By Lane Wilson
Director, American Composers Forum - Atlanta Chapter.
Photos by Tim Wilkerson

As you drive northeast from Atlanta, the interstate angles away from suburban malls and fast food franchises toward vistas of rolling farmland. About an hour outside the city, you round a curve and glimpse the blue foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. Here, on 150 wooded acres in north Georgia, a summer camp for girls has been held since 1925. Year after year, generations of campers have come to learn outdoor skills, make new friends, and have fun.

This year, for the first time, a group of campers also came to make music.

For two weeks in June, 52 young women ages 10 to 14 participated in VivaVoce, a new choral music program held at the Athens YWCO (Young Women's Christian Organization) Camp for Girls in Clarkesville, Georgia. VivaVoce's goals were to provide interested campers with quality instruction in choral music, combined with the opportunity to take composition classes from a composer-in-residence and participate in the creation and performance of new music.

"Getting to Know You": Four Partners with an Idea

VivaVoce was the brainchild of four different organizations in Georgia: the Atlanta Chapter of the American Composers Forum; the Athens, Ga., YWCO; Horizons, a student enrichment program based in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs; and Spivey Hall, a concert venue located outside Atlanta in nearby Morrow.

The four organizations had one thing in common: they were all grantees of The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation. While attending the Blank Foundation's 2002 Grantee Conference, representatives from each organization met by chance over lunch. As they talked, they discovered that their institutional missions might be advanced collectively through a partnership in music. Their conversations eventually resulted in a successful proposal to the Blank Foundation for VivaVoce.

The program was designed to address several unique needs. For starters, very few choral music camps exist in the Southeast, and none offers a composer-in-residence. VivaVoce aims to provide outreach to girls from low-income families who can benefit from such a camp experience. Learning music with the goal of public performances also helps address general issues of self-esteem and personal development for all the young women involved, regardless of background.

Each of the community partners brought different assets to this year's program. The camp's choral directors, Martha Shaw and Jennifer Kane, conduct Spivey Hall's Children's Choirs. Spivey Hall's community outreach staff also managed the camp's marketing, music purchases, and scholarship funding. Horizons and the Athens YWCO identified girls from their programs serving at-risk populations who had an interest in music and vocal performance. And the YWCO Camp provided the time-tested infrastructure within which VivaVoce, as a specialty camp, could operate effectively.

The Forum's Atlanta Chapter worked with the community partners to create the job description and coordinate the selection process for VivaVoce's composer. This year, the composer's responsibilities included writing one commissioned choral work and teaching daily composition classes. Through the classes, the composer and campers collaborated on two additional pieces: an electronic composition that interpreted the camp's natural environment, and a choral piece developed with ideas from the students. All three new pieces were premiered at the camp's final concert.

Because the composer lived at the camp during the residency, the opportunity was offered to composers throughout the Southeast. Out of eight applicants from three states, the community partners chose Jonathan McNair as VivaVoce's first composer-in-residence. Currently a member of the music faculty at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, McNair brought a unique combination of skills and experience to the job. His career has encompassed community outreach, academic teaching and church music, including conducting youth choirs. He has taught classes in electronic music, built a public sound sculpture, and created instruments from household objects. He also has served as a composer for the Forum's Faith Partners Program for the Southeastern states.

"Do - A Deer": From Solfege to Sound Collection

The fifty-two young women who participated in VivaVoce came from Spivey Hall's choir program, Horizons and YWCO programs, a choral group in Athens, and the camp's general registration. They ranged from singers who could read music to girls with no choral experience whatsoever. The group was ethnically diverse, including campers who were African-American, Asian, and Hispanic, all singing together for the first time. And they eagerly tackled music as diverse as they were, learning a total of eleven pieces in English, Spanish, and Hebrew. The choral directors also coached the campers on vocal techniques like diction and phrasing.

One of the pieces the chorus learned was McNair's "Heart-Cry Alleluias," the residency's commission. The text of the five-minute composition combined excerpts from the Psalms with a line from the traditional spiritual "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child," linked by alleluia phrases.

Thirty of the VivaVoce campers, divided into three groups, studied composition with McNair. During the first week, each class researched and contributed texts for the piece that McNair developed into the song cycle "A Day with VivaVoce." During the second week, the girls used mini-disc recorders to collect sounds ranging from frog croaks and birdcalls to the camp's ubiquitous bell. McNair catalogued the sounds and edited them into the digital-audio montage "What Does That Sound Like?"

As part of the curriculum, McNair introduced his students to the work of women composers. Each day he profiled one historic and one contemporary artist, and played excerpts of their music. In addition, he built a "junk" band with materials that included terra cotta pots, wine glasses filled with water, and heavy-gauge aluminum cans. The girls learned how to play their "instruments," improvise, and maintain a beat, while experiencing how sounds from conventional objects can be organized to create music.

After their rehearsals and composition classes, the VivaVoce singers took part in traditional activities like canoeing, swimming, and crafts with the other campers.

"The Hills Are Alive": VivaVoce Reverberations

The first VivaVoce Summer Music Camp concluded with two concerts. On June 27, a free public performance was held at the chapel of Piedmont College near the camp. The girls sang for an audience of their fellow campers, local residents, and representatives from the community partners and the Blank Foundation. The program included premieres of the three compositions created by McNair and his students. The next day, the chorus performed at the camp for their families just before leaving to go home. This presentation included a reprise of several songs, including "Heart-Cry Alleluias" and excerpts from "A Day With VivaVoce." For this performance, the chorus was joined by McNair's "Junk Band" ensemble, who surprised their audience by producing melodies from peach cans and car keys.

And then it was all over - or was it?

For two weeks, the north Georgia mountains had echoed with the sounds of treble voices as VivaVoce introduced the young women to the work and rewards of making new music. The success of this inaugural collaboration has encouraged the four community partners to continue the program. VivaVoce's true resonance will be felt for years to come in the lives of its first young participants, who took an ambitious idea and made it a musical reality.