Summer Music Institute – 2021

SVOTS – 10/3/21

[SVOTS Communications / YONKERS, NY] Whether you are a beginner or an experienced musician, enhance your craft and immerse yourself in hymns from the Slavic, Byzantine, Coptic, and Georgian chant traditions this June, at the 2021 St. Vladimir’s Seminary Summer Music Institute. The online event, themed “Unity in the Church through Song,” will take place June 2-5, 2021 and will be hosted by the Seminary’s Institute of Sacred Arts (ISA).

• Registration information is coming soon!

“Recent times have left many of us wounded by isolation, division, and fear. Now more than ever we need to understand each other and care for each other,” said ISA Director Dr. Peter Bouteneff. “What better way to express that understanding and care than to immerse ourselves in each other’s different traditions of church singing?”

The Summer Music Institute aims to celebrate and explore the diversity of musical cultures in Orthodoxy and improve our technique as choir singers, directors, and composers. The Institute will provide the unique experience of learning hymns from four chant traditions—Slavic, Byzantine, Coptic, and Georgian—first hand. Led by a team of experts and technicians, you will be given the tools to analyze, understand, and faithfully JOIN IN the songs of our brothers and sisters across the world.

“The Summer Music Institute celebrates the unique capability of music to create unity out of diversity—harmony out of cacophony—by using songs, singers, and teachers from outside our respective traditions to help us become better artists in our own crafts,” said Talia Sheehan. Sheehan, a vocalist, music educator, and conductor, is teaming up with the ISA to put on the event with co-organizers Bouteneff and Dr. Harrison Russin, the Seminary’s director of music.

Experienced participants will enjoy masterclasses with detailed coaching and feedback in their choice of three disciplines from gifted pedagogues. Beginners will also enjoy a series of masterclass presentations designed for those just starting out in church music. Built like a “boot camp” for new choir directors and singers, the program will offer a quick but thorough introduction to all the necessary skills—musical, liturgical, and interpersonal—they need to succeed as a new church musician.

The Summer Music Institute will kick off Wednesday evening, June 2, with a keynote address by Dr. David Drillock, St. Vladimir’s professor of liturgical music, emeritus. Three more distinguished speakers will deliver keynote addresses over the course of the event.

More details and registration information are forthcoming.

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