Latest Blog Posts

  Working with Parents in your Choral Music Classroom, Part 2:   Parent Volunteers are an invaluable resource in our music classrooms.  In part 1 of this series, I wrote about how to get started.   In part 2, I am going to write specifically about three characters I’ve encountered along the way and how […]

January is a new beginning for you as a choral director! If you need to gain more discipline in your choir, try this. I’ve used this technique for years with my middle school choirs to get them more focused. It works every time! This is a podcast, click HERE to listen! The focused hallway technique […]

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Leonard Bernstein  Have you ever noticed the best holiday stories portray some sort of dream? From the ballet, “The Nutcracker” to all of the many incarnations of Dickens, “A Christmas Carol,” someone is always sleeping and […]

Show 2309 Listen – Hear… Going Beyond Words On ACDA Radio Theme: Musical Gifts for the Winter Child This week on Going Beyond Words and ACDA Radio you can hear another program of choral music for the season. Composers represented on this broadcast are James Whitbourn, William Mathias, Bob Chilcott, Virgil Thomson, and two songs for […]

Choral Clarity Presents: Are you looking for a more effective way to musically engage your alumni?  Do you want your alumni to come back year after year and ENHANCE the sound of your ensemble? It’s never too late to create a new tradition that the current choir members and alumni can all perform really well. An annual […]

ChorTeach is ACDA’s quarterly publication for choral conductors and teachers at all levels. It is published online, and each issue contains four practical articles. If you are not already a member of ACDA, you can join as an Associate for $45 per year and receive access to ChorTeach and the Choral Journal online. The summer […]

  I began looking back on my 60-plus years of music study and performance, which began in 1952 when I first took piano lessons from Mrs. Meyer at age 5, and then, two years later, when I became church organist at the St. Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church in Sheboygan, Wisconsin (my father, a dentist, was […]

“Working with Parents in Your Music Classroom”   For most of the 25 years I’ve taught choral music and musical theater in public schools, my program has included between 300-350 middle school students.   In the beginning of my career, I never asked for help managing day to day tasks.   I was quietly overwhelmed. […]

Anthony Maglione of William Jewell College stops in to share his thoughts on building a culture of trust with your choir. This is a podcast, please click HERE to listen! Bio Conductor/Composer Anthony J. Maglione is a graduate of Westminster Choir College of Rider University, East Carolina University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He is […]

“Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.” Leonard Bernstein We all know music’s ability to heal and sooth. We know how it comforts the ill and the despondent. Music can help both the dying on their trip “home” and the woman giving birth as she brings new life into the world. It teaches […]