arrange • compose • conduct
Sometimes I like to play a little musical game in rehearsal that I call “In My Head.” I adapted it from an Instagram post from the Swingles from 2017: In my version, we sing a set of three in a row, with the lyrics, “In my head, in my heart, […]
If you own the work, they can’t. As an adult – parent, teacher, or leader: you pick – one of the hardest things to do is to forgo ownership. By that, I mean relinquishing control of a project. Witness the massive number of school projects that are partially or completely […]
I don’t think there are many absolute rules in leadership of students. There are many effective ways of leading students in music, athletics, academics, and extracurriculars. This might be as close as I come: Achievement must always come second to humanity. You can always focus as much energy as you […]
Pomp and Circumstance are good. I don’t mean the Elgar, though that is pretty nice. It’s one of those magical pieces that carry so much weight in terms of setting a scene. I mean, the ceremonial celebration of milestones is worthwhile. It’s great to blow out candles, to wear a […]
I recently asked one of my kids, “What do you think I’ll do when you’re all adults and out of the house?” We talked about ideas: write more music, maybe another book. “Clean less!” was a funny answer. In the end, my kids answers all amounted to: more of what […]
Even the harmony master himself agreed. Gene Puerling loved unison singing. I can’t prove it to you, because the album is not available on any streaming services. I can’t link to a YouTube video because they’re all unavailable. But go and find The Hi-Lo’s singing “A Quiet Girl” By Leonard […]
We’re kind of terrible at it. According to Dan Gilbert, At every age, from 18 to 68 in our data set, people vastly underestimated how much change they would experience over the next 10 years. We call this the “end of history” illusion. To give you an idea of the […]
Meetings don’t always need to last as long as they’re schedule to last. But somehow, almost every meeting I have ever attended has lasted the full scheduled duration. A lot of that is due to meeting creep – discussion points stretching out to fill available time. In the short run, […]
If I was asked to describe my ideal choral educator, it would be someone with an equal combination of these three traits. Of course, you must have skill. A great choral educator knows how to tune a chord, cue the tenors, select great repertoire, teach it effectively and well, and […]
Don’t wait on creating your alumni list. It’s incredibly helpful, I find, to have a list of past students. To contact, to reminisce, and someday, to plan reunions. It’s going to be a lot harder to make that list if it’s in the run up to a reunion; looking back […]