arrange • compose • conduct
Posts specifically about choral music
Things can be difficult for wildly different reasons. Don’t let that surprise you. I solved a 67×41 crossword puzzle in the last few days. It’s huge. There were 782 distinct clues and it took up 3 entire newspaper pages. It took awhile, but the truth is, it wasn’t that difficult. […]
Alice Parker is one of the wisest, most settled musicians I’ve ever spent time with. She knows what works for her, knows what her opinions are, and knows how to express what she hears in her mind. That’s what has made it all the more inspiring, in my time with […]
More and more, I think this is my most important job. More important than my musical insights or expertise. More important than my rehearsal plan or preparation before and after rehearsal. More important than the part recordings, piano skills, or vocal technique lessons. It comes down to this: my students […]
Be aware of just how much context you’re bringing when you begin a piece with your students. I’m watching a “Technical Challenge” in the Great British Bake-Off, in which the contestant bakers are asked to bake a recipe sight-unseen. Sometimes, as in the one I’m watching now, it’s a type […]
I love Thanksgiving for the Usuals. I love that when I make this cranberry recipe, I think of that person and our meal together twenty years ago. I love that when I make this apple pie recipe, I know to omit the golden raisins because my niece has strong opinions. […]
Keep the music you select on the correct side of this axis. My students in Shades of Blue are working on the very difficult a cappella arrangement of “Almost Like Being In Love” by Darmon Meader. It’s aurally demanding, rhythmically tricky, and long! It’s been hard work, but they haven’t […]
Performances don’t always go as planned. Some lackluster performances can be blamed on someone – “I missed that cue” or “You didn’t learn that part as well as you should have.” But many performances don’t have a convenient spot to blame. It was a novel acoustic environment, or what someone […]
Which is most important to you? It has to depend on the context – if I’m picking a Renaissance motet, I’m more likely to focus on the music, because the Latin text isn’t going to be a significant resonating factor for my students. If I’m picking a contemporary choral piece, […]
Pieces need time to breathe, too. What happens between notes and rhythms and performance? Sometimes, not much. Sometimes, an efficient polish and development of musicianship. But there’s something else that can happen over time. I’ve found that the pieces we’ve polished, made musical, and even performed continue to develop with […]
Wait, scores doesn’t always mean the same thing? No, the traditions around interpreting scores can be radically different depending on context, and we don’t do a great job of making that clear to students. We tend to treat the score as an encyclopedia of interpretation – all information for interpretation […]