Sorensen Director of Choral Music Dr. Nicole Lamartine awarded Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Collaborations in the Virtual Classroom Grant

Dr. Nicole Lamartine, UC Santa Barbara’s newly appointed Sorensen Director of Choral Music, has been awarded a Collaborations in the Virtual Classroom grant from UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) for Fall 2020. With all performance classes having shifted to remote instruction for the fall quarter, Dr. Lamartine plans to use this new virtual medium to expose her students to choral music and cultures from around the world. The Fall curriculum for the UCSB Chamber Choir and Women’s Chorus will include a series of lectures and performance demonstrations led by guest speakers from all over the world, which Dr. Lamartine’s IHC grant award will help make possible.

"As we are online for the fall quarter, I wanted to create a series of experiences to enrich the UCSB Choirs' traditional university choral ensemble experience,” said Dr. Lamartine. “In preparing students of all experience levels to recognize, appreciate, and value all types of singing together, we will gather, virtually, with culture bearers and musical experts of various genres. These experts will provide an overview of the type of music or style of singing and teach us a song from their culture, including movement. UCSB Choirs hope to include recordings of these songs in our end-of-quarter virtual 'Postcard from UCSB Choirs.'"

Over the course of Fall Quarter, the UCSB Choirs will hear from choral leaders from around the world, on various topics. The series will begin by focusing on diversity, equity, inclusion, and access with Dr. Rollo Dilworth, Professor of Choral Education at Temple University, who will present a talk titled “O Say, Can You REALLY See? A New Vision for Choral Music.” The remainder of the series will focus on choral practices from various cultures and genres, including choral music of New Zealand and the Maori culture with David Squires (Conductor, New Zealand Youth Choir); choral music of Mexico with Ahmed Fernando Anzaldúa El Samkary (Mexican conductor and pianist of Egyptian descent and conductor of the Minnesota-based “Border CrossSings”); choral music of Moldova with Diana Bunea (Professor at the Academy of Music in Chisinau, Moldova) and Dr. Rodney Garnett (Professor Emeritus at the University of Wyoming and an expert on the folk music of Moldova); and choral music of the Basque people with Elisa Etchemendy, a Basque culture bearer. The UCSB Choirs’ guest speaker series will end with a focus on harmony singing in the Bluegrass style with Shelby Means (Grammy-nominated Bluegrass musician) and Bill McKay (Bluegrass musician with over 20 album recordings). 

Learn more about the UCSB Choirs here.

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