Meet Erica Glenn

ACDA has provided me with a vibrant community of like-minded colleagues across the country, and I feel inspired and rejuvenated whenever I attend an ACDA event, (from national conferences to local workshops to all-state honors festivals). Over the years, I have had the opportunity to present workshops, lead reading sessions, and hear some of my own music performed at ACDA conferences. I also served as the guest clinician for Hawaii’s 2023 All-State Middle School Festival and the 2024 All-State High School Festival. ACDA has provided a home for my research into the Estonian Singing Revolution and the impact of music among refugee populations (via the Western Division magazine, Tactus). I am continually inspired by my peers in the choral world, and I appreciate the opportunities that ACDA provides to gather and connect.

Here are a few choral highlights at BYUH in the past few months!

In May 2025, I raised my baton on the Carnegie Hall stage, looking past the professional orchestra and opera soloists in front of me and into the luminous faces of nearly 70 current and former singers from BYU-Hawaii forming the chorus for the premiere of my original seven movement Worldwide Requiem. We had prepared for nine rigorous months in the classroom, utilizing culturally responsive pedagogy and mastering text in eight languages, including Waray—a Filipino language never before sung at Carnegie Hall. I collaborated directly with students from Tonga, the Philippines, the Middle East, Japan, and Hawaii as I conducted research, translated text, gathered eyewitness accounts of disasters referenced in each movement, and composed the parts for choir and orchestra. I have now been invited to conduct the European premiere the Worldwide Requiem in London with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra in June 2027. 

In February 2026,  Josh Groban’s music director, David Lai, invited our Chamber Choir to perform as Josh’s backup singers in the first stop on his GEMS World Tour at the Blaisdell Arena. A particularly memorable moment for our students was chanting BYU-Hawaii’s oli—the Hiki Mai—for Josh after the concert. 

Finally, this upcoming July, ten BYU-Hawaii music students—primarily from the Pacific and Asia—will travel with me to Poland to work with Peace Through Music International and observe how international NGOs are run. This initiative is being funded by the BYU-Hawaii Willes Center and will help graduating students establish new kinds of music organizations in their home countries, thereby carving out their own niche as arts entrepreneurs and serving their local communities.

One of my favorite choir memories come from an international choir trip to Italy. I first fell in love with choral music as a child when I sang with the Utah Childen’s Choir from age 8-16. During my time with the UCC, we travelled to Italy to sing under the baton of Doreen Rao. I will never forget standing in a circle singing “Siyahmb ekukhanyeni” with over 500 voices from around the world at the Pitti Palace in Florence. This experience is forever frozen in my memory in its cross-cultural, multimodal vitality. I was only twelve, but I was already learning critical lessons about the role of diversity and connection in music.  My favorite experiences have continued to be those that are vibrant and collaborative–performing Mahler 2 with the ASU Symphony Orchestra and Beethoven 9 with the Utah Symphony Chorus and, of course, conducting my own Worldwide Requiem at Carnegie Hall.