High School State Choral 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
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the Assessment Coordinator, Mark Statler, at statechoralfestival@tnacda.org.