Meet Alicia Scanlan

ACDA has been a part of my life since middle school! I can’t imagine being the singer and teacher I am today without the many professional development and performing opportunities I have been given through ACDA.

In the spring of 2024, we put on our first ever Middle School Choral Festival, the Kapuana Choral Festival, featuring 300 voices from grades 6-8. We commissioned a piece by Alec Schumacker, using poetry by a sixth grade student, to celebrate Punahou’s new mission statement. A recording of this composition has been submitted as consideration for the Nā Hoku Hanohano Awards. We will be planning our second Kapuana choral festival for Spring of 2026. We were also busy getting three of our middle school students ready to perform at the ACDA National Honor Choirs this past spring break and in late February we had 100 6th, 7th and 8th graders participate in the Nā Leo Pili Mai Choral Festival.

My first experience with ACDA was as a part of the National Junior High Honor Choir in Louisville, Kentucky. Although I sang in a Children’s Choir since I was a young girl, it was at this honor choir that I experienced the life-changing power and beauty of choral singing. There have only been a few years of my life since then that I haven’t performed with a choir and for the past 24 years have been conducting my own ensembles. A more recent experience that was very special was singing with the Black Diaspora Immersion Choir in Cincinnati, Ohio at the ACDA National Festival in 2023, under Dr. Donald Dumpson’s direction. Lastly, I am currently the Managing Director for the O’ahu Choral Society and love singing under the direction of Josh Habermann.