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2024 ACDA Midwestern Region Conference February 7-10, 2024 Omaha, Nebraska

H eadliners/S pecial E v en ts
Headliners/Special Events

River City Mixed Chorus Nebraska Showcase

Derrick Fox is the associate dean of
graduate studies and creative endeavors
and a professor of choral conducting at
Michigan State University. Prior to MSU,
he was the director of choral activities
and distinguished professor of music at the University
of Nebraska-Omaha and assistant professor of choral
For forty years, the River City Mixed Chorus— music at Ithaca College. Fox has taught at the middle
Omaha’s only LGBTQ+ community choir and one school, high school, and collegiate levels. His conduct-
of the oldest mixed GALA choruses in the country— ing experiences have included singers from upper el-
has been giving voice to the hopes of many who yearn ementary choirs through collegiate and community
for a more fully inclusive and diverse society. RCMC choirs. He was awarded the 2021 Bryan R. Johnson
has grown from a group of ten friends singing at local Service Award by the Nebraska MEA and the 2022
churches and gay bars to more than 160 singers who University of Nebraska Omaha Award for Distin-
perform multiple times a year at Omaha’s most pres- guished Research/Creative Activity.
tigious performing arts venues. RCMC offers singers
and audience members alike safe spaces to celebrate all
that makes us unique, diverse, and joyful. They head-
lined the 2019 Iowa Choral Directors Association con- Meadowlark
ference with a multi-movement commission, Quiet No
More, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the
Stonewall riots.

A. Barron Breland is in demand through-
out the country as a conductor, chorus-
master, clinician, and adjudicator. He has
prepared choruses for Grammy and To-
ny-winning artists and conductors. With
degrees in music theory and choral conducting from
the University of Georgia and the Indiana University
Jacobs School of Music, Breland has a diverse back-
ground in many different fields of music, including
the piano and saxophone. He is dean of the Graduate Meadowlark is a select group of high school musi-
School and vice provost for Faculty and Academic Af- cians from the state of Nebraska. Being a part of their
fairs at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Be- high school’s Pop A Cappella group garnered these
sides his work with the Omaha Symphony and Omaha singers the opportunity to audition for and create
Performing Arts, he is also the principal conductor of Meadowlark. The music performed has been selected
Résonance and the artistic director of the River City with students in mind—trying to sing pop songs of
Mixed Chorus. their age without jeopardizing the complex harmonies
and rhythms necessary for an educational setting.

36 CHORAL JOURNAL January 2024 Volume 64 Number 5