“Whoever degrades another degrades me, and whatever is done or said returns at last to me.”Walt Whitman This will be my last blog on uncomfortable subjects for a while. Over the summer, I had many ChoralNetters contact me about “Choral-Conductors-Behaving-Badly” and thought to address those emails first thing this fall. I had plenty of the […]
The Choral Life
Choral Ethics: Doing the Right Things
“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Mark Twain Many of my ChoralNetter correspondents have Choral Ethics queries I know they KNOW the answer to. I wrote a blog a few years ago about knowing what the right thing to do is but being unsure–or uncomfortable–actually doing it. Folks […]
Choral Ethics: Working Together
“Five guys on the court working together can achieve more than five talented individuals who come and go as individuals.” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar I have lived in the South Suburbs of Chicago for over thirty years. We are a scrappy bunch and should not be counted out in any circumstance. Recently, our scrappiness and ability to […]
The Conductor as Yogi: The Calmest Person in the Room
It doesn’t matter how long I have taught. How many fall semesters I have started as a conductor, teacher, leader, administrator. Human. There is always a mix of excitement, curiosity, trepidation, and exhaustion, even before we begin. Welcome to our life. It was Monday morning, the first day of fall classes. I had been preparing in some sense for […]
Choral Ethics: It’s Our ELEVENTH Anniversary!
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” George Eliot Happy anniversary to US! It is hard to believe, but I have been writing the Choral Ethics blog every week since the Fall of 2015 when Scott Dorsey […]
Choral Ethics: Not Ethical Behavior
“Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life, it is bad to damage and destroy life.” Albert Schweitzer I am re-running four Choral Ethics Blogs which I feel are topical and important for the month of August. I am taking a bit of a break but will […]