Value Set vs. Skill Set
Do your auditions and interviews give too much weight to skill sets and not enough to value sets?
Choral Music
Posts specifically about choral music
Just Because Something is Easy
Just because something is easy doesn’t mean you’re not learning.
Five Reasons To Commission New Music
A core of my musical philosophy is around commissioning new music. Here are five reasons I think commissioning music is worthwhile for any music conductor. 5. It’s important for furthering the art! Your commission might be the next piece everyone is singing or playing – moving the community forward. 4. […]
Sing Without Me
I had a quick National Anthem gig for the Aces, but I was double booked. They could be there. I couldn’t. What a great opportunity! A National Anthem performance is the perfect first chance to practice singing without your conductor, for leadership to step up. It’s low-stakes! (The crowd for […]
Not The Special Part
Having a group of singers who can sing well together isn’t the special part. Thousands upon thousands of singers have learned to master vocal jazz and choral music over the decades, singing tight harmony in tune. As hard as it is, it’s not that special. What is special is finding […]
Zen and Warmups
A Zen proverb goes, “If you don’t think you have time to meditate for an hour today, you should meditate for two hours.” This runs through my head every single time I want to skip past vocal warmups in my Aces rehearsals. Sometimes the motivation is so strong to get […]
Skip The Celebration/Always Celebrate
We aren’t much for big relationship celebration days: Valentine’s Day, for certain, but even an anniversary. It might be a good day for a nice dinner, or fancy homemade chocolate dessert, but we aren’t likely to make a huge deal about it. We celebrate our partnership every day, which means […]
In My Head
Sometimes I like to play a little musical game in rehearsal that I call “In My Head.” I adapted it from an Instagram post from the Swingles from 2017: In my version, we sing a set of three in a row, with the lyrics, “In my head, in my heart, […]
Skill, Vision, and Empathy
If I was asked to describe my ideal choral educator, it would be someone with an equal combination of these three traits. Of course, you must have skill. A great choral educator knows how to tune a chord, cue the tenors, select great repertoire, teach it effectively and well, and […]
Alumni List
Don’t wait on creating your alumni list. It’s incredibly helpful, I find, to have a list of past students. To contact, to reminisce, and someday, to plan reunions. It’s going to be a lot harder to make that list if it’s in the run up to a reunion; looking back […]