How Do We Speak to Our Singers?

Few topics on Choralnet have garnered such extensive responses as those that deal with director/singer relationships. Surely our inspiration and love of what we do should transcend any problems in interpersonal relationships! After all, it’s “all about the music!” Isn’t it?

Yet how many of us wish we could take back a comment that was made to a singer out of anger or sarcasm that was taken the wrong way, or even worse, or maybe even the right way? How many of us we never forgot it? Conductors often find out too late that something they said to a singer in a rehearsal may have been rude or insensitive. Tom Carter in his book Choral Charisma claims that a director will never have an expressive choir unless the singers are in an emotionally safe enough of an environment to be expressive. When we feel unsafe, Carter says, we are wary and constricted and we feel the need to “fight, flee, or freeze.” Singers using these defense mechanisms might argue with the director, quit the choir, often reporting to the director’s superiors, or remain passive, unengaged, and uncommitted.

Hopefully the newly found collegial atmosphere of Arab Spring among orchestra musicians at the moment is also infiltrating its way into the choral room. Are we consciously aware, from moment to moment, of our behavior on front of the choir? Carter has many suggestions for ways stave off bad behavior when a singer does something that gets under our skin so that we can control our reactions to these circumstances.

As James Jordon writes in the Musician’s Soul, “In order to make music, one must be able to meet others on the equal ground of trust and loving.”

 

(From the interest session, “I Can’t Believe I Said That! – or How Do We Speak to Our Singers?” by Andrea Goodman.  Presented during the 2012 Eastern Division Conference.)