We are excited to announce the next judge on the panel of America’s Top Choirs™ High School Edition 2022 (ATC) - Dr. Derrick Fox.
Dr. Derrick Fox is the Director of Choral Activities & Distinguished Associate Professor of Music at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. He earned a BME from Arkansas State University, a MM in Choral Conducting from the University of Missouri – Columbia and a DMA in Choral Conducting from Michigan State University, where he was awarded the prestigious University Enrichment Graduate Fellowship. Dr. Fox was elected President-Elect of Midwestern ACDA in August 2022.
Recently, he was awarded the 2021 Bryan R. Johnson Service Award by the Nebraska Music Educators Association and the 2022 University of Nebraska Omaha Award for Distinguished Research/Creative Activity.
Dr. Fox has conducted all-state choirs, led international, national, and regional choral concerts/residencies, and presented professional development workshops across the United States and internationally. His professional workshops focus on assessment in the choral classroom, building classroom community, rehearsal strategies, choral conducting techniques, and shape note singing in the African American community.
His recent engagements include presentations at Choral Canada's Podium Conference, the National Federation of Ghanian Choirs Inaugural Choral Conference, and the Public Administration Theory International Conference in Mexico, and conducting all-state choirs in Oregon, Wyoming, Georgia, Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Dr. Fox has held teaching residencies and workshops at the Latvian Academy of Music, Syracuse University, Michigan State University, and the University of Missouri - Columbia. He has also led performance tours through Lithuania and Estonia.
In 2019, he conducted the National ACDA Middle School/Junior High Mixed Honor Choir and traveled to South Africa as a 2019 ACDA International Conductor Exchange Fellow where he led choral workshops and rehearsals in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Potchefstroom.
Dr. Fox has taught at the middle school, high school, and collegiate levels. His conducting experiences have included singers from upper elementary choirs through collegiate and community choirs.
As a baritone soloist, Dr. Fox has collaborated with various organizations; including the Arkansas Symphony, Lansing Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Columbia Chorale, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha Symphonic Chorus, University of Missouri, Michigan State University, Webster University and the Espaço Cultural (Brasilia, Brazil). He can be heard singing selections from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess on the compact disc In This Hid Clearing, available on the Naxos Classical Music label.
He created the Professional Choral Collective (PCC) to collect and create learning activities and teaching strategies for choral music educators around the world to use during the 2020 Coronavirus virus pandemic and beyond. He also partnered with the Country Music Association Foundation to create the Unified Voices for Music Education Initiative which provides learning activities for instrumental and elementary music educators.
Dr. Fox serves on the advisory board for the Sound Spirit, a research lab and publishing initiative promoting collaborative engagement with the songbooks that sound America’s musical landscape. He is also a member of the advisory board for the Choral Singing in America documentary series.
As an author, Dr. Fox has written articles for many organizations and was a contributing author in the Hal Leonard/McGraw Hill choral textbook Voices in Concert. Hal Leonard and Brilee Music have published his compositions and arrangements. His book, Yes You Can: A Band Director’s Guide to Teaching Choirs is published by Carl Fischer. He launched The Derrick Fox Choral Series with Music Spoke to publish works by and about marginalized and minoritized people.
To get a chance to get evaluated by Dr. Fox, register for the upcoming edition of ATC here - https://www.feelitlive.com/americas-top-choirs
What is America’s Top Choirs™ (ATC)?
America’s Top Choirs™ is a virtual forum created to showcase the vast choral talent in the United States, and hosted by FeelitLIVE, the world's first all-in-one choir tech platform. The Grand Finale will be broadcast live on the FeelitLIVE platform on October 23, 2022, at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET.
ATC celebrates high school choirs that generate beautiful music every day and is the embodiment of teamwork, resilience, talent, diversity, hope, and positivity. Being one of the largest and most inclusive online high school choral competitions in the United States, ATC aims to bring your choir’s talent to audiences around the world through the power of digital.
How to participate?
High school choirs from across the country are invited to upload a song performance of up to 5 minutes, recorded during the 2021-2022 academic year (between September 1, 2021, and October 7, 2022). A $100 entry fee will be applied when completing the online submission form. When entering more than one choir from the same school, each subsequent choir entry (after the first one) will be $50 per choir.
The last submission date is Friday, October 7, 2022, till 11.59 pm PT.