Summer Schools
Next Summer School for this part of the world is to be held as a combined Australia/New Zealand event in Adelaide, South Australia.
Recent summer schools took place in January 2008 at Knox College, Dunedin. It was a combined Australia and NZ event attended by people from many countries (especially Australia and New Zealand) and a great time was had by all. The course was inspired by the leadership of the immediate past Director General, Professor John Harper.
For 2009, January offered summer schools in Brisbane, Australia, and Hamilton, New Zealand.
“Sing my tongue: a journey in faith and song”
SS2010 Adelaide
RSCM AUSTRALIA and RSCM NEW ZEALAND PRESENT THEIR YEAR 2010
INTERNATIONAL RSCM SUMMER SCHOOL (a combined Australia/NZ undertaking).
Sunday 3 Jan to Sunday 10 Jan in Adelaide, Australia.
INVITATION TO TAKE PART
Download a registration form by clicking the link to the RSCM Australia web site:
You may recognize in the theme of the 55th annual Summer School of RSCM, ‘Sing my tongue: a journey in faith and song”, a reference to the opening words of the early medieval hymn, dating back to the sixth century, that sings of the passion and resurrection of Christ. This combined Australian and New Zealand International Summer School from Sunday 3rd to Sunday 10th January 2010 is an invitation to a pilgrimage of faith and song based on the rhythms and events of Holy Week and Easter.
Building on the idea of celebrating every Sunday as an Easter Day, the week will take participants through some of the liturgies associated with the church’s worship during Holy Week and Easter. You will have opportunities to experience some of the oldest and richest liturgies from different traditions of the Christian faith, including a celebration of the Liturgy of the Gifts on Wednesday, Tenebrae on Friday, the Lighting of the Paschal Candle and renewal of baptismal vows on Saturday, culminating in the celebration of the Eucharist on Sunday morning.
Choral Director for the Summer School
The Choral Director of the Adelaide summer school will be Dr Jeffrey Smith, Canon Director of Music at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Dr Smith comes to us highly recommended by RSCM America, and has had a distinguished career as organist, conductor and educationist. He holds degrees from Yale University and the Royal College of Music, London. His teachers included Gerre Hancock, David Willcocks and Philippe Lefebvre, organist of Notre Dame de Paris, and he has undertaken a special study of the German boys’ choir tradition. Jeffrey Smith has been Organist and Choirmaster at Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, Kentucky, before moving in 1992 to St Paul’s Church, Washington DC.
There he appeared regularly as conductor at the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts and with the National Symphony Orchestra. In 2004 he accepted the post at Grace Cathedral. He was awarded the Fellowship of the RSCM at a ceremony in York Minster in June 2004. Dr Smith is married to Elisabeth Braw, a Swedish journalist, and has two children.
The Summer School program
An exciting repertoire of music has been chosen for the Summer School, with music from the medieval period to the twenty-first century selected. Music will range from the exhilaration of one of Mozart’s early choral masses, the Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis KV 167, to recently composed music for less experienced choirs and congregations to sing. There will be a number of works by Australian and New Zealand composers, including Malcolm Williamson, Colin Brumby, Becky Llewelyn, Jenny McLeod and David Childs, as well as recent music from the United States of America. We will also celebrate two composers whose anniversaries fall in 2010: Samuel Sebastian Wesley and Andrea Gabrieli (although recent research suggests that we may be a little premature here!).
A full complement of workshops for organists, choral conductors and choristers at all levels of experience will be an integral part of the program, including a master class for advanced organ students and performers with Dr Jeffrey Smith. There will be workshops for the RSCM program “Voice for Life”, a carefully planned framework for choral singers to develop their vocal skills and musical understanding. A range of elective workshops will also be available.
As part of the program all participants will be given a “day off” singing so that they may enjoy the manifold pleasures of an expedition to the Barossa Valley. There will be opportunities to hear some of the beautiful and historic organs to be found in the valley and take in some of the ambient sights and sounds of the region. On Thursday evening the Summer School dinner will be held in the grounds of Adelaide’s historic South Australian Cricket Oval.
But the core of the Summer School will be, as always, the joy of learning and rehearsing new and old compositions, and then singing this music in the contexts of some of the most theologically profound, and dramatic liturgies of the Christian church.
Venues and accommodation
The Summer School will be conducted in the churches of North Adelaide and the centre of the city, including St Peter’s Cathedral, Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Brougham Place Uniting Church, North Adelaide Baptist Church and Pilgrim Church in the city. Interstate and overseas participants will be able to stay at St Mark’s College in North Adelaide.
The Organising Committee is keen to encourage younger choristers to attend the Summer School and will be offering a substantially discounted registration fee to participants 21 years of age or younger. We would like to welcome families to the Summer School. Some of the accommodation at St Mark’s College is suitable for family groups, and limited accommodation is available in North Adelaide in apartments and motels. The nearest tourist park accommodation is approximately 1.5 k from North Adelaide, by public transport.
Call for performances
The Organising Committee invites proposals for performances to be presented at the Adelaide 2010 Summer School. Performance soloists or groups may include any type of solo or ensemble, but the music presented should be sacred or religious music deriving from any tradition of the Christian faith. This proviso need not exclude instrumental music: as well as organ music, you are reminded of the repertoire of the baroque church sonata, or renaissance instrumental arrangements and other works intended for church and devotional use, or 17th, 18th and 19th century songs, lieder and piano works based on religious texts, as examples of what may be possible.
Call for workshops and papers
You are invited to present a workshop or paper to the Summer School program. Proposals for workshops or papers may focus on any aspect of the contexts, theory, practice and repertoire of church music. Proposals that relate to the theme of the Summer School, or to the music and liturgies of Holy Week and Easter, will be especially welcomed.
Further information
Registration forms, together with further information about the week long program for the Summer School, will be available after Easter 2009.
For further information on how to apply to present a performance, workshop or paper, at the Summer School, contact the Organising Committee by email or postal mail. The closing date for the receiving of applications will be 31 July 2009.
Email: SS10@rscm.org.au
Postal address:
Dr Warren Bourne
Organising Chairperson, RSCM Summer School Adelaide 2010
PO Box 325
Mitcham Shopping Centre
Torrens Park,
South Australia 5062