Carolee Curtright will present a workshop entitled: The Organist as Choir Director: Enabling the Church Choir and will also present a choral reading session

Carolee R. Curtright is professor emeriti of Music Education and Choral Activities at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln School of Music where she taught such courses as Music Education for the Elementary Education Major, Choral Methods, Voice Skills, Choral Literature and Analysis, Musical Stage Production Techniques, Principles and Process in Music Learning and Choral Arranging. She also conducted the Freshman Chorale and directed the School of Music Women's Ensemble - The University Chorale. She often directs choral clinics and festivals both in Nebraska and throughout the United States for Elementary, Middle School, High School and College and has been a constant advocate for the musical integrity of the Treble Ensemble. She is a published composer/arranger with compositions published by Hinshaw, Boosey and Hawkes, Plymouth, Cherry Lane, Heritage, Lorenz, Roger Dean and Choristers Guild. She recently wrote a commissioned piece for the 50th anniversary of the North Carolina Summer Institute for the Choral Art and directed the middle school choir during that institute. Her choirs have also served as choirs-in-residence at the institute and she has conducted other middle school and elementary choirs during other summers there. Prior to teaching at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln she spent 15 years in church music as director of youth and children's choirs at Country Club Christian Church in Kansas City, MO. There she directed 9 choirs including 3 yrs. of age through high school and handbell choirs. She presently also conducts the Matin Singers at First-Plymouth Congregational church and is teaching High School and Middle School Music at Raymond Central Jr./Sr. High School. She is the founder/artistic director of the Pueri Cantores Organization of Choirs for Young Voices that includes three choirs for young singers from 3rd grade through High School. It began as a Boys Choir in 1981 to sing the Britten "War Requiem" under the direction of Robert Shaw. The organization has evolved to three choirs, a training choir, an intermediate choir and a high school mixed choir. In 2001, she founded a community women's choir, Cantabile, that is in its fourth year. The choirs perform for many organizations in Lincoln, in Nebraska and in the surrounding states. They have toured nationally and internationally. She has maintained a constant involvement with the young singer and Choral Music by coordinating festivals, directing honor choirs and working with directors of choirs. She has been involved with Sing Around Nebraska since its beginning and conducted the first Sing Around Nebraska Honor Choir. She has conducted SAN choirs every year that they have been organized in many sites across the state of Nebraska. This year she conducted the Scottsbluff site. Bonae Cantores, one of the choirs in the Pueri Cantores Organization, is a select choir for high school singers. It was first organized because singers wanted to continue their experience in the organization when they entered high school. Many of the singers have been involved in the organization for six,to ten years. The choir meets once a week for rehearsals at First-Plymouth Congregational Church from September to May. It is open by audition to any Nebraska singer and presently includes singers from 7 different high schools.

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