Latest Blog Posts

  (Musicradar.com)   One of the great benefits of multimedia technology is the myriad ways that we can “visualize” sound. When you are comfortable reading music, you understand that the written score is a pretty advanced way of visualizing sound, but we don’t always have the luxury of singers who are uniformly competent in reading […]

COMPOSITION SPOTLIGHT ~ by Jack Senzig   (Each week we look at a piece of useful repertoire from the ChoralNet Community Composition Showcase.  A variety of voicings and levels of difficulty will be presented.  Enjoy!)   Agnus Dei De Profundis by Mårten Jansson SSAA with Organ and Strings (click for PDF and Audio) Level: College or higher Uses: Lenten Service or Concert, Masterworks Concert Program […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article The A Cappella Myth! By J. Bunker Clark)          ‘In a chapel style’ is the literal meaning of the term a cappella. Today, however, it is used as a synonym for "unaccompanied." We hear about an a cappella performance of a Palestrina motet,. although it is the […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal column President’s Open Letter to the Membership, by Russell Mathis)   Have you ever thought about writing a “Dear Choir” letter? Such a letter might read something like this:   Dear Choir: I confess that I have not always come to rehearsal fully prepared, but you worked hard and […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article Thoughts on Music in the Church, by Alec Wynton)          “We don't think about Bach as being a church musician; he wasn't, he was a great musician who happened for a part of his career to be working for the church. We don't think about Byrd as […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article Relations of Sound and Structure in Elizabethan Choral Music by Jean Berger.)          “The writer attended a recent performance by a very fine choral organization whose program included the “Ave Verum Corpus” by William Byrd. This is a much performed composition, available in several commercial editions, and […]

Earlier this month, we discussed the unique opportunity one colleague had in teaching conducting to a sightless student.  But what if one of your choral students wasn’t blind, but rather suffered from an undiagnosed spatial disorder?   Jeffrey Kiston discusses his first-hand experience with the matter in his article, “Spatial Disorders and Dyslexia in the […]

Only those who can hit a golf ball with Tiger Woods-esque skill should ever be allowed to pick up a set of clubs.  Unless you are a professional-level golfer you have no business whatsoever experiencing the game in any way, shape, or form.   That’s a pretty silly statement, isn’t it?   Believe it or […]

Among the countless things about the choral art that one finds irresistible is that there is always more to do with the choir’s sound.  Of course, we sometimes run out of time, or perhaps we move a particular group of singers as far as they can go under a particular set of circumstances, but that […]