and Copyright Law helps explain just how information, images, video, and music can be incorporated into any kind of lesson plan without running afoul of copyright laws. This resource includes: what resources you can use without obtaining permission, how to obtain and license the works you need permission to use, how to check the copyright status of any media item, and how to apply copyright legality examples to real classroom situations. (2009)
Music Copyright Law – Moser & Slay
Music Copyright Law will help you gain an in-depth understanding of a topic that is vital to the success of anyone in or entering the music industry. From songwriters and performers to managers, producers, and agents, everyone is affected by the issues covered in this book. Avoiding the technical jargon and “legalese” that bogs down other books on the subject, this book explores the world of copyright law and homes in on how it applies to music. It begins by building a foundational knowledge of the fundamentals of copyright law – what it protects, the benefits of registering a copyright, and what to do when copyright has been infringed. Once the fundamentals are established, coverage expands to include controversies involving copyright and music in the digital age and the debates over online music. Packed with practical examples that bring complex concepts to life, this book is a must-have for any professional in or entering the music business. (2012)
Stanton’s Sheet Music suggests that you send your students into summer with some of these great popular music choices for women’s choirs. Whether you’re looking for nostalgic pop, a Broadway favorite or an a cappella showpiece, we’ll help you find the perfect choice for your ensemble!
Christina Perri’s debut single Jar of Hearts has been featured on “So You Think You Can Dance?” and “Glee.” The impassioned ballad provides a powerful, relatable moment for female singers.
Someone Like You, the pop hit by Adele is a heartfelt ballad with a gorgeous piano accompaniment. After a single voice opening, the vocal texture builds into a full-voiced emotional chorus!
The playful song Taylor the Latte Boy from Kristin Chenoweth will provide a moment of absolute delight in your next concert as it tells a story full of effervescence, humor and romantic innocence. It’s a truly charming SSA feature!
For more suggestions, check out our video below, or contact us!