My first experience with ACDA was as a fourth grade soprano in Jean Ashworth Bartle’s Elementary Honor Choir at the Eastern Division Conference in 1992. Sponsored by the directors of my community youth choir and accompanied by my mother, a veteran teacher of middle and high school choirs, I saw and heard first hand the existence of an entire network of people that seemed to love and deeply understand a world that I was just beginning to explore. 

I adored spending hours rehearsing Mendelssohn and Britten with other children from all over the east coast (!). In the evenings, I thrilled at watching Dr. André Thomas rehearse Larry Farrow’s “Market Woman” and Gorczycki’s “In Virtute Tua” with the high school division after the elementary rehearsals dismissed. I thought we (along with several other people, somehow) had snuck into that ballroom, exhilarated by the thought of rehearsing choral music with such exuberance at 10 pm on a Friday, and in the presence of countless engaged observers, besides! 

It all felt very magical, like we were all a part of something both special and welcoming. I had discovered that a weekend spent immersed in joyfully created, enthusiastically shared, and exceptionally executed choral music can be a powerful mirror that might help me see and reconnect with a fundamental and sometimes elusive part of my self. It was also a path to connection with other people who share the same passions, and whose diverse experience and expertise offer the possibility of moving us all forward, developing our craft so that it might enable us to truly (finally!) express the granular, human truth that drives us all to make music in the first place.

I was only nine then, and perhaps too young to appreciate the significance of finding one’s tribe. Like so many of us, I eventually allowed my teaching schedule and the business of life to pull me away from spending my precious time feeding myself. I love my job as a the director of a choral program in an awesome high school, but though I get to share the world of choral music with many wonderful kids all day, I had starved myself the thing that started it all: singing in choir, myself. I was tired and on the verge of burning out, and I knew I deserved more than the table scraps of my time and of that world. I sought a change.

Gently nudged by friends, including Leslie Adler, the director who sponsored that first ACDA experience, I joined the Harmonium Choral Society. Then, I rejoined ACDA. Together, these were a homecoming. I found again the simple, effervescent joy of choral singing, and likewise rediscovered the invaluable learning and networking ACDA offers through its conferences, resources, and perhaps most significantly, its network of generous, knowledgeable members. Indeed, nearly three decades after that first conference, I find I learn something every time I make use of my ACDA membership, even as I continue to quote Ms. Bartle in my own rehearsals.

Time is precious, and I choose to spend at least a bit of it recharging and learning with my people. ACDA is a part of that. What a lovely gift.

Jamie Bunce
High School Youth Chair