arrange • compose • conduct
Dear Seniors, I read with relish your heartfelt tributes on social media and in letters; I watch your faces raw with emotion after our Farewell Concert. I love it all. But today is also my chance to thank you. Thank you for teaching me, for challenging me, for pushing me to be […]
Last evening I held the first of two three-hour studio recording sessions with my choir. Most years we spend some time in the studio; this year we are putting together the first half of an album that we’ll complete next year. We started tonight with May, the piece we commissioned with Michael McGlynn. […]
Here’s what I aspire to in my professional and personal interactions: Generosity. Generosity of spirit is the bedrock of my collaborations. I try to make every interaction I have be built on generosity, and when I lapse in my generosity, I apologize and fix it as quickly as I can. Generosity is giving more […]
As we near the end of the year, I am reflecting on the skills I most want my students to have built over the last year. Here are my top three: Work ethic. Musicianship. Teamwork. I am reflecting because I know I can’t hit each of these skills equally; perhaps work ethic […]
So is yours. So is everyone’s. We have blind spots, preferences, biases. In hindsight, our experiences appear to be leading us – but in the right direction? Who can say. A mentor can. That’s why it’s so important to have a mentor in our life. (Especially before our mid-20’s, when our prefrontal cortex is […]
My organic farmer friend used to look longingly at our little vegetable garden – “I wish I had time for a garden!” Wait, what? Why would someone who toils 16 hours a day to grow organic crops want a vegetable garden? The answer is that it would be a job-hobby. A jobby. Professional […]
The empty page is always challenging. It stares at you and dares you to fill it in. It asks whether you really have anything worth saying. It waits patiently for your guard to be down. But. Make friends with the empty page and you can weather the empty page. Here are a […]
In his book Every Song Ever, Ben Ratliff correctly writes: I am reminded of this every day by my four-year-old, who will bounce directly from Cats to Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony to What a Girl Is by Liv and Maddie (Disneypop). A day of listening might include James Taylor/George Gershwin/Taylor Swift/Stephen Sondheim/Gene Puerling/Yannick Nézet-Seguin/Lin-Manuel Miranda/Pentatonix/Bruno Mars/Adam Gwon/The […]
You’ve heard the expression, “If it were easy, everyone would do it.” There’s a truth there – it takes stamina, willpower to repeatedly accomplish tough things. But I think there is another side to this. Those who succeed again and again look at the tasks they repeat and ask, “What would this look like if […]
Dear singers, why should you work hard in rehearsal? Here’s how I look at it. You’re going to be tired at the end of a 2-hour rehearsal. No matter what. The vast majority of the energy you spend in rehearsal is non-negotiable. Sitting or standing, your body uses energy, and even half-committed work […]