Get the Kids Singing Again
Vincent Oakes
After years of singing distanced, remotely, masked or otherwise away from otherwise typical choir settings, voice building with our choir members may now require special attention and emphasis. In this course, participants will review and refresh pragmatic methods for teaching healthy, relatable, and repeatable concepts of support, phonation, tone, resonance, and timbre with young, inexperienced, or out-of-practice singers.
Meet Your Professor
Since 2003, Vincent Oakes has served as Artistic Director of the Chattanooga Boys Choir, a music education and performance organization founded in 1954 which now includes over 120 choristers ages 8-18 in five ensembles. Since 2006, Mr. Oakes has also been the Director of Choral Music at The Baylor School, a grade 6-12 independent day and boarding college preparatory school in Chattanooga.
His professional involvement and leadership in the American Choral Directors Association includes service as President of ACDA Southern Region (2019-2021) and to the Tennessee chapter as newsletter and web editor, state conference chair, and State President (2013-2015).
As a conductor/clinician, he has conducted over one hundred honor choirs, clinics, and choral festivals, including recent ACDA and NAfME honor choirs throughout the United States and regional honor choirs in ACDA’s Western and North Central regions. Additional recent conducting engagements include the Bangkok International Choral Festival, a residency with Cámara Exaudi in Havana, Cuba, and the VOCALIZZE Choral Festival in Lisbon, Portugal. His research interests have led to professional presentations on working with the adolescent singing voice, effective rehearsal pedagogy, and teaching musicianship and music literacy in the choral setting and have led to articles in ACDA’s Choral Journal and ChorTeach and chapters in the textbooks Choral Pedagogy (3rd edition) by Robert Sataloff and Brenda Smith, Class Voice: Fundamental Skills for Lifelong Singing by Ron Burrichter and Brenda Smith, and Start Singing! published by Choristers Guild.
He is also the editor of the Shaping Young Voices choral series from Hinshaw Music, featuring musically enriching repertoire for young and developing voices. He has been named the recipient of the Baylor School Glenn Ireland Chair for Distinguished Teaching, the Belz‐Lipman Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education from the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, and the Ruth Holmberg Arts Leadership Award from ArtsBuild of Greater Chattanooga.