When did you learn the songs that you know cold?
There are songs I sang 25 years ago that I could probably perform competently tomorrow. Maybe even without the music between now and the performance. Some of them are intricate arrangement by Darmon Meader or Gene Puerling. But if I rehearsed and prepared a piece for performance now, and left it for six months, I’d have to start again.
The songs I know cold are the songs that impacted me as I developed my craft.
I am mindful, because of this, that the songs I program for my own students are likely going to be the songs they know cold, decades from now. Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time” lives rent free in the brains of scores of former Aces The four students in this year’s Shades of Blue will likely be able to sing Darmon’s “Almost Like Being In Love” for the rest of their lives.
I’m thinking about a lot of different criteria as I program music for my ensembles; but I definitely try to take at least a minute to recognize the way the songs I choose will live on after the ensembles has ended.