arrange • compose • conduct
Monday I did nothing for twenty minutes in the middle of rehearsal. I’m a firm believer in letting struggle happen. Coming through the struggle is how you rise to new heights. In this case, it was a sound system setup crisis – someone missed part of the job, someone did part […]
In our distracted age, an intense music rehearsal is a perfect cure. Children…teenagers…adults: we all need practice at ignoring distractions and being fully present. Meditation is one solution often offered. To be effective in rehearsal, you must be fiercely in the present, focused on what is immediately ahead of you. Giving it 50% or […]
Brandon Ridenour was a seven-season member of the Canadian Brass (starting at age 20) and now at 30 has recently made his solo Carnegie Hall debut. Last week he was a guest artist alongside his father at Rockford High School. In their masterclass, before he sang and played “Basin Street Blues”, Brandon revealed […]
Not long ago a high school choral teaching friend told me he was accused by a parent of achieving success only because it was good for his career. “It’s about you, not the students.” Like so many other choir teachers I know, he sacrifices evenings, weekends, sleep, summers, vacation days, his mental and physical […]
Teachers are the soul of our society. I spend my days appreciating and reflecting on all that teachers do for us, so Teacher Appreciation Week seems a little bit redundant. Then again, there is never a bad time to let teachers know they are appreciated. Because teachers are the soul of our […]
If you dream and dream, every week is full of small victories and small disappointments. And some weeks have big disappointments or big victories. Last night was a big victory of dreaming. Celebrate with me the creation of the Rockford High School Performing Arts Series. One year ago, I proposed to […]
Something I remember Steve Zegree reminding us of repeatedly in Gold Company: Once you proven that you can sing a phrase properly – in tune, balanced, blended, dynamics, etc. – anything less than that is unacceptable. Once you’ve cleared the bar, you have proven you can do it consistently well, and […]
I loved the recent news story of the Princeton professor who published a CV of his failures. Dreaming – trying new things – guarantees both failure and success. But we don’t often talk about the failures. Even when you succeed at something new, it often feels like a failure right up until […]
One of my longest and most consistent collaborators is a treble choir from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, Noteworthy. (They like to refer to themselves as “No fella a cappella.”) I just want to congratulate them on a job well done at their annual performance at Spring Sing – an annual a cappella meet […]
One of the things I’m most excited about starting this year is a new concert series. Our amazing local non-profit education supporter, the Rockford Education Foundation, gave the high school music department a grant to start a series that can be self-sustaining, providing masterclasses and concerts of first-rank musicians for […]