arrange • compose • conduct
I’m in love with the mental challenge of working on two versions of the same song. Currently, the Aces are learning a TTBB version of the Star Spangled Banner, while each of them is learning an SATB version in their curricular choir. It’s hard. It’s especially hard if you’re singing […]
I love a mix of recipes I know by heart and recipes I’ve never made before. I have so many things in my weekly repertoire whose recipes I don’t even look at anymore – I bake and cook from memory many times a week. But life gets stale if you’re […]
My least favorite part of September, I told my students in rehearsal tonight, is all the sight reading. Sure, we’re reading music all year long. But the balance of reading and polishing evolves over the course of the year, and in the beginning, it’s much more reading than polishing. It’s […]
I am much more interested in New Year’s Reflections than Resolutions. It’s universally accepted that those resolutions don’t usually stick, and even if they do, it’s hard to wait a whole year to assess the outcome of a resolution. A month is a much more realistic time for a resolution. […]
In a podcast interview, Seth Godin was asked some details about his early work and journey to the present. His response was insightful: “I’m just very uncomfortable talking about this journey of mine, cause I don’t think it’s that interesting cause I was there. […] But I do think the […]
“When will I use this?” is the common refrain. Whether it’s obscure knot-tying in Boy Scouts, SOH-CAH-TOA mastery in trigonometry, or the 18th Century voice leading that contemporary music majors are asked to learn. I understand the question. We want to understand the applicability of the skill before we commit […]
Playing games is the most important way to get great at chess, but they are more effective paired with different other practice strategies. The same is true for performance repertoire in the choral rehearsal. Part of the tradition of learning chess is to play puzzles that require you to force […]
For many of the things in our lives, there is something holding us there. A paycheck. A graduation requirement. A life commitment. When I look around the room of my ensemble in rehearsal, I think, “There is nothing holding them here.” No obligation, no law, no requirement. The only thing […]
As I see it, there are four types of people for a game like chess: Non-playerBeginnerPlayerObsessive You can’t be a chess grandmaster unless you fall into the Obsessive category. Come to think of it, you can’t be a grandmaster at anything without being an Obsessive. All professional athletes. High-level music […]
For teachers, ain’t no tired like a first-week tired. The nights…you crash. It’s easy to think, at the end of the second or third day of school, that you will never, ever, under any circumstances, make it through the year. You say, “I’m going to be in bed exhausted at […]