arrange • compose • conduct
Personal trainers will tell you that if you strengthen one set of muscles but ignore the opposing set, you’re setting yourself up for an injury. To me, the most important set of opposing emotional “muscles” to strengthen are these: High Standards and Personal Grace. High Standards are vital to achieving […]
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell […]
We can leave the same hour lecture with completely different lessons. Walk the same woods, join the same choir, weather the same storm – your experience will still be different than mine. Is it any wonder, then, that children can grow up in the same household and turn out vastly […]
Pride Month doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the brave LGBTQ community members who are standing up for their rights and the rights of each other. It belongs to the leaders who’ve been around since before Stonewall and the youths who haven’t even come out yet. But Pride doesn’t […]
The third chapter of Dare To Lead is called “The Armory” (it’s the third of five sections in Part One, “Rumbling With Vulnerability”). In this chapter, Dr. Brown addresses the idea of wholeheartedness, and provides examples of sixteen types of armor leaders are seen to use in their leadership, and then […]
Sometimes it’s enough to quit the browser, close the tab that’s acting weird. Other times, you get to the point when you need to do a hard reset. Power off, unplug, count to ten, start up fresh. It’s the most reliable way to fix deeply seated problems. And that’s what […]
The Aces endeavor to sing in as many musical styles as possible each year, with no discrimination except quality of music. In that spirit, the entire list is organized alphabetically, as in our folders (except music for Christmas, which goes at the end…) We had around thirty 2-hour rehearsals this […]
Does your audition process have accidental selection bias? In recent, fascinating podcast episodes of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell shows pretty clearly that the LSAT isn’t a great predictor of eventual success as a lawyer – but it is a very good predictor of whether you’ll get in a top-tier law school! […]
I’ve been trying all week to think about how to salute an amazing leader on today, as she retires after 20 years. Ginny Kerwin has been a transformative, visionary leader of MSVMA as Executive Director for the past two decades. Her leadership is seen in the quality of the singing […]
Hearing this beautiful song from Dear Evan Hansen is always moving, and there’s a reason it has become such a frequently performed piece by high school choirs in the last couple years. This version is particularly moving – the 86 nominees for the Jimmy Awards (including one of my former […]