Connect & Co-Create: Engaging Singer-Led Artistry with Young Singers (co-presented with Krystal Morin)
This interactive repertoire session responds to the challenge of co-creating artistry with elementary singers while managing behaviors, accomplishing goals, and building community. The presenters will offer a values-based framework that harnesses the creativity of young singers and their artistic agency in the rehearsal process. Through engaging directly with repertoire, this interactive, responsive, and singer-led approach to rehearsal will be modeled and explored collaboratively. Participants will leave this session with innovative strategies to access and enliven creativity in young singers, supplemental lists of quality treble repertoire, and resources for rehearsal activities and games.
Presented at:
ACDA National Conference | March 20, 2025
Rounds, Partner Songs, and Unison Singing
This interactive repertoire session uplifts rounds, partner songs, and unison singing as an important pedagogical strategy for building tone, confidence and independence, and inspiring creativity, but recognizes that new repertoire can be challenging to find when not published as octavos. Participants will leave this session with both simple and silly songs, as well as sophisticated and complex rounds that include strategies for elevating unison singing to the level of performance.
Presented at:
Arizona Music Educators Association In-Service Concert | February 3, 2024
Singing Songs, Saving Lives: Affirming LGBTQ+ Singers in the Choral Context
Led by trans conductor and music educator Nicky Manlove, this session will offer practical ways to support young LGBTQ+ singers and the complexities of coming out, gender dysphoria and transition, mental health and wellness, and will provide examples of LGBTQ+-affirming policy for organizations to protect and support young queer singers.
Presented at:
ACDA National Children and Youth Conductor Retreat, January 16, 2022
Trickle Up Choral Pedagogy: Trans-Centered Approaches to Supporting All Singers
Trickle Up Choral Pedagogy is designed for experienced choral educators and outlines methods for supporting young singers that begin from an emphasis on supporting transgender singers. Topics covered include voicing and warmups, repertoire, culture, and non-musical administrative practices.
Presented at:
The University of Arizona Graduate Choral Conducting Studio, September 23, 2020
Northern Arizona University Student ACDA Chapter, November 5, 2020
Beyond Tolerance: Affirming LGBTQ+ Singers in the Choral Context
Originally presented as a guest lecture for Undergraduate Choral Methods and Materials I at Washington State University.
September 21, 2020
Surveilling Sylvia: Histories of Policing Gender and Sexuality through the Life of Sylvia Rivera
Originally presented at “Burn a Bridge, Build a Bridge: A Teach-in on Police Terror”
Video | Presentation | Handout
July 11-12, 2020
Sacred Genders, Sacred Stories: Trans Allyship and the Church
Nicky Manlove, Director of Music at St Mark’s Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, shares parts of their journey with gender and their understanding of faith as a nonbinary person. Speaking from their decade of experience advocating for/with/as LGBTQ young people, Nicky offers ways that the Church can align itself with trans-centered visions of liberation.
April 28, 2020
Trans Centered Pedagogies for the (Choral) Ensemble
Originally presented as a guest lecture for MUS 550– Graduate Choral Methods at the Fred Fox School of Music, this presentation offers practical tools for affirming the experience of transgender singers in the choral ensemble. Nicky Manlove, artistic director of THEM Youth Ensemble, is joined by transgender youth who give firsthand narratives to highlight the importance of trans-centered choral pedagogies.
October 7, 2019