Latest Blog Posts

National Chair of the American Choral Directors Association’s Diversity Initiatives Committee This episode flipped the normal script a little bit, where I got to be on the hot seat! I was honored to be invited to be the guest on “And the Beat Goes On” presented by Arreon Harley-Emerson of the Choir School of Delaware. We agreed […]

“You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.” Robert Frost As I write today’s blog, I am sipping a glass of iced tea, brewed with mint from my own garden. The mint was the first thing we planted when we bought our house 26 years ago, but we should […]

In my last blog Agile Centered Instruction, I closed with the following quote: “Tell me, and I forget, teach me, and I may remember, involve me, and I learn” (Xun Kuang). This quote sums up my experience and sometimes frustration with the education profession for the last fifty-five years. “Tell me, and I forget” is […]

continued from Solfège: Part 5: Solfège Exercises   Solfège: Part 6 Solfège with Amadeus   In January of 2012 I decided to teach all of my high school choirs at Nashville School of the Arts as many choruses from the Mozart Requiem as we could learn in four months and to then perform them en masse at […]

ANNOUNCING: 2019 JULIUS HERFORD DISSERTATION PRIZECALL FOR NOMINATIONS >>NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE:  July 15, 2020<< The Julius Herford Dissertation Prize: Each year the Julius Herford Prize Subcommittee of the Research and Publications Committee accepts nominations for the outstanding doctoral terminal research project in choral music.   Projects are eligible if they comprise the principal research component of […]

This illuminating and wide ranging conversation with Michael McGlynn was supposed to be my first ever livestream episode. Well, that didn’t work out… luckily the recording survived! It is presented here in two parts. This is my first ever UNSCRIPTED conversation where no topic or agenda was set in advance. We just dove in, and […]

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace….” St. Francis of Assisi Like many of you, the last few weeks I’ve been scrambling to craft an appropriate statement for my chamber choir to make about the murder of George Floyd. I am heartsick, trying to make sense of the difficulty in our country and how […]

continued from Solfège: Part 4: Teaching Modes with Solfège Solfège: Part 5 Solfège Exercises This episode in my series of posts on Solfège recounts examples of solfège exercises I used in high school choir rehearsals. My usual practice was to begin every choir rehearsal with physical stretches followed by vocal warm-ups and solfège exercises (or […]

ChorTeach is ACDA’s quarterly online publication, designed for those who work with singers of all levels. A full annotated ChorTeach index is available online at acda.org/chorteach. Over 160 articles are organized into seventeen categories. For submission information, to view the index, or to read the latest issue, visit acda.org/chorteach. Volume 12, Issue 4, is now available online and contains the […]

One from the Folder: Repertoire Thoughts for Women’s Treble Choirs.
#61: June 5, 2020