My dear people letter is digital and comes in 7 parts.
Robert Shaw famously wrote long letters to his choirs after weekly rehearsals. He expounded, philosophized, cajoled, and encouraged in multi-page typed letters that were distributed via snail mail.
Now we can get the letters out much more quickly, and freely. So over time I’ve honed a multipart format that works well.
Here are the parts.
QUOTE
An inspirational quote selected to relate to our work this week.
THINK
This is my “Dear People” portion of the letter – philosophizing, offering perspective, and reflecting on the music we’re making.
PRACTICE
Here I’ll list my practice goals for the ensemble before our next rehearsal
REPERTOIRE
A list of our current repertoire, ideally updated with the current status (new, sight read, learned, memorized, performed)
CALENDAR
If all of our coming events are listed in my weekly communication, then they will theoretically see it many times and know where to go to find it.
Occasionally I will highlight the next event, maybe listing repertoire or other details about it starting 1-2 weeks before.
LISTEN
The more we can have a shared reference of music we’ve all listened to, the more we can reference it in our rehearsals.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Sometimes I worry that these posts are not being reliably read. A question of the week at the end ensures I know who made it to the end. It also has the added bonus of creating a meaningful dialogue between rehearsals. We can discover a lot about each other and the music right in the comment section.