Meet Alec Schumacker

ACDA has helped me professionally and personally in so many ways.  From making connections, meeting colleagues and making friends, from being inspired by great choirs and from learning at the conferences. ACDA also helps with opportunities to serve our choral community.

One of the projects I was excited for this year was to conduct Nā Leo Hou, Hawai‘i’s All State High School Choral Festival. This truly was an honor to be a part of. It was a joy to work with so many devoted singers and see the great work that our high school teachers are doing in their classrooms.

One of my most important choir memories was probably when I was 16 or 17 and singing in a high school choir festival. We were working on Morten Lauridsen’s “O Nata Lux”, and the conductor asked us all to stand next to someone who wasn’t on our part.  That was really the first time I’d ever experienced singing in a quartet situation like that, and I remember clearly that I, a bass, ended up next to an alto.  There’s a moment in the first few measures of that piece where the basses sing a G# and the altos simultaneously sing an A. I remember hearing and feeling the alto sing that dissonance next to me and I felt like my entire body vibrated with the energy and beauty of that moment and its subsequent resolution.  I was hooked for good from there on out – I had to write, sing, and be around music like that.