Artistic Council & Education Outreach Reports
| 5._artistic_council___education_outreach_reports.pdf |
Production – David Geist
January has been a bit calmer than most months. We had a break after a very successful Christmas season where we toured our Christmas program for two weeks followed by performing the show ten times in eleven days in and around the Twin Cities! We resumed on January 7th and welcomed Paul Scholtz back! We had one day of rehearsal with Paul working through Alone Together before flying out the next day to Florida to perform in Palm Beach. Paul came back in full force and we gave a great performance of Alone Together, which we hadn't performed since November 20th.
This month we have also visited all of the high schools choirs participating in our HSR program this season, and we collectively went through all of the auditions we received and have decided to invite ten candidates for this year's live audition date. We have a few days off now but it is about to pick up again as we depart Thursday the 25th on a seventeen day tour! We will be traveling to New Mexico, Arizona, California, Wyoming, and Nevada on this tour. It will be very busy with concerts, outreach, as well as beginning to work on the music for our spring show. We are definitely looking forward to escaping the Minnesota weather for a few weeks!
Communications – Paul Scholtz
Artist Activities Week by Week
Education Outreach – Sam Green
High School Residency
Back at it, the artists had their second masterclass visits earlier last week. We are now in preparation for the Festival Day at Gloria Dei Lutheran in St. Paul on Saturday, Feb 23. If you have never been, I encourage you to come and observe! In addition to mass choir rehearsals, the students get to break out into specialized sessions with the artists, AND, there’s pizza for lunch. We’ve had 3 Cantus alumni sign on to volunteer as “hall monitors” at this year’s festival (Matt Tintes, Adam Reinwald, and Aaron Humble). We are delighted to have them back.
2019-2020 Usually at this time of year, we have next season’s HSR participants identified and have already had informational meetings with directors. However, with next season being the 25th Anniversary, and due to a dropping number of HSR applicants, we decided to go in a different direction. Our plan is to offer a free masterclass to every past HSR choir, and invite a select group of students from each school to perform en masse at the 25th Anniversary Gala Concert. This project will take a lot of logistical energy and creativity, and we are nearly ready to contact all teachers with this information. Over the past 12 years, Cantus has worked with 30 different schools. We could potentially have a high school collaborative choir of over 120 students joining us during the concert. What a great photo op!
Minnesota Boychoir Residency
We visited the Minnesota Boychoir during the past week for our second masterclass. Once again, this choir’s work ethic, attention, and musicality was phenomenal. We have a rehearsal with them in April on combined repertoire. Our joint concert will take place on Monday June 17 at Concordia University in St. Paul.
National Outreach
Our upcoming Western tour includes Masterclasses, Lecture/Demonstrations, School Concerts, and more. Expect reports back when tour is complete.
Spread the word that Cantus offers a variety of educational outreach opportunities locally and around the country each year. If you know educators/organizations interested in working with us, refer them to education@cantussings.org, or contact Sam at sgreen@cantussings.org.
Programming – Chris Foss
We have revised materials (sample rep and blurb) for Brave (Touring 20-21) and shared them with AAM in December, in keeping with our usual schedule.
We have decided to apply for grant funding for a project that would commission local composer Catherine Dalton. She would write a piece that would be included on the 19-20 touring show One Giant Leap. Grant materials are currently being assembled by Joe Heitz, Catherine, and myself for the January 31st deadline.
When I Grow Up has been programmed, and music has been ordered and distributed for learning via flex time. We will draft speaking moments soon, and rehearse (mostly on tour) over the next few months, finalizing in performances in mid-March.
As a part of our 25th anniversary year, we have begun the process of going through old arrangements, premieres, and other unpublished works that Cantus has performed in the past. Our goal is to work with Graphite Publishing (Tim Takach) to create a Cantus publication series that features the best and brightest materials from our history. This will hopefully broaden our reach and expand the repertoire in a celebratory way!
We successfully released the Alone Together Live Concert Album, and will continue selling it on all our tour stops the rest of this season! After many unfortunate delays, I think we finally have a smooth system for releasing these. The next step will be to analyze sales and compare with past figures and costs in order to determine future viability of similar projects.
We continue to be in conversation with the Ecstatic Music Festival. The festival features collaborative projects between pop and classical musicians, and Cantus is on their list of possibilities, together with indie pop singer songwriter and multi instrumentalist Andrew Bird. We will also explore opportunities to carry this project back to the Twin Cities, if possible.
We were able to audio and video record several pieces before the St. Thomas Christmas with Cantus show, and we also were able to capture the entire show live. We partnered with a new videographer who was able to turn around video work very quickly, and we were able to drop a video on Christmas Eve as a thank you to our online audience. We are also planning two other impending video releases of the pre-show material.
The first round of editing of the eOne album is complete, and we’re moving on to the second round that will involve listening from the entire ensemble. We are also gathering information and materials in order allow Rebecca Davis to pitch the project to different record labels very soon. I would estimate another 2-3 weeks before the 2nd round of editing is complete.
January has been a bit calmer than most months. We had a break after a very successful Christmas season where we toured our Christmas program for two weeks followed by performing the show ten times in eleven days in and around the Twin Cities! We resumed on January 7th and welcomed Paul Scholtz back! We had one day of rehearsal with Paul working through Alone Together before flying out the next day to Florida to perform in Palm Beach. Paul came back in full force and we gave a great performance of Alone Together, which we hadn't performed since November 20th.
This month we have also visited all of the high schools choirs participating in our HSR program this season, and we collectively went through all of the auditions we received and have decided to invite ten candidates for this year's live audition date. We have a few days off now but it is about to pick up again as we depart Thursday the 25th on a seventeen day tour! We will be traveling to New Mexico, Arizona, California, Wyoming, and Nevada on this tour. It will be very busy with concerts, outreach, as well as beginning to work on the music for our spring show. We are definitely looking forward to escaping the Minnesota weather for a few weeks!
Communications – Paul Scholtz
Artist Activities Week by Week
- December 2 - Christmas with Cantus Tour (Stevens Point, WI; Marysville, KS)
- December 9 - CWC Tour (Camp Hill, PA; Sirius XM Radio, DC); CWC Home (Westminster; Fridley HS; Shepherd of the Valley, Apple Valley)
- December 16 - CWC Tour (Redwing, MN); CWC Home (Colonial, Edina; St. Bart’s, Wayzata; St. Thomas, St. Paul; Ordway, St. Paul; Trinity, Stillwater)
- December 23 - CWC Home (Hamline, St. Paul); Break
- December 30 - Break
- January 6 - Alone Together Rehearsal, Alone Together Tour (Palm Beach, FL)
- January 13 - HSR Visits; Minnesota Boychoir Masterclass; When I Grow Up music learning; Audition Listening; Middleton HS Masterclass
- January 20 - AT Tour (Socorro, NM; Corrales, NM)
Education Outreach – Sam Green
High School Residency
Back at it, the artists had their second masterclass visits earlier last week. We are now in preparation for the Festival Day at Gloria Dei Lutheran in St. Paul on Saturday, Feb 23. If you have never been, I encourage you to come and observe! In addition to mass choir rehearsals, the students get to break out into specialized sessions with the artists, AND, there’s pizza for lunch. We’ve had 3 Cantus alumni sign on to volunteer as “hall monitors” at this year’s festival (Matt Tintes, Adam Reinwald, and Aaron Humble). We are delighted to have them back.
2019-2020 Usually at this time of year, we have next season’s HSR participants identified and have already had informational meetings with directors. However, with next season being the 25th Anniversary, and due to a dropping number of HSR applicants, we decided to go in a different direction. Our plan is to offer a free masterclass to every past HSR choir, and invite a select group of students from each school to perform en masse at the 25th Anniversary Gala Concert. This project will take a lot of logistical energy and creativity, and we are nearly ready to contact all teachers with this information. Over the past 12 years, Cantus has worked with 30 different schools. We could potentially have a high school collaborative choir of over 120 students joining us during the concert. What a great photo op!
Minnesota Boychoir Residency
We visited the Minnesota Boychoir during the past week for our second masterclass. Once again, this choir’s work ethic, attention, and musicality was phenomenal. We have a rehearsal with them in April on combined repertoire. Our joint concert will take place on Monday June 17 at Concordia University in St. Paul.
National Outreach
Our upcoming Western tour includes Masterclasses, Lecture/Demonstrations, School Concerts, and more. Expect reports back when tour is complete.
Spread the word that Cantus offers a variety of educational outreach opportunities locally and around the country each year. If you know educators/organizations interested in working with us, refer them to education@cantussings.org, or contact Sam at sgreen@cantussings.org.
Programming – Chris Foss
We have revised materials (sample rep and blurb) for Brave (Touring 20-21) and shared them with AAM in December, in keeping with our usual schedule.
We have decided to apply for grant funding for a project that would commission local composer Catherine Dalton. She would write a piece that would be included on the 19-20 touring show One Giant Leap. Grant materials are currently being assembled by Joe Heitz, Catherine, and myself for the January 31st deadline.
When I Grow Up has been programmed, and music has been ordered and distributed for learning via flex time. We will draft speaking moments soon, and rehearse (mostly on tour) over the next few months, finalizing in performances in mid-March.
As a part of our 25th anniversary year, we have begun the process of going through old arrangements, premieres, and other unpublished works that Cantus has performed in the past. Our goal is to work with Graphite Publishing (Tim Takach) to create a Cantus publication series that features the best and brightest materials from our history. This will hopefully broaden our reach and expand the repertoire in a celebratory way!
We successfully released the Alone Together Live Concert Album, and will continue selling it on all our tour stops the rest of this season! After many unfortunate delays, I think we finally have a smooth system for releasing these. The next step will be to analyze sales and compare with past figures and costs in order to determine future viability of similar projects.
We continue to be in conversation with the Ecstatic Music Festival. The festival features collaborative projects between pop and classical musicians, and Cantus is on their list of possibilities, together with indie pop singer songwriter and multi instrumentalist Andrew Bird. We will also explore opportunities to carry this project back to the Twin Cities, if possible.
We were able to audio and video record several pieces before the St. Thomas Christmas with Cantus show, and we also were able to capture the entire show live. We partnered with a new videographer who was able to turn around video work very quickly, and we were able to drop a video on Christmas Eve as a thank you to our online audience. We are also planning two other impending video releases of the pre-show material.
The first round of editing of the eOne album is complete, and we’re moving on to the second round that will involve listening from the entire ensemble. We are also gathering information and materials in order allow Rebecca Davis to pitch the project to different record labels very soon. I would estimate another 2-3 weeks before the 2nd round of editing is complete.