As I type this message, we are just weeks away from our tenth annual Elementary Music Festival and our annual fall workshop on October 21st & 22nd in Birmingham. I am excited that so many of you are bringing your students to participate in this wonderful festival. We welcome back our festival directors, Ben & Kristina Sisco. They have done a fabulous job organizing and promoting our festival. We have several new schools participating, and it is going to be a great weekend for our students and teachers. Our festival will include two great clinicians, Mr. Roger Sams and Mrs. Vicki Portis. I am excited to hear the two fabulous children’s choirs perform on Friday evening at the beautiful Wright Center on the campus of Samford University. We thank Samford University for their support and generosity in making this festival possible. We also thank Dr. Suzanne Burgess for her partnership with us. Mr. Roger Sams will also present the following day at our Saturday Fall workshop at Vestavia Hills Elementary East from 9 AM to 3 PM. It will be a fabulous weekend to celebrate elementary music education!
If I don’t get to see you at the fall workshop, I hope I will see you at our January Conference. The 2017 AMEA Conference will be held in Montgomery for the last time before making the move to Birmingham at the BJCC, and this is a conference you will not want to miss. Pre-registration is now open at http://www.myamea.org/amea-conference/2017-conference-registration/ and you can reserve your hotel room at the Renaissance or Embassy Suites from there as well. Our conference this year is going to have a wide range of sessions that will include something for everyone.
We welcome Andrea Coleman as one of our main clinicians. She will present several sessions on Thursday & Friday along with a special fun evening session on Friday night. She was one of our festival clinicians last year, and she has some great sessions to share with us. We also welcome back Roger Sams from “Music is Elementary” along with David Frego and Georgia Newton as our other main clinicians. They will be presenting throughout the conference. David Frego will also have an evening fun session Thursday night on Dalcroze.
We will also hear from several of our own elementary division teachers including Lea Hoppe, Dr. Rob Lyda, and Deanna Bell. They will also be joined by Dr. Patricia Corbin of Jacksonville State University, and Dr. Suzanne Burgess of Samford University. We will have two elementary choral performances on Friday afternoon at 1:15 PM in the MPAC featuring the Montgomery Academy 5th & 6th Grade Chorus, under the direction of Meg Griffin, and The Ogletree Elementary Singers, under the direction of Phil Wilson. Other sessions of interest will be presented by Quaver Music and ChordBuddy. This will be one of our best conferences yet! I want you to be a part of the action so get pre-registered today!
If you are not receiving emails from the elementary division, I would love to add you to our email list. Just send me an email and I will add you to our email list: elementaryamea@gmail.com
I look forward to seeing you and learning together at our upcoming events.
Respectfully Submitted,
Cliff Huckabee
Upcoming Events
10th Annual Elementary Music Festival – Samford University Birmingham, AL
October 21
Fall Joint AMEA/AOSA Workshop – Vestavia Hills Elementary East Birmingham, AL
October 22
AOSA 2016 Professional Development Conference Atlantic City, NJ
November 2-5
NAfME 2016 National In-Service Conference Grapevine, TX
November 10-13
AMEA 2017 In-Service Conference Montgomery, AL
January 19-21
