Jacobs School of Music’s 2023 Sacred Intensive Course
June 5-9, 2023
How Firm a Foundation:
Hymning the Faith in a Changing World
Help us celebrate the 10th anniversary of our founding in a conference centered around praise and proclamation through communal song.
Please plan to join us in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana for this week of musical, intellectual, vocational and spiritual renewal.
SMI offers church musicians 18 and older private and group instruction in organ performance, service playing, choral conducting, group vocal techniques and literature taught by SMI faculty Janette Fishell, Walter Huff, Marilyn Keiser and Christopher Young. Additional events will feature an opening Hymn Festival, concerts and recitals performed by faculty and students, a lecture on selected hymnals found in the Lilly Research Library’s impressive sacred music collection, a lunchtime carillon concert and tower tours of the Arthur R. Metz Bicentennial Grand Carillon, as well as time for personal connection and reflection, all in the bucolic setting of one the nation’s most picturesque campuses.
This year’s courses include the followed “most requested” topics from past courses:
Group voice class
The Well-Seasoned Chorister: Working with the mature singer
Anthem Accompanying
Improvisation for the Timid
Service Music, Tried & True
So Many Stops – So Little Time: Tips on Organ Registration
Tuition and Deadlines
Tuition (incl. Non-Refundable Registration Fee – $70)
Early Registration Discount – $395
Tuition for Participants and Auditors – $420
Discounted Tuition: Two or more participants from the same institution or local professional
organization required for eligibility – $370
Deadlines
Early registration – March 15, 2023
Applications due – May 1, 2023
Payment due – May 22, 2023
Late applications
Late applications will be accepted, but private lessons cannot be guaranteed after the May 1st deadline.
Course website and online registration expected to go live by early January.
Questions?
Email Course Director Janette Fishell at jfishell@indiana.edu
Memories of past SMI courses
SMI 2014 Faculty Recital, Christopher Young, Stephen Price, David Kazimir, Janette Fishell and Bruce Neswick.
Our first SMI Final Concert.
2015 SMI Faculty: Bruce Neswick, Janette Fishell, Christopher Young, Walter Huff, Marilyn Keiser and David Kazimir.
2017 SMI Chorale’s final concert.
Read the review
The American Organist September 2017
2018 SMI Chorale, final dress rehearsal before “The Road Home.”
2020 SMI Faculty
Socially-distanced and streamed SMI 2021: Persevering through the Pandemic
Monday, June 7, 8 pm: Recital from Auer Hall
Organist: Janette Fishell, Professor and Chair (Organ), Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University.
Narrator: Judah M. Cohen, Professor of Music (Musicology) and Lou & Sybil Mervis Professor of Jewish Culture (Borns Jewish Studies Program, College of Arts and Sciences), Indiana University.
Petr Eben’s Job for Organ:
Art and Spirituality in Counterpoint
Why do bad things happen to good people? This question is as ancient as the story of Job and as new as Covid-19. We begin our virtual SMI week with a dramatic setting of the biblical story of Job by visionary Czech composer Petr Eben, a cycle that grew out of the composer’s life experiences and faith. The performance will be enriched by commentary that explores how themes such as suffering, faith and redemption shape this profound composition.
Tuesday, June 8, 8 pm: Masterclass
Presenter: Marilyn Keiser, Chancellor’s Professor Emerita of Music (Organ), Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University.
Prelude to a New Year:
Organ Voluntaries for a Time of Renewal
Some new ideas for service music that will inspire both you and your congregation.
Wednesday, June 9, 8 pm: Recital from First Presbyterian Church, Bloomington
Organist: Christopher Young, Professor of Music (Organ), Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University.
Sunday Music, Old and New
Including selections from the collection 101 Chorale Preludes: German Organ Works and Organ Performance Practices of the 17th and 18th Centuries, edited by John Brock and Quentin Faulkner, soon-to-be-released by Wayne Leupold Editions, performed on the Paul Fritts organ of First Presbyterian Church, Bloomington.
Thursday, June 10, 8 pm: Masterclass
Presenter: Walter Huff, Professor of Music (Choral Conducting), Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University.
Prepare Ye the Way
Techniques for preparing your weekly choir rehearsal, including tips on score study and demonstrations with a small choral ensemble.
Friday, June 11, 8 pm: Recital
Organist: Vincent Carr, Associate Professor of Music (Organ), Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University.
Grand Music for a Great Space
Masterworks spanning the ages provide a grand finale to our virtual SMI week.
20210607_2000_ah_iuml_SMI-Fishell&Cohen
SMI 2022 Memories
Lessons and performances on our two C.B. Fisk concert hall instruments, treasures of the Lilly Library,
events at the Metz Grand Carillon, Bloomington in bloom.
Associate Instructor of Carillon Lynnli Wang.
2022 SMI closing concert program