“She was one of the people who say ‘I don’t know anything about music really, but I know what I like.’ ” Sir Max Beerbohm in “Zuleika Dobson”
Last fall, longtime ChoralNetter Lulu* contacted me. She has always been a supporter of my Choral Ethics Project and suggested I start including something about the hiring of choral directors. She even went so far as to email me interview questions. I agreed to write something soon.
Within days of Lulu’s emails, I also received a series of emails from Amos*, a new ChoralNetter, a scientist and choral singer. Amos wanted to know how to hire a director with Choral Ethics. He had been on the hiring committee of his community chorus who chose a “short-tempered jackass” (his words) as their artistic director two years ago and was gearing up to replace him. Amos and I went back and forth with his story, and then he asked me to wait until spring so the termination of the current director could be completed before I wrote about it. I agreed.
There are many performing arts organizations and places of worship who hire someone with a stellar résumé only to be disappointed with the actual person. They have been heard muttering, “but he/she looked so good on paper” while wringing their hands, trying to clean up the mess. But it’s not just performing arts organizations and places of worship that are left shaking their heads, wondering how they could have gone so wrong; it’s also the choir master/organists, choral directors, conductors and accompanists who wonder what they were thinking when they accepted that “perfect job.” It boils down to a few things, beginning with the members of the hiring committee and a clear understanding of what is wanted/needed by their organization.
Amos admits to knowing a little about music; he enjoys going to the symphony and opera and is an active, longtime choral singer. He questioned his ability to do an adequate job on his community chorus’s director search committee but agreed when pressed. He tells me he is a research scientist by profession, so he thought could at least contribute his research skills. Turns out, they didn’t want his research skills; they wanted his presence and agreement to whatever the president of their board decided he wanted.
There were five people on that search committee; Amos (a scientist), the board president (a businessperson in middle management of a large local company), another singer (a lawyer), their paid Executive Director (a college student majoring in music business), and their accompanist. They had fifteen applicants and interviewed them all. The board president asked the questions, with the singer/lawyer following up with template follow up questions, no matter what their answers were. The Executive Director and accompanist, as well as Amos, were discouraged from doing anything besides introducing themselves and sitting in the interview.
The questions that were asked were either typical business interview questions (Where do you see yourself in five years? Or, how do you motivate people? ) or more contract related (What kind of salary do you expect? Or, would you be willing to be an independent contractor?) but not much about music or rehearsals or repertoire or the nuts-and-bolts of running a performing arts organization. Amos says he doesn’t know much about the music business but does think it would have been important to have asked what kind of music would be programmed for their chorus. Not so, according to the board president. They didn’t audition the applicants in person but asked their top five, after interviews, for audition videos. The person they finally hired had a wonderful interview and his audition video was stellar, but as mentioned before, he was a short-tempered jackass.
After two years of misery, Amos (the NEW president of the board) started doing research about how to hire a choral director, found ChoralNet and my Choral Ethics blog posts. So here we are.
Next week we will get down to the nitty-gritty such as; who to choose for the members of your search committee and how to decide what your organization needs/wants. We’ll start on some of Lulu’s interview questions too.
Please feel free to jump in with your comments and questions about this subject. We’re just getting started!
*Name Withheld