AFPC/NCEA Webinar - Teaching and Conducting a Chant Mass

How can directors teach choirs to read and sing from chant notation with limited rehearsal time? Is it possible for someone who doesn't have much experience with chant to direct a choir to sing it with good phrasing and rhythm? This one-hour webinar with Dr. Jennifer Donelson will introduce directors to effective methods of preparing a choir to hear the music in their minds and sing the music from square notes, of singing chant with good vocal technique and an elegant sense of the line, and of employing artistic and expressive conducting. The music discussed in the webinar are the parts of the Mass (Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) from the 2019 Pueri Cantores Festival Repertoire list.

Presented by:

Dr. Jennifer Donelson, Director of Sacred Music at St. Joseph Seminary in the Archdiocese of New York

Dr. Jennifer Donelson is an associate professor and the director of sacred music at St. Joseph's Seminary (Dunwoodie) in New York, where she also teaches sacred music courses in the St. Cecilia Academy for Pastoral Musicians. She is the Vice President & Treasurer of the Society for Catholic Liturgy, serves on the board of the CMAA, and is the managing editor of the CMAA's journal Sacred Music.

Having studied Gregorian chant at the Catholic University of America and the Abbey of St. Peter in Solesmes, for six years Dr. Donelson served as a co-organizer of the Musica Sacra Florida Gregorian Chant Conference, and has given chant workshops in dioceses and parishes across the U.S. As a choral conductor, Dr. Donelson has directed collegiate, semi-professional, amateur, monastic, and children's choirs.