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Choir directors' seminar

An opportunity to get acquainted with the 2025 Song Festival repertoire, to renew ourselves creatively, as well as to strengthen our ties with one another, so that when we return to our cities, we can fire up our singers and properly prepare them for the Song Festival and have colleagues to lean on throughout the year.

Who, Where, When

  • August 15-18, 2024
  • Camp Dainava - 15100 West Austin Road, Manchester, Michigan 48158
  • All choir directors whose choirs plan to participate in the Song Festival are invited. We also encourage one member of the choir to participate with the director. This person can be the choir president, your right-hand, or anyone else of your choosing.
  • Registration by August 1, $150 USD (accommodation, meals, seminar program and materials)

Schedule

8/15/2024 THURSDAY
17:00
19:00
Arrival & Buffet dinner
19:00
21:00
Welcome evening / Get to know our choir directors
8/16/2024 FRIDAY
07:45
08:45
Breakfast
09:00
09:50
Rehearsal: Part 1
09:50
10:00
Break
10:00
10:50
Rehearsal: Part 1 (cont.)
10:50
11:00
Break
11:00
11:50
Lecture. What are we singing about?: Decoding the symbols in Lithuanian song lyrics
Nijolė Benotas
12:00
13:00
Lunch
13:00
13:50
Free time (e.g., swimming, walk)
14:00
14:50
Rehearsal: Part 2
14:50
15:00
Break
15:00
15:50
Rehearsal: Part 2 (cont.)
15:50
16:00
Break
16:00
16:50
Lecture. How to build a beautiful choral ensemble with non-professional singers through warm-ups and various techniques using the repertoire
Frank Bianchi
16:50
17:00
Break
17:00
17:50
Lecture. How to build a beautiful choral ensemble with non-professional singers (cont.)
Frank Bianchi
18:00
19:00
Cocktail hour
19:00
20:00
Dinner
20:00
22:00
Evening program. Oh! Oh! Humoristic concert spoofs inspired by such practitioners as Gerard Hoffnung, Victor Borge, and Peter Schickele
Vytas Bakšys
8/17/2024 SATURDAY
07:45
08:45
Breakfast
09:00
09:50
Rehearsal: Part 3
09:50
10:00
Break
10:00
10:50
Rehearsal: Part 3 (cont.)
10:50
11:00
Break
11:00
11:50
Lecture. Humans are Musical Creatures: How Music Shapes our Brains, our Children and our Communities
Indrė Viskontas
12:00
13:00
Lunch
13:00
13:50
Free time (e.g., swimming, walk)
14:00
14:50
Rehearsal: Part 4 - Finale
14:50
15:00
Break
15:00
15:50
Rehearsal: Part 4 - Finale (cont.)
15:50
16:00
Break
16:00
16:50
Rehearsal: Choreography
16:50
17:00
Break
17:00
17:50
Lecture. Song Festival Logistics & Weekend Events
18:00
18:15
Group picture
18:15
19:00
Cocktail hour
19:00
20:00
Dinner
20:00
22:00
Camp fire
8/18/2024 SUNDAY
08:00
09:00
Breakfast
08:30
09:30
Mass (Option 1)
St. Mary's in Manchester
10:30
11:30
Mass (Option 2)
St. Mary's in Manchester
by
12:00
Departure
*Exact details subject to change

Lecturers, Performers & Staff

Frank Bianchi

Conductor, Lecturer, and Choral Music Educator

In the Spring of 2024, Frank retired from a 47-year career in music education.  Thirty of those years were spent in public school teaching at Medina and Brunswick High Schools, and the last 17 years were spent at Baldwin Wallace University where Frank served as Adjunct Professor of Choral Music Education and the Director and Founder of the Baldwin Wallace University Men’s Chorus.  The ensemble has been recognized nationally for its uniqueness as it includes musicians who are current, former, and future music educators, professional singers, and former collegiate glee club members spanning many decades of experience. 

In his retirement, Frank continues to be active as a free-lance choral clinician, conductor, lecturer, and adjudicator at both the collegiate and high school levels. He has conducted honors, district, regional, and all-state choirs throughout Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, California, Florida, and Pennsylvania.  He has lectured and presented workshops at several colleges and universities on various vocal and motivational topics for music education students, church choral directors, and music educators.

For seven seasons, Mr. Bianchi conducted the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus. Besides his work with the Youth Chorus, he served as assistant director of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and one season as assistant to Robert Porco in preparing the chorus for various orchestral, holiday, and Blossom Music Festival performances.

He is a past recipient of the Outstanding Music Educator of the Year Award given annually by the State of Ohio Music Education Association (OMEA) and serves on the Board of the Intercollegiate Male Choruses of America (IMC). He is also a member of American Choral Directors Association and the Ohio Music Education Association.

Besides his education and choral work, Mr. Bianchi works throughout Northeast Ohio as an accompanist and organist/pianist for several churches. He is the associate organist at St. Ignatius of Antioch Catholic Church and a free-lance organist/pianist at churches throughout NE Ohio.  

A life-long Clevelander, born and raised in Cleveland Ohio, Mr. Bianchi has been inducted into the John Marshall High School Hall of Fame, his alma mater. Frank completed his undergraduate studies at Cleveland State University (BA in Music Education/and Piano studies with professor Andrius Kuprevičius) and his graduate work at The Cleveland Institute of Music (MM in Choral Conducting/Voice).

He resides in Middleburg Heights, Ohio with his canine ‘shadow’ and ‘best buddy’, Charlie.

I've done so many festivals and workshops but, I remember that gathering in Michigan as if it were yesterday for many reasons. The warm welcome, the camaraderie, and the mutual respect of the directors gathered were what I took away from that beautiful experience. I accept to go back in an instant. I'm honored that you considered me again. I'm very excited to work with everyone, and I think it's going to be a blast.

Frank Bianchi

Indrė Viskontas, PhD

Neuroscientist, Opera Stage Director, and Science Communicator

Indre Viskontas is a neuroscientist, opera stage director and sought-after science communicator across all mediums. Combining a passion for music with scientific curiosity, she is affectionately known as “Dr. Dre” by her students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she pioneered the application of neuroscience to musical training, and at the University of San Francisco, where she is an Associate Professor of Psychology and director of the Creative Brain Lab. She received a BSc from the University of Toronto, a Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA. She is also the Creative Director of Pasadena Opera, where she directed “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”, based on the famous case study written by Oliver Sacks and Proving Up, by one of opera’s most exciting composer/librettist duos, Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek. She also directed “Katya Kabanova” for West Edge Opera at the California Shakespeare Theater, and the premiere of a new work recounting the full story of Lady MacBeth at UCLA. She recently collaborated with the New World Symphony and Edwin Outwater in Miami on “By Ear: A Journey into Musical Perception” which included live brain tracking.

As a scientist, Dr. Viskontas has published more than 50 original papers and chapters related to the neural basis of memory and creativity, including several seminal articles in top scientific journals. She is currently the President-Elect of the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at the NeuroArts Blueprint, and Director of Communications for the Sound Health Network, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts. Her scientific work has been featured in Oliver Sacks’ book “Musicophilia”, “Nautilus”, “Nature: Science Careers” and “Discover Magazine”. She has also written for “American Scientist”, “MotherJones.com”, “Vitriol Magazine” and other publications. In 2020, SFCM and the Getty Foundation published her white paper, “Music for Every Child”, outlining the impact of music education on child development. Her first book, “How Music Can Make You Better”, was published by Chronicle Books in 2019, and within a week was the best-selling music appreciation book on Amazon. In 2023, she was awarded the Osher Fellowship at the California Academy of Sciences to better understand the impact of conservation photography on our emotions and gave the second annual Chen Lecture on Brain Science in the planetarium Dome.

She co-hosted the docuseries “Miracle Detectives” on the Oprah Winfrey Network and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, major radio stations across the US, including several appearances on the NPR program “City Arts & Lectures”, the “Ted Radio Hour” and the “Sunday Edition” on the CBC in Canada. She also co-hosted the web series “Science in Progress” for Tested.com and VRV. She is also the host of the popular science podcast “Inquiring Minds”, which has been downloaded more than 14 million times. Her second podcast, “Cadence: What Music Tells us About the Mind” was a finalist for the Science Media awards, and a Webby Honoree. In 2022, she wrote and hosted the Audible Original podcast “Radiant Minds: the World of Oliver Sacks”. She often gives keynote talks, for organizations as diverse as Genentech, LinkedIn, the Dallas Symphony, SXSW, TEDx and Ogilvy along with frequent invited talks at conferences and academic institutions. She has written and filmed 98 lectures across four courses for “The Great Courses”, “Essential Scientific Concepts”, “Brain Myths Exploded: Lessons from Neuroscience”, “How Digital Technology Shapes Us and Your Creative Brain”, streaming now on the Wondrium platform. She also co-created and hosts a podcast for Visa Direct called “Money Travels” and was the spokesperson and scientific consultant for the Sonos x NOW collaboration “Now that’s what I call Dopamine”, a playlist designed to elicit the chills. Dr. Viskontas has led creativity and innovation workshops for the International Monetary Fund, French entrepreneurs and leaders at the Sorbonne, and Synthetic Biologists at the University of Southern California.

Nijolė Benotas

Choir Director & Music Teacher / Journalist, Author & Translator

Choir director and teacher. Bachelors degree in choir directing from the Lithuanian Conservatory of Music in Klaipėda (1980). Masters degree in music (MM) from Toronto University (1998).

Founded and for many years led the children‘s choir „Angeliukai“ and the vocal ensemble „Sutartinė“. At various times was one of the directors of the Toronto youth choir. Conducted in the Lithuanian National Song Festival in 1994 (the first festival after regaining independence). Worked for over 30 years at St. Mary‘s and Loretto Abbey high schools as a music teacher and head of the art department.

Author of original lyrics and translator of numerous songs and hymns. Frequent author of articles in the Lithuanian press in the United States and Canada concerning topics in choral music, music education, and other subjects.

Vytas Bakšys

Pianist

Pianist Vytas J. Baksys received his DMA and MM degrees in performance at S.U.N.Y. @ Stony Brook. He earned his Bachelor’s degree with Distinction from the New England Conservatory of Music where he was also elected Phi Kappa Lambda. Other awards include Outstanding College Student of America, Extraordinary Performing Arts Student of America, and a nomination for inclusion in a recent edition of the International Who’s Who In Music. His principal teachers were Angel Ramon Rivera, Victor Rosenbaum, and Gilbert Kalish. He is also an alumnus of the Kinhaven Music School (Weston, VT) and Eastern Music Festival (Greensboro, NC).

Among his many accomplishments, Vytas lists extensive performances of various styles and genres throughout North America, Europe and Asia, having worked with many well known artists, conductors and composers, among them: Arthur Fiedler, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Sir Roger Norrington, Leonard Bernstein, Sir Simon Rattle, Leonard Rose, Gary Karr, Yo-Yo Ma, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gil Shaham, Joseph Silverstein, Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux, Olivier Messiaen, film composer John Williams, Stanislaw Skrowicesky, Oliver Knussen, Rafael Frübeck de Burgos, Dawn Upshaw, Chris Brubeck, John Harbison, James Levine, Peter Schickele, and, more recently, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Andris Nelsons.

Since 1989, Vytas has served as faculty pianist working with the Fellowship Conducting Program at Tanglewood. He has similarly collaborated for five years with the Conducting Program at Yale School of Music. An active freelance collaborator, Vytas performs a variety of recitals, competitions, and other functions. He has worked with a number of area choirs including the Boston Secession, Arlington Street Church Choir, Somerville Community Chorus, and New England Classical Singers; made occasional appearances with the contemporary ensemble Boston Musica Viva; performed with various groups such as the Concord Chamber Music Society, Boston Artists Ensemble, South Coast Chamber Music Society, Pentamerus, West Stockbridge Chamber Players, and the Boston Symphony Chamber Players among others; is the faculty accompanist at The Rivers School Conservatory; and is a frequent keyboardist with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops Orchestras, and occasionally participates with Boston Landmarks and Portland Symphony (ME) orchestras. In recent years, this kind of scheduling has resulted in an annual output averaging more than 150 performances of 100 different programs.

He has participated in recordings for RCA, CRI, Golden Crest, Sony Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, Warner Brothers, Nonsuch, Reference Recordings, Terezin Music Foundation, Naxos, and BSO Classics labels. Being of Lithuanian descent, he has made frequent appearances at ethnic cultural centers including the Baltic American Society.

As a composer, Vytas’s works include several short piano pieces, a piano concerto, a piano quintet, two microtonal works, and several transcriptions of works by Beethoven, Braggiotti, Foote, Glinka, Pärt, Schönberg, Scheidt, Sibelius, and others, most recently Heitor Villa-Lobos, Stravinsky, and Satie.

On the lighter side, Vytas considers himself a connoisseur of music humor. While in the Long Island area, he served eight seasons as co-founder/director of the Stony Brook Anti-Musica, an ensemble dedicated to promoting concert spoofs. His diverse compositional output includes such works as Oratorio: Ground Hog, Variations On A Surprise, The “Big Oh!” Medley, Chaconne Grandissimo, and the Underture to The Dentist of Milan, all inspired by such practitioners as Gerard Hoffnung, Victor Borge, and Peter Schickele.

Audra Januškienė

Master Chef for the Choir Directors’ Seminar

I was born and raised in Kaunas, but I spent summers in the countryside with my grandparents. I graduated from Vilnius University, where I majored in German language and literature. Before I graduated, I taught German for a few years in middle school. Later I worked as a translator at the “Lituanica” shoe factory, and also with various businessmen.

I visited the United States for a few months, however months turned into a multitude of years. 🙂  My good friend, the photo artist Algimantas Kezys (may he rest in peace) was responsible for my ”chosen” career path. I began my career catering an anniversary party for Algimantas. Shortly thereafter I got my first order to cater a wedding. All of this initially was just a hobby.

I have now been catering party buffets for over 20 years. I’ve also owned a coffee shop, a restaurant, and continue to cater many special events.

Most recently I have been engaged in the film industry: the fifth Lithuanian Documentary Film Festival (LDFF) occurred this year. During the pandemic I began working on something that has long been a passion of mine: to produce a travel blog (worldculturebazaar.com). Sadly, I cannot spend as much time on this as I would like. While traveling, I engage with many people and take a countless photos.

Food to me is a type of original creation. I enjoy new challenges and experiments. I particularly enjoy events with a theme. Although I cook dishes from various world cuisines, perhaps my favorites are horsd’oeuvres, even though they require the most work.

What should seminar participants expect ? I would have them keep an open mind. Every day, I will let the menu be inspired by available local products and daily events.

Registration

Please complete one registration form per participant.

See you soon!

FAQ

  • Sleeping bag or bedding (e.g., sheet, blanket)
  • Pillow with pillowcase
  • Toiletries
  • Towel
  • Box fan and extension cords
  • Options for free time, depending on your hobbies:
    • Bathing suit, flip flops & beach towel
    • Fishing rod & tackle box
    • Sports equipment (e.g., tennis, basketball, yoga)
    • Games (e.g., chess, playing cards, Jenga, corn holes)
    • Music instrument

Yes, you can bring your child. Depending on your child’s age, she can participate in the program, provided she will not be a distraction. Otherwise, you should make arrangements for your child’s supervision by another adult (e.g., parent or grandparent).

The registration fee for children and accompanying caregivers is $50.

Should we find that there are a number of children who will be attending, we will make our best efforts to find a counselor who could run some activities while the adults are at work! Who knows, maybe the kids will prepare an entertaining program for the bonfire?!

  • There will not be a lifeguard. Swimming across the lake is prohibited. Swimming is only allowed within the marked limits. It is the responsibility of parents to supervise their children under the age of 18 near the water. Campers under the age of 18 cannot enter the water, nor use the diving board without their parents.
  • To use the rowboat, at least one adult (18+) must be on board. All campers under the age of 18 must wear a life jacket.
  • Campers are strictly prohibited from bringing any items the use of which would endanger the camp or cause harm to another camper (e.g., explosives (fireworks), matches, flammable liquids, dangerous sprays, knives and the like).

Have a question?

Need some more information about the Choir directors' seminar? Get in touch with Rita!