This is a Choral Ethics Blog post repeat from several years ago. I need to slow down and plotting out the rest of the summer now seems like a smart idea. I try to be here, one way or another, every week because I know many of you look forward to this blog and I […]
Choral Ethics: Music is the Easy Part
“I don’t care much about music. What I like is sounds.” Dizzy Gillespie When I was about 18 or 19, soon after I began my undergraduate program, my late mother, a coloratura soprano, told me music is the easy part of being a musician. Being 18 or 19 and knowing EVERYTHING (as you do) at […]
Choral Ethics: Honor
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.” Socrates Today is the Summer Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s wonderful to have so much light during the evening of a balmy day. Sitting outside, with an adult beverage or lemonade or iced tea, is […]
Choral Ethics: Father’s Day Ruminations
“You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.” Robert Frost As I write today’s blog, I am sipping a glass of iced tea, brewed with mint from my own garden. The mint was the first thing we planted when we bought our house 30 years ago, but we should […]
Choral Ethics: Loyalty
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Arthur Conan Doyle Believe it or not, I get many emails about loyalty. Loyalty to a chorus or church choir or alumni group and perhaps another type performing group of some sort. I get questions such as: if my university […]
Choral Ethics: Cicadas, Brahms and the Approah of Summer
Dad, Peter Genaro and me at a dance workshop in the 1970s “The truth is, I’ve been lucky. But just like the waltz, life has its own rhythm of rise and fall.” Len Goodman Here in Chicago, the cicadas are out in force. In my area, I awaken to hear a low hum in the […]