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Brené Brown puts language about the gap between reality and our inner monologue when she advises to bolster conversations with this statement: “The story I’m telling is…” We respond to story, and our stories help us make sense of our lives. But our stories don’t always conform to reality, and we’d do […]

Recently I was working on a challenging transition with my TTBB group. They had to go from a unison G to a 2nd-inversion Eb ma7 chord. The crunchy half-step between B1 and T2 was tricky. The solution? Rehearse with just one part at a time. Without the B1s, the chord rang as a […]

Do you have montage moments? That’s a moment when you feel like, if this were a movie, this would be the first shot in a montage that would fast-forward through a time transition. Once you start to build a habit, it’s easy to expect the results will start to appear […]

A few weeks into the school year can be a miserable place to be. You’ve got some notes down, but you’re not an ensemble yet. You’ve got some inkling of where you’re headed, but you’re still a ways away. Here are the things to remember: On the way to good, you […]

The right note at the wrong time is the wrong note. So goes an old adage, and one I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. I’ve heard a lot of auditions recently with musicians who sight read (or sing prepared pieces) with accurate pitches and inaccurate rhythms. In a heightened, nervous state, brains hyper-focus on […]

I’ve written before on why I think we should consider calling choir retreats “choir advances”, because of the amazing progress you make in a day or a weekend together. When you advance, you’re heading towards something. Here, then, are the three goals I invited Shades of Blue, my vocal jazz ensemble from Grand Rapids Community […]

The brilliant bassist/singer Esperanza Spalding is finishing an amazing act of public creation today. Her album Exposure has been created, from conception to final tracks, live in the studio over the last three days – a total of 77 hours ending at 1pm Pacific time today. The entire process has been live streamed to Facebook […]

I am preparing my choir for an ACDA-Michigan conference performance at the end of October. By my count we will have had nine 2-hour rehearsals and a retreat to prepare a 25-minute set of music. The balancing act, then, is keeping them motivated but not afraid. I have programmed ambitious […]

Q: What is one problem in contemporary culture that you think choir can help solve? A: Choirs can empower their members to learn how they can express their individuality within a cohesive group. Our society is ever-more broken down into tiny slivers: micro-cultures of like-minded individuals. More and more often, we are only comfortable interacting within […]

Yesterday I wrote about 10/10 rehearsals. Here’s the big reason we shouldn’t have every single rehearsal operate at ultimate peak efficiency. We are not cogs. We are not robots designed for a task and then optimized to peak output. The human growth process is messy, filled with false starts, dead ends, and […]