arrange • compose • conduct
Posts specifically about choral music
A choir always needs more leaders coming from within the ensemble. But there’s more than one way to be a leader! Section Leader. Know your parts, lead extra rehearsals, be the one to ask questions for your section. Hey Guys! Leader. Speak up, call out, and generally police the ensemble […]
Just because we all have to be in agreement doesn’t mean we all have to be beholden to the page. A rhythmic disagreement between sections tonight offered an opportunity to ignore the sheet music. Sheet music, of course, only contains a fraction of the musicality – there’s a lot of […]
I often encourage the Aces to adopt a 5×5 practice regimen outside of rehearsal. (5 minutes/day, 5 days/week). The problem is that often, the group members end up carrying tremendous individual guilt around failure to meet that modest goal. The guilt can lead to avoidance, creating a vicious cycle of […]
Recently asked online: “Are part recordings cheating?” That is, does providing part recordings diminish an ensemble experience because we don’t force our students to develop the reading and keyboard skills to learn the music on their own? The answer is: of course not. In fact, I think our music education […]
My students and I talked about 9/11 this weekend on our retreat. I shared my story, and reflected on the arc of my students over the years – my first students had been in middle or high school at the moment 9/11 happened. My current students weren’t alive, but their […]
My preferred place to be when walking into a rehearsal or class is three steps ahead. I want to be far enough ahead to anticipate any questions, to be prepared with accurate answers or advice, and to guide my students smoothly forward in their learning. But you can’t always be […]
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 […]
We’ve talked a lot about starting – only natural as we consider this book and its many ideas at the beginning of a school and concert year. And yet, closings are important, too. I’m thinking about ends of rehearsals, about ends of concerts, and about ends of years (ends of […]