About

All pieces available on cameratapress.com are for vocal groups either a cappella or accompanied. I wrote them over a fifty-year career as a choral conductor mostly to fill programming needs for my choirs: college, radio, church, community, and professional.

My longest conducting gig began in 1975 when, with the help of singing friends, I founded Camerata Singers of Elkhart (Indiana), now St. Joseph Valley Camerata. Christmas and spring dinner concerts had new themes each year. I often included brief readings to develop a subject in a specific way. These often pointed to a hymn, folksong, carol, or poem to be arranged or set to music.

In the '90s I began numbering my pieces, but it was with the arrival of software capable of professional level music engraving that Camerata Press became a real possibility. I worked for some years to learn the details of today's music notation. (My choirs breathed a sigh of relief!)

An event in 2009 was pivotal in launching Camerata Press and cameratapress.com. E. C. Schirmer in Boston, eminent American composer Randall Thompson's publisher, accepted my SATB arrangement of Thompson's solo song "Velvet Shoes." Editor Stanley Hoffman asked me if I could provide a copy done in Sibelius, their house music notation software. My wife Christine had given me Sibelius and helped load the CDs on my computer, but I had not yet learned it. Procrastination ended that day! They needed the Sibelius copy in three weeks.

For a few years I tried my own designs for front covers, but made the right decision in asking David Fast, graphic designer for Mennonite Mission Network, for his services. Randy Horst of Goshen College's communications faculty designed the logo. In 2013 I discovered web designer Ruth Smucker who has worked with me expertly, attentively, and tirelessly. We launched cameratapress.com that year. A website is always a work in progress. Watch for posts announcing updates, improvements, and new pieces.

Please go to the home page of cameratapress.com to see the influences upon and aspects of the music there, and of course, I invite you to browse.

—David A. Seitz