Others

Liz Garnett makes the lemons of a bad rehearsal day into lemonade: When things don’t go right, that forces us to pay more attention to how to do what we’re aiming for. We have to think more diagnostically, and listen more carefully to what the choir is struggling with. We have identify more precisely what the obstacles […]

Liz Garnett pens an interesting exploration of “semantic depletion”: Say something often enough and the connection between signifier (the sound that points to an idea) and signified (the idea a sound evokes) breaks down. This isn’t usually a problem in conversation…. In order to perform a song (or a sonata or a play), you need […]

The American Choral Directors Association cares about the choral instrument in worship. Because we care, ACDA is sponsoring a conference for musicians working with the choral instrument in worship settings. The event is called One Song, and I invite interested choral conductors, and particularly conductors new to this area, to join us in Atlanta on […]

Leading online magazine Salon has a feature article interviewing choir director Ralph Opacic about the impact Glee is having on existing high school show choirs. A sample: How has "Glee" warped expectations of what a show choir is? Many of us have distinct memories of being in a show choir growing up, and New Directions […]

My excellent Samford student Chris Barbee pointed this article out to me about composer Jason Robert Brown’s confrontation of copyright abusers.   It is a long story, but many of you will find it fascinating.   Here is how it began: Four thousand copies of my music were being offered for “trade.” (I put “trade” […]

A UK Guardian article describes a study on the psychology of concert dress. First, four young, talented violinists were filmed playing the same music, dressed in three different outfits of varying levels of casualness. All these violinists were music students, from the top 10% of their year, and they were vetted to ensure comparability : […]