Teaching Music Through Performance in Middle School Choir

This book is one of the most comprehensive resources ever published for middle school choir directors - written, researched, and compiled by conductors and educators with a wealth of teaching experience. It is ideal for anyone who seeks a deeper understanding of the best choral literature for middle school singers and who wishes to learn from some of the seminal voices in the profession. In Part I, Sherri Porterfield discusses the role of assessment in middle school artistry; Judy Bowers outlines a hierarchy for independent part singing; Patrick Liebergen and Paul D. Head discuss selecting and preparing quality repertoire; James Jordan encourages the inner journey of a young singer; and Frank Abrahams introduces comprehensive musicianship through the lens of critical pedagogy and reciprocal teaching. Part II includes teacher resource guides for 80 works considered by these experts to be the best available for middle school choirs of all ability levels. Each teacher resource guide includes information about the composer or arranger, the composition, historical perspectives, technical and stylistic considerations, musical elements, form and structure analysis, and text guidelines. Each guide also contains valuable suggestions for rehearsing the music with middle school students. Resource recordings of many of the works are available on the companion CD (Set 1). The long-awaited second set of middle school choir recordings feature unison and canons, SA, SSA, SAA, TB, TTB and TTBB repertoire from the series. Of special interest are seven tracks featuring middle school choirs. These are beautiful recordings of some of the great repertoire in print for the middle school level that serve as excellent models of what great singing can be at this level.