arrange • compose • conduct
I’ve listened to a lot of music. Like, a lot. But there’s still vast amounts of amazing music I have never listened to. There’s simply not time. When someone seems affronted that I haven’t gotten around to hearing their favorite music, or music held in high regard, I can feel […]
My son loves Scouting – he’s passionate and committed. But he also knows that his forward motion slows down every few months. It’s a natural cycle of the type we all go through in any activity. When he noticed that he always gets reenergized after participating in certain optional events […]
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 […]
Change isn’t always bad, and we’re often bad at separating the positivity of the change from our resistance to it. The road to my kids’ middle school is full of truly unbearable pot holes and shoddy repairs. I should say was. The road has recently been repaved. My first time […]
I tried a new activity at this year’s retreat, and I’m keeping it. Two Minute Talents! Each singer brought some small talent or trick (think “Stupid Human Tricks”) that could be performed in two minutes or less. It was raucous fun – laughter, silliness, and impressive, all at once! It […]
In her recent podcast interview with Dr. Brené Brown, Dr. Amy Cuddy describes the turmoil she felt about whether to continue her career path. I was sort of saying, “Do I want to go for tenure or not?” It’s stressful, to go up for tenure – you know, you’ve got, […]
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 […]
The last time I was on a retreat was in 2019, and this weekend I’m (with school approval and as safely as I can) on a retreat with the Rockford Aces. I’ve noticed a trend in my own retreat planning towards more human connection and away from actual musical rehearsal. […]
Our society has long been obsessed with marking the differences between “Generations” (basically arbitrarily marked) like Z, Millennial, X, etc. The obsession has seemed to ramp up in recent years. The truth is, there are some noticeable and consistent differences in generations over time, though I think that they’re detectable […]
How often do you have students who are “totally planning to audition…when I’m 100% ready.” Perhaps they’re not feeling knowledgeable enough, or have a tuning problem or a tone problem or a vibrato problem. In my experience, those students almost never actually get close enough to 100% to audition. Because […]