arrange • compose • conduct
A snow day exists outside the usual routine. Commitments vanish, duties get postponed. Students sleep. What do you do? Perhaps you catch up on some grading or lay out some lesson plans. Maybe you just curl up with a good book and a mug of tea. I challenge you to […]
How much of a contingency plan do you have as an educator/conductor? I think a lot about this – usually when I get sick shortly before a concert. And what I come up with is always the same: plan on a snow day. In other words, assume that your penultimate […]
A key question for conductors to ask themselves is, “Have I prepared my ensemble so that they achieve even when I’m not there?” My students are performing tomorrow at State Solo & Ensemble. I won’t be there, nor am I at their rehearsal tonight. It is profoundly difficult for me […]
When I bake bread (and I bake a lot of bread), I invariably get some flour on the counters. Whether it’s the mixer throwing some out of the bowl, the extra flour I spread on my cutting board to do a final knead, or just the inefficiency of pouring flour […]
2019 was a wonderful year, both professionally and personally. Here’s an overview of my work year: Writing I published a new post on this site every day in 2019, totaling 368 posts. I wrote over 75,000 words written for my blog this year; That averages to over 5,000 a month or around 200 per day, or […]
It’s my end-of-school-year tradition to publish the repertoire my ensemble sang over the year. With my second year at GRCC in the books, here are the pieces Shades of Blue learned and performed. Shades of Blue had nine singers (2-2-3-2) in the fall semester and eight singers (2-2-2-2) in the […]
“Must be nice to have all those Snow Days!” said many people. Well, here we are at the end of April, and I can unequivocally say: Nope. Set aside the curriculum adjustments and the uncertainty over when the school year will end with make-up days tied up in the state […]
Some people have asked why, with 15 Snow Days this year, we are still having a Spring Break in our school district (and countless others in our area). Leaving aside that (A) it is contractual and (B) many parents already had vacation plans that they could not change, what about […]
So far, our school district has had fifteen – fifteen! – Snow Days in the 2018-19 school year. But Snow Day is a catchall phrase. We have had school canceled due to: Snow Freezing rain High winds Glaze ice Sub-zero temperatures And even, in September, heat! So it got me […]
My colleagues and I are, rightly, concerned about progress and momentum. Eight Snow Days in two weeks has left every West Michigan choir program–not to mention the musicals, Variety Shows, and AP Classes–in a fairly frightening state of not knowing how to get back on track. And yet. And yet. […]