arrange • compose • conduct
I am so excited for the Rockford Aces’ 15th Anniversary Concert and Reunion, one week from today – May 26, 7pm at Rockford High School. It’s been months in the planning, and my students have prepared so hard to put on a fantastic and varied concert. It never fails to […]
Strong emotions are valuable messages, if we take the time to listen. I’m just home from our choirs’ farewell concert, complete with all the tears that traditionally accompany its end. Those sorts of strong emotions help to tell us what we value. Even when we can’t necessarily verbalize our values, […]
Timing your talking is tricky. I am a big proponent of “talk less” in rehearsal. Singers don’t need a soliloquy – they need simple, clear, concise guidance followed by singing the passage again. And again. And again. But on occasion, you need to deliver more words. Maybe it’s logistical instructions […]
It’s easy to think that lack of motivation connotes lack of interest: if I’m not motivated to work on something, it must mean I’m not interested in it. The truth is more complicated. I might lack motivation because I’m tired. I might lack motivation because the goal is so distant […]
How can you incorporate the effect of a studio session into rehearsal? Both I and my students hear differently in the studio. We all hear and seek to correct mistakes with an intensity not present at every rehearsal. We pace differently in the studio. There is still laughter and camaraderie […]
Take the music seriously. Everything else, treat lightly. “I try never to take myself too seriously. But music has to be taken seriously.” Yannick Nézet-Séguin, on 60 Minutes I agree with him on both counts. Where we get into danger is when a conductor starts to associate their vision of […]
I think there can be a fear that if you go too long without exercising a craft, it disappears. It helps to recognize that that’s not true. I haven’t written any new music recently. While I think of writing music as the core of my professional work, there are seasons […]
Worry more about what you’re going to do tomorrow than about whether it connects to what you did yesterday. Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. – Soren Kierkegaard I try to remember to not try to make my life make sense. I know that […]
Get comfortable with not understanding things; it means you’ll get to understanding them faster. If only all realms of learning were like math. Math builds sequentially from one concept to the next. If you understood the last bit, then this bit is the next logical idea. Music literacy is not […]
This is how I started my description of my conducting pattern. (It’s an odd meter piece, with frequent time signature changes and surprising subdivisions.) “You don’t need to know this, but here’s how I’m conducting this.” For a y’all come, multigenerational pickup choir, the theory takes a back seat. And […]