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Homepage > Training Courses >
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RSCM America sponsors a number of summer training courses throughout the United States. Each course is as unique as its setting. All courses provide the opportunity for choral training and exploring wonderful choral music in liturgical and/or concert settings. Some courses offer master classes in organ performance, choral conducting and composition. Several courses offer adult seminars, activities, and opportunities for networking and fellowship. The Courses take place in cathedrals and other large churches in major cities with choristers residing in hotels, university settings, small private schools or rustic, lakefront facilities. All course locations are chosen for the safety and comfort of the participants. Each course includes additional activities. These activities can include sports, recreation, crafts, field trips and boat races. There are customs unique to each course that generate fun and enthusiasm. The music directors are renowned in their field and offer excellent leadership for youths and adults to learn new techniques and skills. In addition, significant opportunities for spiritual and theological enrichment are also offered. The Training Courses provide programs for:
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RSCM America 2011 Training Courses --
Courses for Boys, Teen Boys, and Adults TULSA COURSE Participants: 40 boys, age 10-18, and 15 adults
Courses for Girls, Teen Girls, and Adults GULF COAST COURSE CAROLINA COURSE Participants: 40 girls, age 10-18, and 25 adults
Courses for Girls, Boys, Teens and Adults ST. LOUIS COURSE
CHARLOTTE COURSE Participants: 60 young singers ages 10-18, 30 adults, and 2 organ scholars
WASHINGTON COURSE for ADVANCED TREBLES Participants: 8 boys and 22 girls of advanced ability (red or yellow ribbon, or equivalent)
KING'S COLLEGE COURSE Participants: 60 girls, 40 boys, 30 teens/young adults, 20 adults, and 2 organ scholars
RHODE ISLAND COURSE AT NEWPORT Also in North America MONTREAL COURSE HOMILIES
We gather here this evening, continuing the tradition of evensong that goes back hundreds of years in this Anglican form, and much earlier still in its basic elements and motivations. For people have always felt the urge to say their prayers in the evening, in every time and culture and place, to thank God for the blessings of the day, and to ask God’s protection for the coming night. Tonight is not only the day’s end, but also the completion of a remarkable week for the girls and adults in our inaugural Rocky Mountain course as part of the Royal School of Church Music. A lot of work has gone into making this week a success – work by the staff, and considerable work by the girls and adult singers, who have maintained a demanding schedule of rehearsal. This is an auspicious start for a program that I believe will thrive here for many years, drawing young and not as young deeper into the life of faith through music. What happens over the course of a week like this is really the building of a community. In hard work, prayer, music making, and fellowship together, a collection of individuals from all over the country and from many and varied backgrounds is forged into a community. And what is the final act of this community, before it disperses back to the other communities from which it came? A culmination, a final act of praise, not for itself, but for God. In this final evensong, we take everything we have made together - the music, now polished, that contains all our experiences, our joys and sadnesses, that utters the inutterable - and we give it away. We give it away, with all of your prayers, joined with us silently and aloud, give it away to God, the sweetest source from which all we are and have comes. What a countercultural act this is. In a society which values individualism and accumulating – getting things and holding onto them, white-knuckled, for dear life, we make our common prayer and praise to God, an offering of thanksgiving for all God has done for us, expecting nothing in return. Like the beautiful Buddhist mandalas made, painstakingly, in sand of many colors, only to be swept away at their completion, our evening song will remain only in our memory. Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory. We do this not because God needs our prayers, any more than God needed Gideon’s meat and cakes and broth, but because, like Gideon, we need to offer them. When God received Gideon’s offering, Gideon knew that God was listening to him, and that God would be with him. Gideon was the least in his family, of the weakest clan in Manasseh. But he knew that with God, all things were possible, even leading the people of Israel out of the hand of mighty Midian. We pray and give praise to God, in harmony with the chorus of heaven, to remind ourselves that God is still with us, to this very day. We ask God’s grace that what we sing with our lips, we may believe in our hearts, and show forth in our lives. And when we do this, when this community, both ancient and new, gathers to worship God in song, we experience no less than a glimpse of the kingdom of God. Jesus built his own community of followers in his own day, coming up to Philip and to others, and saying, simply, “follow me.” And they did, and invited others, like Nathaniel, to do so as well, leaving all they had behind to follow him, to come and see what this Jesus had to say. This group of disciples, from all over, with different gifts and challenges, grew into a community around Jesus. It was a community with wild ideas, like the mighty being put down, and all being equal in dignity, the proud scattered, the hungry fed, and the humble and meek exalted. They believed this was what God wanted, and what God’s kingdom would be like. And they believed that by not holding onto their lives too tightly, but by giving them, all their gifts and talents, for the glory of God, this radical vision just right, just might come closer to reality. We are the descendants in faith of those disciples, and we join with them in praying that God’s kingdom of justice and mercy will come. We give all that we have to thank God for what God has graciously given us, and we pray for God’s love, wider than any sea, to be with us this night, and for evermore. Amen. The Reverend
Canon Poulson Reed
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