2nd ASIAN CHOIR GAMES Korea 2009

Start:	Jul 7, '09
End:	Jul 17, '09
Location:	Gyeongnam Province, South Korea

2nd Asian Choir Games
July 7-17, 2009, Gyeongnam Province, Korea


The choirs of the Asia-Pacific region have fond memories of the 1st Asian Choir Games, held in Jakarta, Indonesia in November 2007. More than 4,500 participants from 12 countries celebrated the opening of a new series of events created by INTERKULTUR to acknowledge the growing role of choral music in the Asia-Pacific region. 135 choirs witnessed the rich depth and diversity of the choral musical palette in this region and encouraged the organizers to continue to hold the event on a biennial basis.

Following the great success of the maiden event in Indonesia, INTERKULTUR, in collaboration with the Province of Gyeongnam, is proud to present the 2nd Asian Choir Games!
Yes, this time it will be a whole Province that hosts the event, spread over a number of its cities: the beautiful Korean Province of Gyeongnam on the south coast of the country.

All choirs from the Asia-Pacific region are welcome and also have the chance of taking part in one of the competition's 15 categories. The best choirs at the 2nd Asian Choir Games will also have the opportunity to qualify for the Grand Prix of Choral Music: this time round, the Asian Choir Games are an independent event within a larger festival series.

In addition to the choirs, the event will be open to all kinds of instrumentalists and instrumental groups as well as folk dance groups. The involvement of a wider range of music and dance will make the Asian Choir Games an even more colorful and entertaining event.

Interested? Come and be a part of it. The choirs of the Asia-Pacific region are hereby invited to take part in the 2nd Asian Choir Games in Gyeongnam Province, Korea!

SEE: www.korea2009.com

Finale 2009 Review

Some initial impressions of Finale 2009, after using it for several days. I must admit immediately that I skipped Finale 2008 (refused to pay $100 of annual dues…), so my impressions are based on the improvements from Finale 2007.

For Finale 2009, MakeMusic really worked much harder than previous updates on NOTATION instead of bells, whistles, and app-bloating audio tricks that professionals wouldn’t use. I’m truly thankful. Several of the new features are:

• A Multiple Page View that allows edits on anything visible (instead of only the first visible page being “active”). Very nice! (Wish it had been that way from the start).
• Selection Tool (combination of the Mass Edit tool used through 2007, and the selection tool introduced a few years ago) is efficient and powerful, since it allows all sorts of different edits to be made without switching tools. (Sibelius users have enjoyed this for quite some time now…!)
• Clicking on an object, or adding an expression, etc, shows dotted lines to where it’s attached (Once again, Sibelius had it this way long ago!); no more unexpected expressions, hairpins, etc, showing up in stray parts, or attached to the wrong measure! And, you can drag items around on the score, and automatically re-attach them wherever you want. (Again, thank you, Sibelius!)
• Drop down menus have been revamped, and are now more streamlined and intuitive. It takes a little while to get used to some new menus and shortcuts, but I think they’re worth learning.
• Expression assignment is MUCH more streamlined, customizable by category, and more intuitive. As a result, expressions can be entered with one command (instead of three dialogue boxes!).
• Along the same lines: you can now drag-apply expressions: click and drag over any number of staves, and then assign an expression to all those staves at once. (Much less need for tediously creating staff lists!)
• Nicely improved Setup Wizard, with more options for customizing and saving ensembles.
• Playback using any sound library in your computer, from within Finale, very easily. This is a huge step forward, as I was never really able to get my own virtual instruments to play within Finale even though they were supposed to be compatible. Now, they work just fine without any difficult setup.
• User Manual is in browser format instead of PDF, finally (although perhaps this happened in 2008?) (Again, thank you, Sibelius!)

There’s lots more that’s new, but these are the things that really stick out to me, for composition and notation.

I can’t help but think that Finale and Sibelius seem more and more like Windows and Mac- anytime the one comes out with something great, the other usually copies it pretty quickly (or, in the case of Finale copying Sibelius’s Dynamic Parts in 2007, not so quickly!). For those of us who are rather stuck with Finale, we can be thankful that it’s becoming more and more like Sibelius in the areas that Sibelius shines. Finale 2009 really makes some great strides forward for composers and people concerned with efficient, intuitive, and professional notation- it’s worth buying, for me.