Last Christmas I was engaged to record a CD of a Girl's Schola at a Catholic High School. I ended up doing this over three sessions and was also invited to assist and conduct some of the music by the director, Isabel Miller, as well who had studied at a Choir School that I led along with my wife, Ellen Doll Jones, CAGO and the director of the B16 Schola in Knoxville, Mary Weaver. Mary Weaver and I had also led a Saturday workshop on chant and polyphony with this choir earlier on, so I knew they were proficient and an enthusiastic group.

I was then asked to develop a program to take the choir and liturgy group students out to area churches to sing and read at Mass to promote the school along with the director. That was an interesting experience.

Knowing what I did then about the school, I completed the recording and also ended up doing the design of the CD graphics. Initially there was thought of featuring a photo of the school on the cover, but we shifted that over to what we decided was better idea, focusing on the fact that this school is based upon traditional Catholic belief and practice.

The interior two panels of the CD case include a very compelling description of the school and what it offers to students and families.

The school ordered them to sell, but more so to use as gifts to donors and prospective families. The CD is not designed to make students want to attend, unless they are devout Catholics, rather it is designed in its entirety to make parents and grandparents want to send their children and grandchildren to attend.

This is something that you can do for your schola, parish and so on.

This is today something that is very affordable to do. The schools sells them for $10, I was able to load them to Amazon with all the profits going to the school choir fund. At Amazon they cost a bit more.

Depending upon how much of this recording and production you and members of the church can do, the cost of the CD's can be very affordable. In this case the ones teh school distributes are a four panel Green design.

Also, if you are purely interested in having them available for sale, www.createspace.com will take you by the hand and lead you through the production process of your recorded files and the case design at no charge, list them for sale on a free webpage and also place them on Amazon, all in the typical commercial shrink-wrapped CD box. This is more expensive than having the produced by a company like we used to produce the school ones.

We were also able to arrange a release party at Barnes & Noble Bookstore, which also ordered and stocked the CD in their music department.

I'll be glad to ask any questions if it will help you promote your schola and chant.