Ba’al Chazon Award for Cantorial Innovation

For the past two years, the Ba’al Chazon Award for Vision has honored cantors for their work beyond their synagogues. Moving forward, the Ba’al Chazon Award for Cantorial Innovation will recognize creative and successful programming within our synagogues. The core of the cantorial role remains our expertise and execution of sacred music, but our contributions to synagogues now range far beyond these traditional duties, to include work in pastoral care, social justice, community engagement, academia, and more. The Ba’al Chazon Award for Cantorial Innovation will reflect this dual nature of our work by highlighting accomplishments in two categories.

Each year, the award will honor innovative approaches in the permanent category of Sacred Music, as well as one additional category of work that reflects the focus of the ACC on a changing basis. This year, in connection with the theme of our 2019 ACC-GTM Convention in Atlanta, that additional category will recognize the achievements of our members in Social Justice.

This award is meant to benefit our membership as a platform for sharing successful programming ideas. If your submission is in the category of Sacred Music, we want to know about a particular program, that has either completed or is on-going, that displays innovation and success in such areas as choirs, concerts, instrumental ensembles, b’nai mitzvah training, worship leading, etc. The same applies to submissions in the category of Social Action. We are looking for programs that highlight innovative work in such areas as economic justice, racial justice, environmental justice, etc.

The program in question must be designed and executed by you, as a cantor. Partnership with other clergy and lay-leaders is important, but we want to recognize the efforts of colleagues who have devoted significant time, energy and leadership in the work for which they will be recognized. While we are hopeful to receive submissions that reflect work from within the last five years, there is no official limit on how long ago the program in question was executed, as long as it maintains relevance to the work that cantors do in either of the two categories today.

As ACC members, you are invited to enter your submissions in either one or both of these two categories, since each of you knows your own work best. Unlike in previous years, there will not be any third-party nominations, so if you know of a colleague whose work could benefit our broader membership, please encourage them to send their material.

Submissions should minimally include a detailed written description of the program, but you are encouraged to include as much supplementary material as possible. Examples of such material might be cue sheets, concert programs, and audio or video recordings if applicable and possible. The material in the winning submissions will be made available on the members-only section of the ACC website, so the more information that you can share, the more our colleagues will be able to benefit from your work. With your help, we look forward to growing together and strengthening each other in our sacred calling!

Click here for the google submission form. Please send your supplemental materials to Deb Greenswag at dgreenswag@accantors.org.

All submissions are due no later than May 10, 2019.