MOIRA SMILEY RESIDENCY
Moira Smiley is best known for her work, Bring Me Little Water, Silvy.
ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
February 28 - March 1, 2023
Join us for a two-day residency featuring composer and performer Moira Smiley at Georgia State University. Featuring lectures, open rehearsal, and a high school choral festival, Moira's expertise brings a fresh look at all the facets of a successful musical career.
On day two, the high school choral festival features rehearsals, a directors reading session, observing a clinic with Georgia State University Singers, and a final concert alongside the university's Treble Choir. During the high school choral festival, Moira will work with participants on 3 of her works in a mass choir setting.
MOIRA SMILEY RESIDENCY
Tuesday
Lecture: Composing with Voice + Text
A presentation and hands-on class about composing-with-the-voice for all musics students, especially composers/songwriters/producers, speaking to specific compositional structures for multiple voices and understanding the voice as an instrument - not just the bearer of text and melody. The presentation will cover text rhythms and cadences as musical building blocks using repetition, fragmentation, interpolation and engage in composing/improvising exercises to build compositional structures.
Entrepreneur Workshop: Co-Creating Your Musical Career
Moira Smiley sustains a successful, fiercely independent career in music through performing, composing, publishing and teaching. With an upcoming concert of her music at Carnegie Hall, consistent tour schedule of performing arts centers, TED and TEDx appearances and a thriving music publishing business, Moira guides young artists through the most important steps of building and maintaining a career in the arts.
Treble Choir Clinic
Tenor-Bass Choir Clinic
Wednesday
SATB Choral Festival - Registration Required to attend
Arrival & Check-in Begins
Florence Kopleff Recital Hall
Warm Up & Rehearsal Block 1
Rehearsal Block 2
Teachers Reading Session
Florence Kopleff Recital Hall Greenroom
Lunch
Entrepreneur Workshop: Co-Creating Your Musical Career
Q&A Forum
Rehearsal Block 3
Raffle, Group Photo, and Informance
End of Day
BIOGRAPHY
Moira Smiley Biography
As a composer, Moira Smiley is known worldwide for choral arrangements like Bring Me Little Water, Silvy and originals, Stand in That River and How Can I Cry. She’s in demand as a commissioned composer, writing multi-movement pieces like Time In Our Voices and In The Desert With You for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Vonnegut Requiem: Light Perpetual for Voces Novae, Loud My Soul for Ad Astra Festival and Headwaters for The Myrna Loy Theater. The European premiere of Time In Our Voices was performed by the voices and mobile phones of Ars Nova Copenhagen under the direction of Paul Hillier. In 2018-2019 Moira released the album and choral songbook, Unzip The Horizon as companion to her The Voice Is A Traveler solo show. She continues composing and improvising in collaboration with artists in film, video game production, theater and dance, and her work can be heard on feature film soundtracks, BBC & PBS television programs, NPR, and on more than 70 commercial albums. Upcoming premieres and current projects include Greta Sails for youth choir, Utopias for voices and strings, and a re-telling of Ovid’s tale of Narcissus for mobile phones and voices.
REPERTOIRE & FEES
Fees
Two-Day Festival Pass
Any collegiate student or professional artist is welcome to register to attend both days of the two day festival. Registration includes access to all Tuesday lectures & rehearsals, as well as the Wednesday Choral Festival. Lunch will be provided on Wednesday only. The Two-Day Festival Pass is available to participants ages 18 and older.
Cost per individual: $45
Choral Festival Group Registration
Any high school choral teacher is welcome to register their high school choral students for the Wednesday Choral Festival. Each school will be expected to purchase their own copy of the listed repertoire in addition to the registration cost. Lunch is provided as part of the Group Festival Pass.
Cost per student: $35
BIOGRAPHY
Jennifer Sengin
Deanna Joseph
Jennifer Sengin is the Associate Director of Choral Activities at Georgia State University where she directs the Women’s Chorus, Choral Union, and teaches conducting, graduate choral literature, undergraduate choral methods, and supervises student teachers. Under her direction, the Women’s Chorus recently performed at the Georgia Music Educators Association Conference in January 2020. She currently serves as the R&R Chair for Youth and Student Activities on the GA-ACDA Board and as Faculty/Administrator of the Choral Music Experience for Choral Teacher Education course at Michigan State University. In addition, Dr. Sengin sings in the professional women’s choir, mirabai, under the direction of Dr. Sandra Snow.
Prior to pursuing doctoral studies, Dr. Sengin taught high school choir in New Jersey. During her tenure, the choral program grew from approximately 150 to over 250 singers. Under her direction, the choirs performed at Carnegie Hall, the New Jersey State Theatre, and Princeton Chapel on the Princeton University Campus.
Dr. Sengin is an active guest conductor, clinician, adjudicator, and presenter. She recently provided sessions at the Georgia Music Educators Conference, Florida Music Educators Conference, and at the Mirabai Women’s Leadership Retreat in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Sengin has taught courses at Michigan State University and Central Connecticut State University. She has published and contributed to articles in the Choral Journal and Tempo Magazine.
Dr. Sengin is an active guest conductor, clinician, adjudicator, and presenter. She holds degrees from The College of New Jersey (BM), Ithaca College (MM), and Michigan State University (DMA).
Dr. Deanna Joseph is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at the Georgia State University School of Music where she conducts the University Singers and leads the master’s program in choral conducting. In 2015, she was the recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Outstanding Teacher Award at Georgia State, where she was selected out of a pool of over 800 faculty. A recent review of her work states, “[t]he choir sings with great musicality, excellent intonation, clear diction, and a healthy and beautiful pallet of tone colors…” (The Choral Scholar).
In May of 2017, the University Singers under Dr. Joseph’s leadership won first place in the renowned Marktoberdorf International Chamber Choir Competition while on a concert tour of Austria and Bavaria. In May of 2013, the University Singers competed in La Florilège Vocal de Tours where the choir placed second overall in the mixed choir category and Dr. Joseph was honored with the Prix du chef de choer (conducting prize). The Georgia State University Singers have been invited to perform at two Southern Division conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and at two conventions of the Georgia Music Educator’s Association during Dr. Joseph’s tenure at GSU, and the Georgia State University Choirs have been hired to sing two productions of David Bintley’s Carmina Burana with the Atlanta Ballet: in 2013 (North American premiere performances) and 2017. The choir’s professional recording, Evening Hymn (Gothic Records), is distributed internationally by Naxos and is available for purchase or streaming on all the major music distribution outlets including Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, etc. The American Record Guide review states “There are no runts in the repertory litter…[and] [t]he Georgia State choir of 40 is very good at all of it: radiant as dusk approaches, but hushed and sensitive to the coming darkness as shadows deepen and fall.” The disk has been featured several times on National Public Radio’s program, With Heart and Voice.
Dr. Joseph is an active guest conductor and headline clinician and has conducted all-state and honor choirs in more than twelve states. She is a frequent conductor of choral-orchestral repertoire, and has led performances of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Beethoven Mass in C, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Creation and Lord Nelson Mass, Schubert’s Mass in A-flatand Bruckner’s Mass in D Minor. She has prepared choirs to sing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Opera, and Andrea Bocelli. One of her small ensembles was featured on a 2016 episode of “The Walking Dead”.
Dr. Joseph’s research in the area of 19th century choral-orchestral performance-practice has led to invited presentations on the topic at several division conferences of the American Choral Director’s Association and at the national convention for the National Collegiate Choral Organization. In October of 2012 she was selected as one of 25 presenters from ten countries to speak at the Lund Choral Festival in Sweden.
Prior to her appointment at Georgia State University, Dr. Joseph served on the faculties at Smith College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Dr. Joseph holds conducting degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where she was awarded the Walter Hagen Conducting Prize. She is the founder and artistic director of the Atlanta Summer Conducting Institute (ASCI), a weeklong, summer conducting master class that draws conductors from across the country.