“Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.” Honore de Balzac We just finished another Lenten, Holy Week and Easter season. Church musicians rounded the corner, heading toward the end of the finish line of their busiest six weeks, exhausted and craving chocolate bunnies. […]
Choral Culture
The Conductor as Yogi: Take What You Need
My blog schedule this year has coincided more than once with concert weeks for me, which means as I sit down to write, I am absorbed with those tasks, thoughts, and emotions that emerge from peaking and sharing performances. Trying to clear space to think deep thoughts. Hmm. Maybe a different strategy is needed right now. I recall […]
Choral Ethics: Should We Be Responsible for Other People’s Happiness?
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Marcel Proust Serena* is happier in her present situation than she ever was in her past positions. She’s beginning her third year and knows it was pure luck to find this job. She is an […]
Choral Ethics: Ruminations of an Old Ballerina
“This is the strange thing: Dancers don’t age.” Twyla Tharp I am a dancer. Descended from Chicago Dance Royalty my father, Charles Grass, was Bob Fosse’s vaudeville partner and Ruth Page’s assistant. My parents met during an Opera Theater of Chicago production of “The Bohemian Girl,” when Dad served as stage director/choreographer and Mom was […]
Choral Ethics: Be Yourself, No Regrets
“My work today is perceived as being classic, but when I first started out, it was a break from the norm. Since then, I have continued to reinvent myself. I don’t change my style, but I allow it to evolve.” Giorgio Armani The courage to be yourself, looking at things from your own perspective, takes […]
The Conductor as Yogi: Leading Towards Whole
“…Responsibility is a necessary condition for the wholeness and fullness of life, and he who cannot assume it may be denied the greatest opportunity which life offers to anyone: to be a whole person, to be right with the world, to belong.” Voices 12: Choosing Life With a Purpose by Robert K. Greenleaf When I wrote The […]