I am taking a bit of a Choral Ethics break during the summer, and today we have a guest blogger. I will be working on the fall’s Blogs during the summer, so if you have a Choral Ethics dilemma or query or comment, please email me: . Choral Ethics Guest Blogger: Issues for Our Time […]
Others
Raise Your Voice
Last month, I told you about my Solutionary Choral Curriculum. In summary, my middle school chorus focuses on a cause for the year. They not only have a fundraising concert at the end of the year to raise money for that cause, they also work on finding Solutions to help the cause throughout the year. […]
Wife claims her Husband is Tone-Deaf – willing to BET ME on this!
Here is a true story. This happened this past Friday night. We had another family over for dinner (non-musical family), and the wife says “My husband is Tone-deaf.” Well, she was willing to BET me her husband was tone-deaf. The BET was: If I can get her tone-deaf husband to sing decently, they […]
Recharge: Worship, Community, and Justice
As Director of Music at a church, I often need to think about logistics during the service. Especially on Sundays with multiple choirs, I need to think about getting a choir to the correct place in the Chancel. If I need to switch to a different location in the Chancel, I often need to figure […]
Midweek Meditation: The Inner Critic
In my previous blog post, I wrote a bit about perfectionism in the context of my career as a teacher/conductor. I recalled conducting a concert and mentioned that as I was conducting this performance, an inner voice was assessing the concert in real time. As I reflected on this, I realized that this voice was […]
The Schwa [ə] Flaw: Why We Rarely Sing [ə] and What We are Singing Instead
THE PROBLEM How many of us love to teach our choirs and voice students about the ubiquitous schwa, the most common unstressed vowel used in spoken English? Posters, T-shirts, special schwa cheers, and other creative teaching tools are employed by voice teachers and choral conductors in the tutelage of this vowel. Here is a common […]