UUMN Conference 2014
San Diego, CA
July 16 – 20, 2014
Host Church - First UU Church of San Diego
Hotel - DoubleTree by Hilton San Diego - Hotel Circle
Clinician - Ruben Valenzuela
Music Supplier - Chandler Music, Prescott, AZ
Registration begins in January
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Honoring the Past – Engaging the Future
To honor music of the past, we will take a journey of discovery with Ruben Valenzuela, our guest choral director. Ruben Valenzuela is the founder and music director of the Bach Collegium San Diego, an acclaimed vocal and instrumental ensemble that specializes in Renaissance and Baroque period performance. Under Ruben’s direction, the conference choir will learn choral music from the vast library of the Mexico City Cathedral. This is where Valenzuela did his doctoral research in both music brought from Europe to New Spain and in music composed by indigenous Mexican composers of the 17th and 18th centuries.
To engage the future, we will take another journey into contemporary music and worship under the leadership of Dana Decker, Associate Director of Music at First UU Church of San Diego. Dana will work with a select group of instrumentalists and soloists from the conference to form the band that will lead and accompany a blended service in two Sunday worship services at First UU Church of San Diego. The conference will also offer a “contemporary worship workshop track” so that attendees will be able to engage other aspects of contemporary worship planning and learn to integrate this approach into the more familiar patterns of UU congregational worship. In addition to the contemporary worship track, the conference will feature workshops on handbells and handchimes, children’s choirs, vocal pedagogy, choral conducting, and other topics and guest clinicians as the Conference Planning Committee develops these themes over the coming year.
Bring your instruments to San Diego, whether you play period instruments or modern instruments. Michael Holmes will organize the early music players into an ensemble to perform during the conference, and Dana will work with the band for the Sunday services.
Our Sunday morning worship services will be more like a music festival Sunday, rather than a standard “preaching service,” so we will accommodate a broad spectrum of music, demonstrating how blended/balanced music can succeed in our UU context.
Plan to join us in balmy San Diego for a conference that both honors the past and engages the future.
Ruben Valenzuela - Choral Clinician
RUBEN VALENZUELA, Founder and Music Director of the Bach Collegium, San Diego since 2003, has led the ensemble in varied and diverse programs encompassing the music of the Renaissance, early and high Baroque, through music of the early Classical era. Under his artistic direction, the Bach Collegium San Diego has given highly acclaimed premiers of historically informed performances in the San Diego music community. Such premiers include Handel’s Messiah and Theodora, Bach’s St John Passion, B minor Mass, and numerous Cantatas, Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, and staged performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. He has led the Bach Collegium San Diego ensemble on several international tours to the Festival Internacional del Órgano Barroco in Mexico City, and most recently toured with the ensemble to Bolivia to the IX Internacional de Música Renacentista y Barroca ‘Misiones de Chiquitos’. As a guest conductor he has recently led the San Diego Chamber Orchestra in performances of Haydn's Creation, and has coached, and led, the USC Baroque Sinfonia in performances of Handel's Dixit Dominus and regularly works with this country's leading early music specialists. As a musicologist, he has conducted research at the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical, Carlos Chavez (CENEDIM), with an emphasis on the Sanchez Garza collection, and presently at the Archivo del Cabildo of Mexico City Cathedral. He is currently a PhD candidate in Musicology at Claremont Graduate University where his dissertation research focuses on basso continuo practice at Mexico City Cathedral (1650–1750). Additionally, he is the Director of Music & Organist at St Peter's Episcopal Church, Del Mar.