arrange • compose • conduct
Don’t ignore the middle future. I’m pretty good at thinking about what I have to do tomorrow. I’m less good at thinking – at least in detail – about what I have to do in two months. The practice of taking a few minutes to think in detail about the […]
Educators shouldn’t always give in to their instinct to offer options for different learning and personality styles. I’m always one to offer different perspectives, different approaches for the things I teach. I want to reach and teach everyone, so I’ll cover a topic in as many different ways as I […]
There are times when it’s to your credit to be easygoing, and times when it just adds work for other people. Don’t say, “I’m not picky. You decide.” There are two situations when I’m likely to hear that answer. First is when I’m taking food orders for a group. If […]
One of my goals this year is to send out an agenda the night before every weekly rehearsal. I can’t think of a single ensemble I’ve ever sung in that had a specific agenda that I was aware of ahead of time. I am certain my conductors had specific plans […]
It’s obvious. The best thing about your first year is your second year. That’s often been said to and about first year teachers, and it’s true there, for sure. The learning curve of your first year teaching, and in most jobs, is so steep that the second year is better […]
Summertime affords space for reflection. Can you bring that to your everyday? But I think that waiting till summer to reflect on what’s working and what isn’t takes too long. Often, when I’m in the middle of work, I don’t think I can possibly also devote time to stepping back […]
I’m not a generalist. No one is. I don’t suffer any delusions of being a world-class composer or arranger, but I know that I have specific knowledge that makes me effective in specific situations. I can write for my own groups better than almost anyone else, because I know exactly […]
What’s your personal purpose statement? I’ve worked in the past on developing a purpose statement for my ensembles. Here’s where I landed for the Aces: To make high-level genre-agnostic music with tenors and basses from Rockford HS and share it with people through performance and recording, such that (A) a […]
Are you appreciating the skills of the people you work alongside most frequently? We turn today to the book of Sports Night, Season 1, Episode 10. In this scene, TV anchor Casey is being produced by a sub producer (Sally), and his longtime producer Dana is questioning the trust he […]
It’s great to find people who are crazy in the same way as you. Tonight I attended a concert production of Les Misérables, performed by a cast of seventh through twelfth graders who started rehearsing together on Monday. (The cast featured two of my students/Aces members as Jean Valjean and […]