arrange • compose • conduct
We wrapped up our eighth successful year with the Rockford Aces last week, culminating in a 2-hour concert that was widely considered our best yet. I’m sharing here our rep list from the year. The Aces endeavor to sing in as many musical styles as possible each year, with no discrimination […]
One of the things that makes singing so hard is that our self-worth is bound up in our performance. Failure to achieve a standard of singing can lead to serious self-esteem problems and sometimes even stop people from singing. When you play the tuba, or the flute, or the piano, […]
This Monday morning, for many teachers, is the first day of 2016-17 prep. (not, as some call it “Summer Break”) If you’re like me, you want to get right to it with a stack of octavos at the piano, your favorite calendar software open, and an email to students reminding them not […]
Our profession is a little bit crazy. When you hear stories of schools that are so flooded in the spring that carp are swimming in the basement – but the school district can’t convince their community to support improvements. When legislators are repeatedly–repeatedly–eviscerating school policy at the state and national level, all the […]
Peter Shaffer, the playwright best known for his Tony and Oscar Award-Winning Amadeus died this week. I was lucky enough to be in the audience at a talkback about the play that he presented in the mid-nineties at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada. They had mounted a truly outstanding production, featuring Brian […]
Enjoy this lovely new work from Michael McGlynn and Anúna. It’s on their new album “Sunshine | Shadows” out this week. Michael has the compositional skill to sound so fresh and so timeless all at once – combining elements of jazz, choral, folk, and more into his writing. It’s a tricky needle […]
How did this happen? I’m here at my least favorite day in having a select choir. Auditions are a necessary evil, but they are an inevitable source of disappointment. This year, I moved my audition day for my ensemble from the first week of school to the last week, so this is […]
Choir directors have to have both: you have to be in the moment, reacting immediately to everything from kids falling off risers to emotional breakdowns to out-of-tune final chords to fire drills. But you also have to have the arc in mind, always. The arc to the concert, the arc […]
“Graduation is a beginning, not an ending,” I found myself saying to a senior student yesterday. It sounds a little trite, but it’s absolutely the truth. It’s the beginning of more freedom, more choice, more direction, more passion. Now, how you handle those things can very quickly make it seem […]
This is a follow up to my post about the current Michigan bill that would profoundly alter the Michigan high school curriculum and eliminate the fine arts requirement entirely. My father took my advice and wrote to his state congressman. In his handwritten response, the congressman makes two arguments that I have to […]