"David Brunner's music is lyrical, fresh-sounding and always creative. His music is a favorite with the choir as well as the audience!"
Lynne Gackle
School of Music
Baylor University
Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 7:42PM I spent the weekend with the Hillsborough All-County High School Mixed Chorus in Tampa, Florida and was impressed by their preparation, personal musicianship skills, eagerness, good humor and hard work. It was especially gratifying to hear I AM IN NEED OF MUSIC and IF I CAN HELP SOMEBODY sung so well. Now if I can only stop Robert Ray's HE NEVER FAILED ME YET from swirling around in my head...
Monday, January 16, 2012 at 5:22PM My friends and colleagues Lori Lovell and Matthew Swope and I presented a session on our Vertical Virtual Choir experience at the Florida Music Educators Association conference in Tampa on Saturday. In addition to the documentary and virtual choir, itself, now being live, the octavo of E PLURIBUS CANTUS is in print from Boosey & Hawkes. All made their debut at the conference. It was a joy to share what we learned from this experience and sense an excitement and interest from other choral teachers about how they might experience technology in the choral classroom in a new way. The FMEA conference is always a memorable event and it was great to reconnect with friends.
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 8:24AM Last night was the video debut and live premiere of the long-in-the-making “vertical” virtual choir project with Maitland Middle School, Winter Park High School and University of Central Florida singers. The project was the inspiration of Lori Lovell, choral director at Maitland Middle School, who had seen Eric Whitacre’s video and wanted to develop something similar for her own students. She was the inspiring force of “yes we can” behind the project and quickly brought Matthew Swope, from Winter Park High School, and I together at Starbucks for a planning meeting the beginning of the summer. The idea of a vertical team of educators from various grade levels in the same discipline working cooperatively to develop and implement the project would bring to young, emerging and mature singers an opportunity to explore technology in the choral classroom and partner together in an exciting and collaborative venture.
What began as a casual conversation over coffee quickly took shape and form, when Tom Todia, the Course Director of Game Sound at Full Sail University (one of the premiere art, music, and film schools in the world) came onboard to facilitate the software for recording and manipulating individual student audio and video. We wanted a piece that was age and skill appropriate for the youngest singers, yet captured the imagination of the older ones, and a text that told the story of our project and was one that every singer could identify with. It seemed that the best way for this to happen was to write a new piece.
I contacted my friend, musician and poet Scott Lounsbury in New Hampshire, to see if he had anything that might fit the unique nature of the project and two days later he delivered E PLURIBUS CANTUS, a tremendous text about coming together from many places to form one voice, written just for us. It took just another two days to compose.
Many happy circumstances converged with good friend Lynn Peghiny agreeing to play the piano track, former Winter Park High School film student Gabe Gundacker launching a documentary video project about the collaboration, plans for a combined live performance that would showcase the video release, and a session for the Florida Vocal Association at the state FMEA conference. The conductor video and piano audio tracks were recorded in August, 180 singers’ audio and video individually recorded in September and the editing process in the months following.
This project captured the imaginations of our students, brought technology into our choral classrooms in a very real way, initiated partnership between the public schools, University of Central Florida and Full Sail University, and united younger and older singers of generation Y in a way they had not experienced before. Communities ringing, each voice joined in singing.
Last night’s performance was the first time that all of us were in the same room at the same time and what a glorious experience it was! My applause goes to all involved, friends and colleagues Lori Lovell and Matthew Swope, master techno-wizard Tom Todia, and all of our students, whose enthusiasm and love of singing is contagious. Scott Lounsbury has artfully captured what it feels like to be a singer in a chorus. E PLURIBUS CANTUS is an anthem to bands of empowered singers everywhere – from many, comes one song.
Sunday, December 4, 2011 at 7:54AM Rabindranarth Tagore's wonderful text, along with the milestone 20th anniversary of the Syracuse Gay and Lesbian Chorus were the inspiration for MY SONG, which premiered Friday night in upstate New York. The chorus sang with generous spirit and heart and brought to the audience an inspirational program of joyful celebration. Bravo to the all the singers and director Glenn Kime for a wonderful evening!
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 8:27AM Just had a wonderful weekend with friends Paul Caldwell & Sean Ivory, who came to work with Sean Linfors and Tesfa Wondemagegnehu's awesome singers from Timber Creek and Freedom High Schools and my UCF Chamber Singers. We spent the afternoon in rehearsal together and featured their music in concert, singing Carrickfergus, Lay Earth's Burden Down, and the second-ever performance of Da Pacem. What a great time!