Latest Blog Posts

Once again, the idea behind this series is how to build a positive culture in your choir.   John Wooden, the most successful college basketball coach in history, was famous for the structure that he built into his practices (rehearsals) and the clear expectations for each player on the floor. He was amazingly detail oriented […]

During a recent conversation, a new acquaintance introduced himself as being “Just a church choir director.”   Excuse me?  Just a church choir director . . . !?   Creating satisfying choral art with a college choir that meets five days a week is comparatively luxurious next to the herculean task of producing beautiful sounds […]

Everything – EVERYTHING – in our obscenely media-obsessed world is designed to over-stimulate us (and separate us from our hard-earned cash).  You are bombarded continually and from every direction with pernicious messages screaming that you are too fat . . . that your partner is beneath you . . . that your kids aren’t playing […]

You’ve eaten waaay too much food.  The kids are over-tired and over-sugared. The kitchen is a disaster.  Family members are getting cranky. Football is blaring on the TV.  “ChoralBuzz” will get back to content designed to enhance your practice of the choral art in a couple days.  But for the moment, try to relax a […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article, Choral-Orchestral Balance: A View from the Trombone Section, by Susan Dill Bruenger)          Trombonists also resent the choir director who, busily conducting the ensemble, asks someone-anyone-to go out into the hall and listen for balance. Often the person will say, “The brass is too loud,” and it […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article, Arts Medicine: And Overview for Choir Conductors, by Robert T. Sataloff.)          Singers are exposed to a variety of hazards related not only to singing, but also to numerous other facets of performing or other artistic pursuits. Some singers perform as instrumentalists ordancers, in addition to performing […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article, Musical Arthritis and the New Conductor by Charles Facer.)          The young, recently hired director of a 100-voice community choir was working hardto inspire his new singers to sing in tune, with precision, and musicality. He spoke often of “stepping up to the next level.” He would […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article, Pluralism in the Works of Heinz Werner Zimmermann by Z. Randall Stroope.)          More than any other German composer, Heinz Werner Zimmermann (b. 1930) has incorporated jazz and American spiritual elements into European traditional compositional techniques.  For Zimmermann, this fusion of jazz and traditional (or “classical”) elements […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article, Beethoven’s Mass in C:  Notes on History, Structure, and Performance Practice, by Fred Stoltzfus)          Although numerous German authors have discussed Beethoven’s Mass in C, opus 86, there have been only limited critical discussions of the work published in English.1 Often opus 86 has suffered from comparison […]