This professional development session is for all choral educators looking to reinvigorate the rehearsal process and improve our singers' role in bringing words and music to life for audiences. Whether you work with elementary, secondary, collegiate students or avocational singers, you are invited to join us! Participants will have a chance to exchange strategies with colleagues and learn new ways to train the articulators of speech, inclusive of needs for developing voices. 

Take your choir to a new level with this refresher course on teaching diction and the International Phonetic Alphabet to ensembles. Led by singing-actor and teaching artist Dr. Alexis Davis-Hazell and facilitated by choral conductor-educator Dr. Morgan Luttig, this workshop will be professional development that gives you tools you can use immediately in your rehearsals. Come gain continuing education credit and breathe new life into your choral rehearsals! 

Course Objectives: This session will reinforce the value of baseline knowledge of introductory phonetics to support the performance of literature in multiple languages (which is central to formalized western vocal music practice.) The voice is a phonetic as well as a melodic instrument, and elocution training is essential for meaningful communication while singing. The instructor will establish skill priorities for idiomatic and aesthetically pleasing formation of language sounds, to be explored with choral educators by way of: vocal tract anatomy review, speech articulator development, listening exercises, tongue and jaw exercises, articulation drills and group collaboration. A recommended reading list of resources will be provided.