Invitational Choral Festival
2025 EMU Invitational Choral Festival
~Canceled for 2025
March 29, 2025
- 10:00 am-8:30 pm
- REGISTRATION CLOSES: March 15, 2024
- Cost: $35.00 per singer (covers music, two meals & concert parking)
- All featured choral ensembles will be joined by additional EMU Choral singers and individual high school ensembles and members from around the state to form the FESTIVAL CHOIR. The Festival Choir will sing 3-4 pieces together as a mass ensemble at the final concert.
- High School Teachers may bring full ensembles or select members from their program.
- Schedule of Events
Featured Composer- Melissa Dunphy
Born in Australia and raised in an immigrant family, Melissa Dunphy herself immigrated to the United States in 2003 and has since become an award-winning and acclaimed composer specializing in vocal, political, and theatrical music. She first came to national attention when her large-scale work the Gonzales Cantata was featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, National Review, and on Fox News and The Rachel Maddow Show, where host Rachel Maddow described it as "the coolest thing you've ever seen on this show." Other notable works include the song cycle Tesla's Pigeon, which won first place in the NATS Art Song Composition Award, and choral work What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? which won the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Competition and has been performed nationally by ensembles including Chanticleer and Cantus.
In 2024, Dunphy was awarded and Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. She was the recipient of a 2020 Opera America Discovery Grant for Alice Tierney, an opera commissioned by Oberlin Conservatory which premiered in 2023 at Oberlin and Opera Columbus. She has been composer-in-residence for the Immaculata Symphony Orchestra, Volti, and the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus, and her commissions include works for the BBC Proms, the BBC Singers, VOCES8, Cantus, the Mendelssohn Chorus, ACDA Eastern, the American Guild of Organists, and the Kennett Symphony. Dunphy is also a Barrymore Award-nominated theater composer and served from 2014-2023 as Director of Music Composition for the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference.
Dunphy has a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.M. from West Chester University and is on faculty at Rutgers University. She is president of the board of directors for Wildflower Composers and serves on the board of Lyric Fest. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Matt; the Dunphys are currently the owners and developers of the Hannah Callowhill Stage, a new performance venue in Old City Philadelphia which they hope to open in 2026, and co-hosts of the popular podcast The Boghouse about their adventures in Philadelphia colonial archaeology.
Links and Forms
- GENERAL REGISTATION FORM- Individual singer, small group or full ensemble
- Pay online
- Schedule of Events (Tentative)
Festival Choir Music
No advanced preperations will be required. However, please listen to the below links as many times as possible to become familiar before you arrive.
- I Took A Walk with Joy, Dunphy
- Soon Ah Will Be Done- William Dawson
- The Heavens Are Telling- Haydn
The EMU Choral Festival experience will include
- the opportunity to make music with high-level musicians from across the state
- the opportunity to sing with the EMU Choir
- the opportunity to participate in vocal masterclasses to learn more about healthy singing
- the opportunity to perform a choral-orchestral work with the Honor Orchestra
Steps for singer involvement
- If you are a full ensemble and want to attend as a member of the Festival Choir
- If you are an individual and want to attend as a singer
A few logistical details
- Once individual students are dropped off at EMU we will care for them all day. While a parent or chaperon is welcome none is required after check-in. Teachers are not expected to be present all day.
- No advanced work on the festival literature is required. Simply show up ready to make music
- Students will wear the concert dress of their High School Choir in performance. During the day students can wear "spirit wear" so show excitment in their home school.