arrange • compose • conduct
Is it hubris for me to edit Mozart? I am no Classical-era scholar, but when I wanted to do a certain Mozart canon with the Rockford Aces, the available scores had two problems. 1. The key was too high. 2. I needed a very specific text. Mozart’s original text is […]
I had a marvelous music theory professor at Western Michigan University. David Loberg Code is clever, with a dry wit and a passion for theory pedagogy, he thoroughly engaged me in three different classes. In the last few years, he’s been using some more unusual approaches to present theory topics. I trust […]
I’m a vocal jazz guy. As much time as I spend on other choral genres, it’s vocal jazz I always come back to when I need to refill my musical well. Trouble is, vocal jazz is a bit of a stepchild in the choral music world. In the panorama of […]
I’m in the process of mixing the third CD from the Rockford Aces. My students and their friends routinely ask me: when are you putting it on iTunes? On Spotify? I’m not. I am not in the music business. I don’t care about downloads or streams – I care about memories. […]
A mashup – two songs smoothed together through common beat, harmony, or melodic contour. It’s like a medley but tighter. For virtually any song you select, literally thousands of songs could be mashed up with it without much stretching. So the question becomes, why mashup? To me, the songs need more to […]
One of the great unexpected benefts of taking my students to the World Choir Games was the rare opportunity to “double dip” on pieces of music. All too often, choirs prepare pieces with a concert in mind, and then turn to new repetroire on the next rehearsal. You might spend […]
I’ve had many friends go on to wonderful careers in music, but few I’ve known as long as Jeremy Fox When I was still in high school, Jeremy and I met at a Phil Mattson Vocal Jazz Workshop and we’ve crossed paths numerous times since then. We’re very like-minded and enjoy […]
Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. – From Psalm of Life, Henry Longfellow These are the first lines of poetry I ever knew my heart – thanks to my dad proclaiming them to encourage […]
When I talk about augmented triads, I always play the Nat “King” Cole version of “Stardust.” The string introduction, wow. Note the echo in the strings at 1:11 (end of verse) Which do you think came first? The introduction or the accompaniment?
“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” -Anonymous Genuinely funny choral music is hard to come by. You can find clever and witty thing, or pieces where a single joke is stretched out to three minutes. Laugh-out-loud choral music is a little trickier. And that’s probably ok, because it’s surprisingly hard […]