General Interest
Hymn Sing
Come join us for a special musical treat to start your Workshop experience! We will be singing along with the organ, as usual BUT – we will be adding something to each hymn. See what fun we can have with hymn harmonizations, interludes and original compositions to make Sacrament Meeting feel like your own little Tabernacle!
Music Chair Boot Camp: Music Matters! (Sandy Bennion)
Music matters! Especially in our wards and stakes. This class will focus on how to magnify your calling as a ward or stake music chairman. We will discuss who makes up your music staff, and key into ideas for how to provide opportunities to involve more members and non-members in our music programs. We will rehearse how we can use music to strengthen testimonies, develop talents, and unify our ward and stake families. As music chairman, you play an important role in blessing lives–yours and others. Music matters after all!
The Whole Truth: Encouraging Excellence in the Everyday (David & Emily Thomas)
Keynote Speakers
Hidden Treasures: The Hymns (Dana Garrett)
“Brothers and sisters, let us use the hymns to invite the Spirit of the Lord into our congregations, our homes, and our personal lives. Let us memorize and ponder them, recite and sing them, and partake of their spiritual nourishment.” (Preface to the Hymnbook)
Come learn and discuss how to develop and strengthen a love for the hymns and ways to incorporate them into our everyday lives. This class is designed for any and all who desire to discover the gift that our hymns are.
Choral
Choral Reading (Kay Card)
Read through a selection of choral music appropriate for ward choirs. The pieces vary in difficulty and price, as well as come from a variety of resources to provide a wide exposure for choir directors. Two hours for this class! As requested by participants last year.
Hymn Conducting Made Easy (Allen Green)
This is the ideal class in hands-on, basic conducting for youth, prospective missionaries, full-time missionaries, and anyone else with limited musical training. It is for those who think they lack the sense of rhythm to conduct a hymn for a baptism or other meeting. It is also for those who have some idea how to conduct but can’t remember a three-beat pattern from a four-beat pattern, let alone how to start or end a hymn. As a professional drummer, Allen shows how conducting can be as fun and easy as playing a tom-tom.
Conducting Master Class (Dr. David Thomas and the Portland Ensign Choir)
Observe 3 workshop attendees as they work on polishing hymns in choir performance, using the Portland Ensign Choir for demonstration. Dr. David Thomas will coach participants on important concepts of phrasing, color, dynamics, balance, blend, conducting technique, and more. Nearly titled “Show What You Mean and Mean What You Show”, this class will offer specific guidance on refining the conductor’s physical gestures to more effectively encourage the desired singing from the choir.
Primary/Nursery
Nursery Music (Laura Friend)
Come find out the WHY of nursery music and learn creative ways to teach nursery children primary songs that will engage them and have them singing to their parents at home, as well as prepare them for their transition into primary. This class would be appropriate for primary choristers, nursery leaders, daycare/preschool teachers (many principles taught could carry over into any musical setting), and parents who want to teach their children music in the home.
A Trifle Too Excited: Transitions and Tips for Managing Junior Primary (Cecily Kiester)
C.S. Lewis, when commenting on a recent conversion of his friend, said to her: “The only…unfavourable symptom is that you are just a trifle too excited.” It’s possible he was also talking about singing time in Junior Primary! There is nothing more wonderful than the enthusiastic singing of the Sunbeams and CTRs as they sing beloved songs they know, but sometimes behaviour can get out of hand and threaten to chase away the Holy Ghost.
In this session we’ll talk about planning, teaching, and transition techniques that can be used to help with classroom management when working with younger primary children. Be prepared to move and try out some ideas as well as to share your own favorite techniques during discussion time.
Fluent in the Language of the Spirit (Cecily Kiester)
Fostering Music Literacy in Senior Primary
For so long we have been taught about how important music is in the Church. We use it to teach doctrine, share testimony, and, most importantly, invite the Spirit of the Lord to be with us. As President Spencer W. Kimball once said, “Music can act upon our senses to produce or induce feelings of reverence, humility, fervor, assurance, or other feelings attuned to the spirit of worship.” Music is an important language of the Holy Spirit. Isn’t it important that we continue to focus on helping our primary children to become fluent in this language?
In this session, we’ll discuss how we can teach musical concepts such as notation, sight-reading, and vocal production within the format of Primary Music Time. These activities and ideas can work well as transitions, memory helpers, and classroom management tools as well as helping to create our next generation of competent church musicians.
Organ/Accompaniment
Basic Organ 101 (Ramona Jones)
Transitioning from Pianist to Organist (Beginning Organ)
Are you a pianist, called to be organist? Have no fear! There are tools you can use to make the transition easier. In this class we will learn about: getting to know your organ, proper placement on the organ bench, how to prepare your score, the best way to practice, free online organ training resources and much more.
Organ Registration (McKay Marshall)
Stop using someone Else’s Presets!
Demystify the organ in this class on registration. We’ll help you decode organ stop vernacular, learn when to pull which stops, and begin crafting your own custom sounds from the organ. We’ll discuss common situations including solo and accompaniment registration, as well as offer some general tips to create a more polished sound from the organ.
Creative Organ Playing that Inspires Singing (Nathan McConkie)
In 50 minutes, learn a variety of quickly implementable techniques to help you enhance your organ musicianship, which in turn will encourage and inspire members to sing out and worship in a new way. We’ll discuss how dynamics, varying harmonies, and key modulation can refresh our experience with the hymns that sometimes become stale in our worship. I love the organ and am convinced that organists have more influence than they think to encourage worship through song.
Vocal/Singing
Voice Performance Master Class: Learning by Doing (Dr. David & Emily Thomas)
Participants practice the art of performance in a small, controlled environment, receiving feedback from two experienced instructors. Observing class members provide the “audience” for performers, can offer helpful reinforcement to the performer, and learn by watching others practice their performance. David & Emily Thomas have been providing joint instruction at voice performance classes for nearly 15 years, and credit this class format with significantly increasing the rate of progress among students.
Strengthening Sisters Through Song (Emily Thomas)
Focusing on Young Women and Relief Society, this class will offer examples of using music to strengthen sisters in our wards through rehearsing and sharing special musical numbers. Discuss ways to provide edifying music for ward activities, sacrament meeting, and joint meetings while cultivating strong bonds between sisters of all ages.