As a matter of general interest, the FSSP of Los Angeles has just opened up registration for their Sacred Music Symposium. It will take place June 15-19th at St Teresa of Avila Catholic Church in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles.

The focus of the conference this year is working with volunteer choirs (rehearsal techniques for volunteer choirs, how to improve their sound, practical tips, etc etc)

Dr Horst Buchholz, whom you all know as the Vice President of the CMAA, will be conducting and teaching along with Dr Alfred Calabrese, Music Director at St Rita Catholic Church in Dallas, and Catholic composer Kevin Allen, who is the Music Director at St John Cantius in Chicago.

Really good stuff happening in general with FSSP LA these days it seems. If anyone is interested there is more info at ccwatershed.org/Symposium.

Full disclosure btw - I’m a little biased about the Symposium because I go down every year with at least half of my choir of awesome teenyboppers, hehe. It has really inspired a deep love of sacred music in them and we’ve had a tremendous improvement overall as a choir because of the experience. I’ve had such an amazing experience with it that I’ve even started volunteering my time to help them organize. It’s that worthwhile!

Side note, I also recommend that if you’re a choir director to bring along as many singers as you can. There is nothing like singing in the Symposium choir with these incredibly talented conductors. Or at least that has been my experience. It really put us all on the same page as a choir and helped us bond.

Hope some of you can come and experience it first hand- words and pictures don’t do it justice! :)

Oh! And there will be altar server training going on simultaneously during the week of the Symposium at the same location, in case you know of anyone wishing to be trained to altar serve by the FSSP.