Shannon Marie Gravelle

Stories of Healing and Reimagining with Derrick Fox

November 24, 2021 by Shannon Marie Gravelle Leave a Comment

In March 2020, Dr. Derrick Fox was leading students toward a performance of “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed” by Joel Thompson. This performance was a culmination of choral experiences over multiple years, where Dr. Fox and students had worked to build an awareness of the human experience. They sang octavos covering different topics, such as mental health, and discussed how the topics were experienced by different people. Students engaged in leadership activities and the choirs met with local school choirs. In Thompson’s work, students had to be able to sing the pieces and have open conversations about the lived experience of Black folks in America. It had taken three years of work to lay the groundwork for this particular concert project. The performance was on Tuesday. School shut down the following Friday.

With the performance behind them, Dr. Fox faced another problem: Students didn’t get community recovery time after this emotional performance experience due to the shut down. He was determined to find space to uplift, challenge, and affirm their experience. He knew hybrid learning, masks, and shields would be barriers to connection in Fall 2020, so he created “choir families” for students to build community and process their previous spring. He would sometimes observe these interactions to listen, learn, and find a way to recognize and see these singers in rehearsal and their community.

It’s Fall 2021 and they’ve been singing together– masked and 3 feet apart. His choirs are strong. He was surprised, because he thought there would be a long journey rebuilding. But they spent so much time taking care of each other, creating community and building trust, students returned in the fall and were all in. “I don’t wait for something wrong before I look up to see how something is going,” he says of his philosophy with students, in and out of rehearsal. He says to his students, “All I want you to be is the best version of you today. I’m not one of those teachers who says leave it all at the door because music will make it all better, because that’s a lie. It can, but it’s a lie to say that’s a [capital T] Truth.”

Dr. Fox’s Cultivating Choral Communities workshop series were created specifically for the choral world. Every workshop is different, but begins the same: defining terms. It’s hard to move forward without a shared language. He facilitates conversations about diversity, including but not limited to racial equity. For example, he led sessions with a high school choir about power and proximity to power in the form of friendships. It was transformative and empowering. With organizations, he can empower them to do the work internally– fix processes or challenge curriculum that disenfranchise those that don’t have power. Communication within groups is imperative to this work. People who attend the workshops have varying degrees of knowledge and understanding. The real difficulty is when people are so locked into their own experiences that they aren’t aware of other people’s needs in the space. The dominant narrative in our country is the white perspective. Until we can all come together to have conversations that lead to action, we’re going to be stagnant. His ability lies in consensus building and bridge building.

Evaluating the last 18+ months of equity work, it’s evident the choral profession has aligned with the trend to appear as if they are doing something. Part of the work is vetting professionals invited to facilitate ADEIB (Access, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) work. One has to do the work to bear the culture, and being from a culture does not make one a bearer of it. If we aren’t intentional, we can actually exclude people from our organizations; someone observing could say “Oh, that’s who they see as representative of my community” or “It doesn’t seem that the organization has done the work.” Going viral doesn’t mean it’s viable. On the other hand, our profession doesn’t give much leeway for mistakes. As soon as someone does something problematic, they are dropped, without being given any support to grow and change. Some organizations within the choral profession are more thoughtful about this work than others.

“How do we support long-term work?” It requires investment of time and thoughtfulness. While a one-off workshop can be important, it’s not just about the music sung; it’s about the words said. There needs to be space/time to talk; only then can we bring in what is needed. We can’t be enticed by expediency. This work doesn’t have an end time. With that commitment, we will begin to prepare people coming into the choral profession. Then maybe in the future, we won’t have to convince people this is a pillar of our organization. We are very concerned with changing the NOW, but there is a generation who have grown up with equity in a way many of us haven’t. Our profession can capitalize on this, and bring major change to the future.

“Equity is the action we put in place to achieve equality.”

Stories of Healing and Reimagining with Maria A. Ellis

November 10, 2021 by Shannon Marie Gravelle Leave a Comment

Maria A. Ellis, founder of Girl Conductor LLC and host of Bach & Beyoncé, was tasked in January 2020 by The St. Louis Children’s Choirs to start a new inner city choir. In the very segregated St. Louis, Ms. Ellis explained, The St. Louis Children’s Choirs are located on one side of town. Black people were on the other side of town. After the first (successful) concert in March, the newly formed choir had one rehearsal and COVID shut everything down. It was devastating. After the ACDA Webinar which stated it was unsafe to sing, Ms. Ellis worked creatively to support a variety of choral professionals. When George Floyd was murdered, she was asked to provide training on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Asked if the DEI momentum was the same now as in Summer 2020, Ms. Ellis paused to reflect. This is being Black in America, she explained; something terrible happens, and everybody says “This is horrible! Let’s never do those things again.” Last summer, it was trendy to host diversity sessions and put black boxes on social media, but in 2021 there’s video of a math teacher in a headdress and resistance to teaching with a Critical Race Theory lens because people don’t want to make white kids uncomfortable. What about Black kids? Who wants to hear about how their ancestors were beaten, stolen, killed for the color of their skin? It’s not a good feeling. Concern for them slowly fades away.

Ms. Ellis wonders if the energy and emotional effort to facilitate trainings and conversations matter if nothing changes. Many continue to do what they have always done, not rising to the challenge of the work, often because they aren’t sure what to do. Her recommendation is “remixing,” changing how we do things. Teaching standards, vocal pedagogy, sight-singing, etc., but remixing it so everybody feels seen. Changing warm-ups or adding a new twist to a folk song so students feel they have access to and own the song. Program music by Black composers outside of Black History Month. Be intentional about programming, explore the diverse repertoire available, and don’t “other” any style of music.

Ms. Ellis teaches at Sumner High School, the oldest Black high school West of the Mississippi. She’s building a choral program at a school that hasn’t had one in over 20 years. She isn’t teaching in a conventional way; these are kids who feel like they’ve already been rejected by society. She builds relationships and wants students to be able to speak and communicate music no matter who they are talking to. In the Black church, she says, musicians will often use numbers to communicate chords, not necessarily solfege. So she teaches solfege and numbers. She remembers starting music classes in college– she felt so behind, because there was “basic stuff” she didn’t know. She was used to learning by rote. But people who learn, sing, and play by ear have a skill set that is important. Numbers, solfege, takadimi, counting, rote, Gordon… Which system is “the best”? Whichever system our students use to keep singing in their communities. So give students access to all of it.

When she first auditioned for the music program in college, she didn’t know how to read music, and she didn’t get accepted. She then studied with a friend and was accepted. As she reflects on that, she sees how heart-breaking that situation was: if she wouldn’t have had that friend, where would her path have gone? What about the people that don’t have access to the friend she had? Because of this, Ms. Ellis is committed to getting music skills to all people, including adults. If we want to keep people singing, we shouldn’t allow anyone to feel bad if they don’t have a certain skill. We, as choral professionals, need to create paths forward.

Ms. Ellis first created Girl Conductor to help create paths; she wanted to showcase women on the podium. When she was in high school, she saw women in the classroom, but not on the podium. Thinking her only way forward was in education, she decided to pursue business. She didn’t love that field, and went back to school for music (with three young children!). Her company now provides diverse music resource products, entrepreneurship classes for fellow educators who want to start businesses, professional development sessions and more. Recently in a conversation with conductor Chaowen Ting, the founder of Girls Who Conduct, Maria’s whole perspective of being a minority changed. She didn’t feel she was the only person being “the only one.”

“When you know better, you do better.” The choral profession has the opportunity to become more equitable, to do better. “We didn’t do 2020 for nothing,” she said, stating that people have to keep pushing their organizations. When we diversify who is in the room, everyone benefits through new perspectives, thoughts, and values. “I don’t want to sit in a room with people who know just as much as me. I can’t throw like that. I need to sit by someone else and get their perspective,” she said.

Stories of Healing and Reimagining with Olivia Vestal

October 27, 2021 by Shannon Marie Gravelle Leave a Comment

In March 2020, spring break was extended. Olivia Vestal, now a first-year choral teacher in Durham, NC, was supposed to go to Regional NATS. Instead of performing live, she recorded a video, and remembers that was the last thing she did without a mask. After they finished, she wiped down the piano and recording equipment, and asked, “Is this good?” (referring to cleaning).

Olivia took the majority of her education courses after COVID had forced classes to change formats. She wasn’t sure how she was going to become the teacher she wanted to become when she wasn’t able to go into schools. Almost all of her courses needed an in person component. She wrote lesson plans she didn’t get to teach and had to give up classroom visits. Instead of observations in schools, she watched people on YouTube. She lost hours of classroom contact.

Her student teaching practicum in Spring 2021 began fully online. Many of these virtual days consisted of checking in with students, vocal exercises, and singing music on solfege. She would sing or call on a student to lead a passage, and students would sing with her or the student leader. All of this took time, and there were internet issues. In addition, the school mandated that she couldn’t teach for more than 45 minutes. After a couple months, school moved to cohort groups. Students would come for a week, then the next week another group would come in. The group that was not in-person attended online. Then they moved to all in-person, unless the student had chosen Virtual Academy. Until the dress rehearsal, she didn’t hear all the students sing together. As a student teacher, the only time she had to hear, evaluate, and give immediate feedback to the entire choir was during these rehearsals. She learned how to be flexible. She leaned into building community. She encouraged their exploration of music in addition to building their skills. But she missed out on training her ears, because for much of the time, she didn’t have voices in the room.

She continues to field constant change. In her classroom, she implemented risk mitigation measures that she knows will change based on public health. She has envisioned how she would set up her classroom if COVID mitigation strategies were not in place. She also has the normal first-year teacher issues to attend to: obligations that sometimes come to her late or unwritten program expectations, for example. It’s difficult to remember some policy and procedural things. She hasn’t given herself time NOT to work. If something doesn’t go well during the school day, she looks to her own preparedness. She finds herself having a difficult time separating work and being home. She struggles with imposter syndrome, and wonders how COVID affected her preparation to become a teacher– did she get the full experience of a teacher education program and is she really prepared? Despite the newness, her colleagues are supportive and don’t treat her as a novice. She feels a part of the team. She’s also able to connect to her students faster and easier because they’ve shared the online learning experience. Her students will say to her “You get it.”

As she builds her program, community is one of her priorities. Part of community building is learning foundations of music together– sight-reading, vocal technique, identifying features of octavos, aural skills. Sometimes community building has looked different than she anticipated. As an example, she had a student speak about being anti-LGBTQ+. She was taken aback by this, because she had never met a student who felt this way (or at least not a student who has expressed it). Her approach was to try to educate the student on how to care about individual people in their community, and what that expression of care might look (or sound) like.

She’s making a point to learn about each student: Who are they and what do they need? She’s trying to understand all identity points, or at least the ones students share. She’s made it a priority to meet all the counselors so she has access to resources and can learn from them. The students are doing listening journals, and the singers pick the music and create the assignment to go along with it. Some music doesn’t have any text, and some music isn’t in English. It’s been a great chance to learn about what the students value and what they need.

Stories of Healing and Reimagining with Dr. Anne Lyman

October 13, 2021 by Shannon Marie Gravelle Leave a Comment

Dr. Anne Lyman wears many choir director hats: community choir, church, and community college choir. She is the past president of Washington ACDA, loves sharing the joys of early choral music, and is clearly a service-oriented conductor.

During the first 10 days or so of March, things went from “normal” to unsettled to cancelled. At Tacoma Community College, in-person classes were canceled before they began their last quarter. Dr. Lyman said those 10 weeks were the weirdest weeks she had ever taught, and they were completely online during the 2020-21 school year.

Her frustrations with the past year are ones that many conductors have echoed: some students didn’t show up, difficult at times to find motivation, program numbers were down. She felt fortunate to have great support and guidance from administration, and yet she realized there would be a shift to more online options, which could pose recruiting and retaining challenges.

Still, this past year brought some affirming experiences. It was important to singers to be together and to sing, even without performance as a goal. In her community choir, she set up virtual projects that consisted of learning music, studying historical/cultural aspects of the music, and the virtual choir creation. In fact, Sine Nomine Renaissance Choir expanded its community, including those who were homebound or living in other places. Dr. Lyman was thrilled she could engage people who wanted to “nerd out on polyphony.” The projects were so popular that she will continue to incorporate them. Her college students grew through the online platform: karaoke, student-led rounds, teaching warm-ups, leading sectionals. It seemed easier for some students to lead from the comfort of their own space instead of a classroom. She didn’t have a full picture of what all the students were dealing with at home: technology difficulties, full time jobs, caregivers… yet, they showed up.

This year also brought another change: a new rehearsal time. Instead of every day, she changed it to 3 days a week with a longer rehearsal time so students drive to campus less. She’s been working with her thoughtful eLearning department so students can attend rehearsals using Zoom. In-person rehearsals will follow all the recommendations. In addition to understanding and prioritizing mental health, community building, encouragement, and general uplifting experiences, the singers need a musically challenging and robust singing experience. She thinks singers will want to step into the rehearsal and get down to business.

ADEI is also integral for Dr. Lyman. The Washington State ACDA board has been investing in equity work prior to the death of George Floyd. It’s been slow work, without many visible takeaways or outcomes yet, but they’ve been a committed task force. The work has been both personal (Dr. Lyman points out that she has spent her life complicit in inequity) and organizationally challenging. “What is choral excellence? What does that mean for us as singers? For us as a program?” If it means excellence in choral performance, that’s problematic for equity in the choral field. Dr. Lyman also pointed out that sometimes less music may be performed because there was a higher need for conversation around the music (side note: Jazzmone Sutton said something similar in her advocacy and relationship-building discussion a few weeks ago). Dr. Lyman recognizes that equity work doesn’t always involve her singers. She doesn’t want to pressure her students to do her work, and she can’t force other students to take it on if they aren’t ready for it.

“How can we hope for our young singers to have a future in singing if we don’t make equity a part of everything we do?” Dr. Lyman posed. This includes acknowledging that what we’ve done until this point has not been sufficient, or has been flat out wrong. The acknowledgement piece is hard, and egos can get in the way of growth. She wondered about how to make equity a thread in everything we do, including bringing the work to the local K-12 teachers, either calling out behavior or working with K-12 colleagues to address community issues. Dr. Lyman said she wants training in how to call out behavior (This is something I have heard requested multiple times from colleagues– not how to recognize it, but practice using the words in the moment to disrupt behavior). Ultimately, she knows she can continue to challenge her own role within her community and the systems that she is involved with (Dr. Ahmed Anzaldúa’s posed a question related to this in his blog post: Are the systems in place, whether previously designed or created by you, preventing relationships with people in your space and community?). The DEI should not go away because “we’re going back to normal.” She is working toward and supporting change, adjusting how she can be a part of the process, including getting out of the way at times. What struck me in our conversation was how intentional she was in her listening and responding to her colleagues, students, and most vulnerable in her community.

Stories of Healing and Reimagining with Dr. Ahmed Anzaldúa

September 22, 2021 by Shannon Marie Gravelle Leave a Comment

This was a remarkably invigorating, inspiring, and humbling conversation with Dr. Ahmed Anzaldúa, Founder and Artistic Director of Border CrosSing, and Director of Music Ministries at Unity Church in St. Paul, a congregation with a robust music program including four adult choirs, children’s choir, and an annual musical.

In the initial months of COVID, Dr. Anzaldúa’s main task as a church musician was to determine how worship was going to happen. The focus was on music in the entire worship experience and new structures that hadn’t been in place (such as determining the new duties for the music staff). Choirs met over Zoom. Dr. Anzaldúa thought they might keep their original programming, but soon realized that wouldn’t work. They did different projects, virtual choirs, discussion groups, Yoga, and hosted guest speakers. His main concern was getting everybody connected. As vaccines became available, some singers returned to sing with other vaccinated members, with optional Zoom rehearsals. This fall, they fully reopened with mask and vaccine requirements. Since musicians need to assess their own levels of risk, Zoom will remain an option for some things. Dr. Anzaldúa emphasized that it is important to continue to create as much access as possible. In music ministry, it is important not to forget the ministry part.

In the way of “silver lining,” building community over Zoom created a closeness within the choir that would have normally taken years to achieve. Ironically, Dr. Anzaldúa has spent more time with his choirs online than in-person, having started at Unity Church in September 2019. In addition to relationship building, they explored music they may not have explored if not for COVID. His favorite piece was one they commissioned from Abbie Betinis called “what if you slept”, a piece full of experimentation written to be performed with a virtual choir. Conversely, Dr. Anzaldúa has not enjoyed making community health decisions. Many choral professionals have had to create policies and safety protocols for ensembles, and these risk mitigation strategies have often been adopted by our entire communities. He found himself in the unenviable position of having to say no to outside requests or remind guests to keep their masks on. Also, Dr. Anzaldúa adds, he would be happy if he never edits another video, although he understands it’s been meaningful.

The past year and a half has come with multi-layered discussions. The church is committed to social justice and equity, and with this commitment can come uncomfortable conversations; many conversations have went beyond singing and vocal warm-ups. He recognizes that church spaces lend themselves to conversations that don’t always happen in an educational setting. When there is something problematic, you have to attend to it, or the community lives with that issue until it is addressed.

Dr. Anzaldúa is heavily involved in ADEI work, and has had a big role in shaping important projects such as the Justice Choir. When asked about equity, he affirms its centrality, and goes further, challenging how we often think of ADEI. Equity, he points out, is not a separate thing. “What’s the alternative?” he asks. Are choirs singing without thinking about equity/access? If one is not thinking about equity or access, are they living their life and doing their work without thinking about how it affects others? When it comes to our work in the choral world, Dr. Anzaldúa hopes that equity is so central to our work that it becomes integrated, not a separate pillar. Thinking of others, being empathetic, treating others with respect are all examples of equitable practices. “Those are things we can all get behind,” he states.

“We all have our limitations,” Dr. Anzaldúa comments, going on to say that we are all working in systems that are structurally racist, and we can’t take what we do out of that context. One example he gives: In some school districts, teachers may lose their job or face discipline for speaking out on some topics. He understands that people can be hesitant to be vocal, often for these reasons. It varies from person-to-person. He would wish that people that have opportunity to push back use those opportunities.

“For any justice work,” Dr. Anzaldúa said, “there has to be relationship work. Without relationship, it’s charity.” When we discuss equity work, it comes down to relationship. What’s the relationship you have with your singers, administrators, community? More importantly, what relationships are missing? Are the systems in place, whether previously designed or created you, preventing relationships with people in your space and community? What are your relationships and what are the quality of your relationships? Even social justice-minded people can be unsure of how to respond or who to engage when confronted with a social-justice issue. He has seen that happen in organizations as well. A lot of organizations realized they didn’t have a relationship that would allow them to reach out to a community. It’s important to do authentic outreach, and whether this is in an organization or community, it requires establishing relationships.

Stories of Healing and Reimagining: A Pause

September 8, 2021 by Shannon Marie Gravelle Leave a Comment

It’s that time of year. We are all starting (or are a few weeks into) a new school year, a new church season, community choir rehearsals, or new composition projects. Yet this isn’t where I thought we would be when I started this blog series in June. I fully expected to be looking at COVID in the rearview mirror.

Yet here we are. And you know as well as I do that we all wish we were in a different place. But we aren’t.

From my conversations, here is a summary of some common experiences:

Most ensembles are back in some form. Most are in person, although not all.
Some in-person ensembles are requiring vaccines. Some aren’t.
Most ensembles are requiring that their singers follow recommendations put forth by the aerosol study (masked, distanced, shortened rehearsal time).
Most ensembles and programs have much lower numbers than they are used to. And perhaps related, most programs have a lot less money.
Many programs are still solidifying what performances will look like. What will be required from the singers? From the audience? Or will the audience not even be allowed in? Most directors can’t make a decision until they are closer to the performance. It seems that most are hoping for the best, but planning for the worst.

It’s incredibly evident that our colleagues are fully invested in their communities. We all believe in our missions. Yet there are a lot of emotions about the past 18 months, and I’m not convinced we’ve really been processing them.

So this series continues. Instead of Stories of Newness: Healing and Reimagining, it will be shortened to Stories of Healing and Reimagining. I will continue to listen to and share the stories of our colleagues. And it’s my sincerest wish that you will find solidarity, inspiration, and warmth in these stories.

I wanted to pause for a moment before this series continues. And I invite you to pause, breathe. You are not alone in your exhaustion and you aren’t alone when you feel inspired by hearing your singers make music as a group. You and your choral communities are creating your own stories of healing and reimagining. Thank you.