When your choir is so small, any little thing can be a huge bump in the road. One member out sick is manageable, but TWO? That rehearsal isn’t going to go the way you expected. It’s my experience that the members of a small choir are most likely members of everything else and there’s going to be more conflicts than you might see in a bigger group. There’s that piece you bought that’s just too challenging for this group at this moment and you don’t have the budget to buy something else and CPDL is down and what do I do?
Here are the steps I take when things go wrong, when my plan is completely derailed and I start to panic:
Breathe
This isn’t just a directive to myself. Everything in choir starts, continues, and ends with breath. Take the time to breathe together. Focus on the quality of breath for a particular entrance. Work on releasing together by breathing in. Practice extending the breath through a long phrase. Teach (again) the concept of staggered breathing.
By focusing on breath, the way forward almost always becomes apparent to me.
Simplify
This word to my small church choir is like poison. As though the only music worth doing is SATB and anything else is unacceptable. It took me years to understand that they see unison or 2-part music as a failing on their part; they aren’t good enough to sing in 4 parts so why sing at all? This is a faulty mindset. I know it, and you know it, but it takes a lot of convincing for them to even consider it.
When a piece is just too much for the forces on hand and I’m just not able to change to another piece, I find places where we can simplify. What happens if during this verse we sing the melody together? We still get to sing 4 parts in the chorus, but we’re giving ourselves a well-deserved break by giving up our struggle and joining together to make the text sing.
My 8-voice girls’ choir includes a violinist, 2 violists, a harpist, a guitar player, and a clarinetist. I can perform an SSA piece with 6 voices on the melody and 2 instrumentalists filling in the other voices. I’ll get creative, and they all feel so accomplished.
Relate
I love music. Almost all of it. And I’m really passionate about the music I choose for my choirs. I’m privileged to be their conductor, and I work hard to find the right pieces that will make these small groups sound their best.
But I love the people in my choirs more. And the people come first.
What that looks like with the girls’ choir is the girls get to pick the music. They pick the most interesting things! From madrigals to Broadway and everything in between. I do my best to honor their requests, and find companion pieces to match. We had so much fun last year doing the “Cups” song from Pitch Perfect (their choice) and segueing into Emily Crocker’s arrangement of “J’entends le moulin” (my choice) keeping the cups going. The girls loved it, they sang a French Canadian folk song mixed with a contemporary American folk song, and they had ownership over their choral experience.
But with the church choir, relating is different and in a way more important. When it comes to choosing music for this group, there’s really only two considerations: does this piece fit with the worship theme, and will this piece make “Margie” (not her real name) successful? Margie’s husband has alzheimer’s, and Margie’s respite is church choir. She is the one in the group who needs choir the most. And she is my first priority every single week.
Reach Out
We are in constant information overload. Constant. By reading this blog post, you’ve used up time and brain space that you could have spent on emails or score study. But you read it because you thought there would be something of value (I hope you found it). You read it because we need each other, personally, to be involved in our music making.
ChoralNet and Facebook are wonderful resources, allowing us to go beyond the googling to ask for actual human advice. Both platforms provide good search tools to help you see if your question has been addressed recently, but ask the questions. Especially in the moments of frustration or panic…reach out. We’re all in the boat together, paddling toward the same shore.
ACDA has a national mentorship program which is a wonderful way to connect with someone who can help you directly.
But the most valuable resource is our personal time. Time to talk on the actual phone (still a thing) or sit down over coffee (thank goodness, still a thing) or Skype or Facetime or whatever. Reach out with your voice. Take time to be with colleagues, either in person or electronically. We need each other…and I think that goes for the conductors of the big choirs too.
I don’t have all the answers. (Except 42. That one is obvious.) Breathe, Simplify, Relate, Reach Out. What are your steps to success when things start to go awry with your small choir?
Julie Parsons says
Bart Brush says
Henry Alviani says