Repertoire & Resources
the All-State choirs of the fifty states
Youth Choirs
Gretchen Harrison
National R&R Chair
gharrison.jhms@gmail.com
All-State Choral Music:
Has it Changed in
the Past 15 Years?
A comparison of the music
selected 1995-2000 and 2014
by Jamie Spillane
The All-State choir format is one
of the most important forces dictat-
ing the choral music programmed
and heard each year throughout the
United States. It is also one of the
most measureable in regards to cur-
rent thoughts on choral music selec-
tion. A choral work that is selected
for a single All-State choir in a large
state can result in the sale of thou-
sands of copies of an octavo and of-
ten a hundred or more performanc-
es of a new work in a single year.
All-State choirs are most often con-
ducted by university professors who
work diligently to produce a varied
program of music that is musically
interesting, moderately challenging,
educationally sound, and compel-
ling for the choir and audience. The
music selected for performance by
CHORAL JOURNAL March 2018
guest clinician selected to conduct
has a profound effect on the choral each choir for the festival. Some
music purchased and performed states have three All-State choirs—
throughout the nation. men’s, women’s, and mixed—while
the majority of states have a single
mixed choir. In most states, the All-
High School All-State
Choral Music Study
A 2004 study evaluated the High
School All-State choral music select-
ed for all fifty states over the period
of five years from 1995 to 2000.1
Building upon the lists complied by
Rebecca Reames and published an-
nually in the Choral Journal between
1997 and 2001,2 each of the 2500+
compositions programmed during
the period was evaluated according
to how often each individual com-
poser was represented, how often
each specific composition was se-
lected, the style period of each work,
which guest conductor selected the
work, specific voicing utilized, and
whether it was part of a balanced
program. As this type of study has
not been revisited in over a decade,
this author chose to take a snapshot
of more current trends by evaluating
the choral music selected for a re-
cent year to see how All-State choral
music has changed in the years since
that music was last investigated.
The year of 2014 was selected,
and each state was contacted re-
questing the list of works and the
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