High School State Choral Assessment
Results will be published each evening of the State Choral Performance Assessment.
To: Tennessee High School Choral Directors
From: Mark Statler, TN-ACDA State CPA Coordinator
Re: 2025 High School State Choral Performance Assessment
Hello Directors,
I hope you are doing well and having a positive and meaningful school year with your choirs so far. I am thankful for the activities of TN-ACDA and our regional TMEA vocal associations, and I am grateful to be the coordinator of this year’s State Choral Performance Assessment. My hope is that this event serves as both a challenge and encouragement to each of you as a director and to your choral programs as a whole.
The High School State Choral Performance Assessment (State CPA), formerly known as the State Choral Festival, is one way that TN-ACDA fosters a high-level of choral culture in our state. This year’s State CPA will be held April 23-25 in Memphis (Wednesday 23 April), Murfreesboro (Thursday 24 April), and Knoxville (Friday 25 April). Our adjudicators this year are Mark Munson from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, Marcel Ramalho from Augusta University in Georgia, and Sonja Sepulveda, director of the Palmetto Voices Spiritual Ensemble in North Carolina.
There are four avenues by which your choirs can gain eligibility for the State CPA:
- Choirs who received a Superior at their regional assessment event are guaranteed a spot at that year’s State CPA. Their schedule requests will be honored first in the order in which they were received.
- Choirs who participated and received a Superior at the previous year’s State CPA but who were unable to participate in a regional assessment event in the current year will be automatically eligible but not guaranteed a spot at the State CPA. Their schedule requests will be honored second in the order in which they were received until all spots are full.
- Choirs who participated and received a Superior at the previous year’s State CPA but participated and did not receive a Superior in a regional assessment event in the current year will be automatically eligible but not guaranteed a spot at the State CPA. Their schedule requests will be honored third in the order in which they were received until all spots are full.
- Any remaining spots will be filled with choirs who did not receive a Superior at the previous year’s State CPA and did not participate or receive a Superior at this year’s regional assessment event, filled in the order in which their registration was received.
Choirs can register at the “High School State Choral Performance Assessment” tab of the TN-ACDA website: (/hs-choral-performance-assessment). For Middle and East Tennessee high schools, the deadline to register is Wednesday, March 26. (West Tennessee high schools: due to your regional CPA date, I will send follow-up information regarding your deadlines.) If your choir is guaranteed a spot (#1 above), you may go ahead and mail your payment or pay online. If not, register online but don’t mail a check or pay online for those choirs yet. You’ll receive an email from me by March 31 confirming which choirs have been scheduled, after which you can mail a check or pay online. The deadline for payments will be Friday, April 4. The fee for each choir is $178 and the Online Registration contains more details about payments.
Schedule for the events will be posted by April 4.
Please email me at mstatler@utm.edu with any questions!
Objective critiques are the lifeblood of improvement, both for directors and ultimately for the benefit of our students. The ratings are secondary. Receiving suggestions for how we can continually improve is the real objective, and the prestige of singing at the State event can provide an additional motivation for choristers. We hope you will seriously consider taking part.
Gratefully,
Mark Statler, Doctor of Arts in Music
Director of Choral Activities, University of Tennessee at Martin
Choral Performance Assessment Coordinator, TN-ACDA
Festival Adjudicators
Dr. Mark Munson
Mark Munson retired in 2024 as Director of Choral Activities and Professor of Music Education at Bowling Green State University where he conducted choruses and taught classes in choral literature and conducting. Prior to joining the university faculty, he taught eight years of junior and senior high school choral music, primarily in his home state of Pennsylvania. During the 2005-06 academic year he participated in a faculty exchange to Sweden where he was a visiting professor of music at Musikhögskolan i Malmö of Lund University, a choral music specialist at Fröknegårdskolan in Kristianstad, and visiting conductor of Christianstads Motettkör.
BGSU choruses under Dr. Munson’s direction toured both domestically and internationally, and they made appearances at professional conferences. He conducted the Toledo and Lima Symphony Orchestras in holiday performances, and prepared major choral/orchestral works for a number of internationally renowned conductors. Among other offices held in professional organizations, he served as president of the Central Region of the American Choral Directors Association and of the Ohio Choral Directors Association. He authored articles published in several periodicals, most notably ACDA’s Choral Journal, and he continues to be active as a guest conductor, choral clinician, and church musician.
Dr. Munson attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania where he studied piano and earned his undergraduate degree in music education. He holds a Master of Music degree in choral music education from the University of Michigan and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in choral conducting from the University of Cincinnati. As a young teacher he sang in the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh under the direction of Robert Page for six seasons.
Dr. Marcel Ramalho
Dr. Marcel Ramalho is currently Director of Choral Activities and Assistant Professor of Voice in the Department of Music at Augusta University. Before joining the faculty at AU, Dr. Ramalho held teaching positions at Earlham College, where he served as Adjunct Instructor of Voice, and at Ball State University, where he served as Applied Voice Instructor, as well as Graduate Assistant Conductor of Chamber Choir, Concert Choir, and Women’s Chorus.
As a conductor, Dr. Ramalho has led performances of works such as Fauré’s Requiem, Vivaldi’s Magnificat RV610, Handel’s Messiah, Stephen Paulus’ Christmas Tidings, José Maurício Nunes Garcia’s Requiem and Missa Pastoril para a Noite de Natal, Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert, Randall Thompson’s Frostiana, Benjamin Britten’s Choral Dances from Gloriana, Vincent Persichetti’s Flower Songs, and Franz Schubert’s Mass no.2 in G. As an opera singer, Dr. Ramalho has sung Thomas Putnam in The Crucible (Robert Ward), the titles roles in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Peter in Hansel and Gretel (Humperdinck), and Captain Corcoran in H.M.S. Pinafore (Gilbert and Sullivan). Concert appearances include the bass solos in J. S. Bach’s cantatas Ich habe genug(BWV 82), Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir (BWV 38), Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 4), and Weinen, klagen, sorgen, zagen (BWV 12), W. A. Mozart’s Freimaurerkantante, and G. Fauré’s Requiem. A recipient of several academic awards, scholarships, and grants, Dr. Ramalho’s research focus on the music of Brazilian composer José Siqueira (1907-1985). Dr. Ramalho has published articles in the Journal of Singing, Opus, Per Musi, Revista da ABEM, and has presented lecture recitals at Source Song Festival, the 31st National Conference of the Brazilian Association for Graduate Studies in Music, and at the 2022 Southeastern Region NATS conference, as well as research papers/posters at the 63rdCollege Music Society National Conference and the 2024 Southern ACDA Conference. Other activities include voice recitals, voice masterclasses, and choral clinics in Georgia, Tennessee, and Brazil, as well as performances (as a singer and conductor) with Orpheus Men’s Ensemble of Georgia since 2022.
Dr. Ramalho holds a Doctor of Arts degree from Ball State University (Vocal Performance and Choral Conducting), a Master of Music (Vocal Performance) from Indiana State University, and a Bachelor of Music Education from Universidade Federal da Paraíba (Brazil).
Dr. Sonja Sepúlveda
Sonja Sepúlveda is the Artistic Director of the Palmetto Voices Spiritual Ensemble and former Director of the Winston-Salem Youth Chorus. She was the Director of Choral Activities and professor of Theory at Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for 11 years where she conducted the Salem College Chamber Choir, Chorale and SuperTonix. Dr. Sepulveda also conducted Salem Academy ensembles Glee Club and Spirit. She came to Salem following positions at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky and Brewton Parker College in Mt. Vernon, Georgia.
Graduating from Winthrop University with a Bachelor of Music Education and Master of Music degrees, she studied conducting and sang under Dr. Robert Edgerton. Sonja Sepúlveda earned a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Conducting from the University of South Carolina where she studied under Dr. Larry Wyatt and Dr. Carol Krueger. Dr. Sepúlveda’s choirs have performed concerts at the National Cathedral, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and the Lincoln Center as well as performed concerts in Europe, Canada, and Mexico. Her choirs have had the honor of presenting solo concerts for National American Choral Directors Association Conferences as well as Southern Division ACDA and the Music Educators National Conferences. She sang with the Robert Shaw Festival Chorus for eight years and is in demand as a choral adjudicator and clinician, as well as being known for her TEDx Talk “Being a Woman Conductor and Overcoming the Prejudice.” //youtu.be/zOFk3gupoFg
Dr. Sepúlveda is Conductor-in-Residence/Program Development Associate and Director of Program Development for MidAm International of MidAmerica Productions that is partnered with Carnegie Hall.
Early Years: Sonja Sepúlveda grew up in an all-musical family. Everyone sang or played an instrument such as guitars, fiddles, mandolins, piano or organ. She gave private piano recitals starting at age 10 and sang in school choirs from the first grade. Later she danced in a dance company and spent a decade doing musicals for community theater which led her to overseeing the choral music and appearing in the ABC miniseries “North and South.” Growing up in the church, Sonja became church organist at 13 and still finds church music an anchor in her life. Teaching music in public schools from elementary to high school allowed her to find her calling and true passion for choral music.” Her website is //sonjasepulveda.com/.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the Assessment Coordinator, Mark Statler, at statechoralfestival@tnacda.org.