Page 39 - CJJan25

2025 ACDA National Conference March 18-22, 2025 Dallas, Texas

v
t E
en
ts
C
onc
er
ack
,
ange T
r
B
acks
)
oth T
r
P
urple T
Concert Events (Purple Track, Orange Track, Both Tracks)
(
r
O
r
ack
,
eral centuries of choral art music, including works by Convention in February, under the baton of acclaimed
African American composers, with a noted emphasis conductor Richard Bjella. During the TMEA conven-
on the performance, presentation, and preservation tion, the choir will engage in four days of intensive re-
of the Negro spiritual. As a historically black college/ hearsals. Presenting an encore of that performance for
university that, since its inception in 1876, has opened ACDA members, this marks the second time a TMEA
its doors to any and every person seeking a first-class, all-state choir has been invited to perform at an ACDA
four-year university experience, our ensemble has pre- national conference.
sented performances of the Negro spiritual with ex-
cellence, authenticity, and respect. Richard Bjella has distinguished him-
self as a conductor, clinician, choral
Demetrius Robinson serves as the direc- pedagogue, and choral arranger around
tor of choral activities and music educa- the world. In 2014, Bjella was appoint-
tion coordinator at Prairie View A&M ed artistic director of the San Antonio
University in Prairie View, Texas. Robin- Chamber Choir. Their CD, Unfrozen: A Baltic Christmas,
son received a BME in vocal and instru- received Grammy attention in 2018. He retired from
mental music and an MM in choral conducting from Texas Tech University in 2017, but previous to his
the University of Southern Mississippi. He also com- work in Lubbock, Bjella served twenty-five years as di-
pleted an educational specialist degree in educational rector of choral studies at the Lawrence Conservatory
leadership at William Carey University and a PhD in of Music, leading the Concert Choir in an acclaimed
music education at the University of Memphis. Rob- performance at the 2009 National ACDA Conference.
inson received the Future Music Faculty Fellowship He is also active in the promotion of creative choral
from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2022. programming and has a chapter in The Oxford Handbook
of Choral Pedagogy (2017) “The Art of Successful Pro-
gramming: Study, Selection, and Synthesis.”
Featured Concert

Saturday 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm Call for 2025 Choral Journal
Winspear Opera House Summer Festival/Workshop Listings!

The March/April 2024 issue will feature our annual
TMEA All-State Large School Mixed Choir free Summer Festival and Workshop Listing. Email

submissions to abumgarner@acda.org by January
15, 2025, in the following format:
Event date

Event name
Event location

Selected through a highly competitive multi-level One-sentence description of the event
audition, the top high school choristers in Texas will
be named to the 2025 TMEA All-State Large School Contact information
Mixed Choir in January. The choir’s 224 voices will (e.g., name, phone, email, website)
unite for the first time during the TMEA Clinic/

CHORAL JOURNAL January 2025 Volume 65 Number 5 37