Thank you for posting this, Scott.  It cannot be said too often.  I think, however, that there is a significant element in needed social change that is missing from the above that music could address.  Women are the greatest percentage of the poor in the U.S. and world wide.  Women are deeply marginalized in the arts.  ACDA does little to support and encourage women's choral groups.  It is unconscious, I believe, but women's groups are thought of as school girl groups.  Few composers write for adult women.  Most sacred works are heavily patriarchal.  There are no festivals at the local or regional levels available for adult community women's choirs.  Colleges and universities hold festivals for high school women's choirs for the purpose of recruitment.  They cannot afford to include adult women's groups.  We adult women desperately need adjudicated festivals for motivation.  My women's vocal ensemble can barely pay for our materials, our rehearsal and performance veues, liability insurance and piano accompanist for performances. I am a volunteer as my singers cannot afford to pay me, though I am of professional training and experience and my group is one of serious artistry.  We simply have no campus or technical backing to host our own women's festival.  The general public still thinks of women's choirs as deficient as a performing group because there are no men.  We rehearse and smile and perform and slowly build our audiences.  We smile because we remember that there are many places in the world where women are not even allowed to sing in their own homes, much less in public.

Carla Strandberg, Director, Women of Note