How do you communicate the details about how your rehearsal feels?
Every conductor’s rehearsal is a little different.
Different how?
- How the rehearsal begins
- What warmups will cover
- When singers can take bathroom breaks
- How much side conversation is tolerated
- How questions are communicated
My general approach is to let my ensembles learn those things experientially in the first few rehearsals, but I also know that clear definitions can be effective. Last Thursday I had a lot of students taking water and bathroom breaks during the first hour of Aces rehearsal, and I paused to say, “You can expect a 5 minute break around 8:00 in every rehearsal; please use that rather than disrupting rehearsal if you can avoid it.”
As much as I know that that type of direct definition can be effective, I tend to avoid it; especially at the beginning of the year, I want to avoid as much talk/business as I can so we can get to the business of making music. With institutional memory, reaction to situations, and redirects over the first few weeks, I find that the rehearsal details become clear to the ensemble pretty quickly.