BYU Women's Chorus selected to perform at prestigious ACDA conference

BYU Women's Chorus selected to perform at prestigious ACDA conference

(Devin Anderton)


Save Story
Leer en español

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

SALT LAKE CITY — The Brigham Young University Women’s Chorus was selected from more than 250 choirs to perform at the American Choral Directors Association National Conference Wednesday.

The choir auditioned for the biennial conference by submitting an audition CD including some of its performances over the last three years, according to the BYU Women’s Chorus Director and ACDA Utah Chapter President Jean Applonie.

The BYU Women’s Chorus isn’t a traveling choir, so it had to wait until the ACDA brought its national conference to Salt Lake to audition, Applonie said.

“It’s a pretty rigorous process,” Applonie said. “It was a pretty big invitation for us.”

There were about 30 choirs that performed at Abravanel Hall and the Tabernacle at Temple Square Wednesday, including some professional choirs that were invited to attend. There were about 23 or 24 choirs that were selected from the audition, Applonie said.

With more than 20,000 members, the ACDA is “probably the largest organization of choral directors in the world,” Applonie said.


It is such a huge honor to have been selected by this organization to then come and sing for choral directors from not only all over the country, but all over the world.

–Jean Applonie, BYU Women's Chorus director


“It is such a huge honor to have been selected by this organization to then come and sing for choral directors from not only all over the country, but all over the world,” Applonie said.

The national conference offered concert sessions and educational sessions that covered topics such as how to get permission to perform a song, how to help an adolescent male develop his voice, and the history of the barbershop quartet.

Applonie said she thought about one-quarter of the more than 5,000 attendees were students studying to be choral directors.

“It’s a huge honor to come and sing for an audience of choral directors who do this for a living and are coming for inspiration, so it was a tall order for us,” Applonie said. “It was just a huge challenge for us to push ourselves beyond our normal best and I so wanted that kind of a challenge for my choir.”

Saturday, the BYU Women’s Chorus will join The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, opera singer Sylvia McNair, Broadway star Santino Fontana, the U.S. Singing Sergeants and combined ACDA National Conference honor choirs in a special performance at the Conference Center.

Tickets for the event are sold out, but guests can try to get tickets on standby.

Related links

Related stories

Most recent Utah stories

Related topics

Utah
Megan Marsden Christensen

    STAY IN THE KNOW

    Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
    By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    KSL Weather Forecast