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 […]
Others
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 […]
Recharge: Creation and J.S. Bach
For me, part of recharging means engaging in creating art. Often I feel much better after having sung in a choir. Last week, I had the great opportunity to attend, participate, and sing in the Illinois Bach Academy (IBA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where we rehearsed and performed the St. Matthew Passion […]
Deadline: June 15–Nominations for ACDA’s Julius Herford Dissertation Prize
Nominations are being accepted for the next Julius Herford Prize, which will be awarded for a dissertation by a student earning their degree in 2021. This award recognizes an outstanding doctoral terminal research project in choral music. Projects are eligible if they comprise the principal research component of the degree requirements, whether the institution defines […]