arrange • compose • conduct
I was taken by this recently-posted TED Talk from a Lincoln, NE high school English teacher. A few important quotes from her talk: They come to school with trauma, and when I go home every day, that goes home with me. And see, that’s the hard part about teaching. It’s […]
Choir directors are real-life wizards. Specifically, they give their students the gifts Dorothy and her friends sought from the Wizard of Oz. Brains – choir offers students the chance to engage their whole brains in complex thinking about a range of issues. Heart – the true expression of great poetry […]
You know now it’s not perfect. Share it anyway. Every idea has some degree of perfection while it’s only in your mind, and every idea undergoes de-perfecting in the process of moving from the brain to the world. It’s even harder early in your development, when you haven’t developed skills […]
In my experience, every piece you write makes you feel like a new composer again. That’s because every aspect of writing a piece comes with limitations and guides you in specific directions. They all make demands on your writing that require you to become a new composer. The text makes […]
A diverse opinion base is one of the blessings of a free society. And yet, in the choral rehearsal, too often we seek to align all opinions to a single reference point. That opinion, of course, is the right one…i.e., the conductor’s opinion. Independent thought, though, is needed if we […]
My son brought home this inspirational video from the 2006 independent movie Facing the Giants. I think that what makes the scene an inspirational video is a combination of seeing a human achieve an extraordinary physical feat (never mind that it probably wasn’t filmed as such) and that the player […]
We’re in the midst of a run of three Collage Concert performance in which my ensemble, the Aces, sing two pieces. They’ve already performed the pieces at the choir Holiday Concert and at a runout concert, so they’re becoming increasingly confident and polished. One blessing of the too-many-concert weeks that […]
Global climate change is without a doubt the biggest social challenge our species is currently facing. Actually, it’s the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced as a species. We all need to get involved. Not just the elected officials, not just the advocates. We all. Including the artists. Maybe especially the […]
Eric Whitacre does many wonderful things with his success and fame, but I think the best thing he’s done is to initiate his Teacher of the Week. He honors a teacher – any level, anywhere in the world – based on nominations submitted to his site. It’s exactly right to […]
A lot has been written about the insufficiency of our notation system, and a lot more could be written. (For a great essay about it, check the last chapter of The Anatomy of Melody by Alice Parker.) But there is one particular notation that I feel increasingly in need of […]