Latest Blog Posts
ChorusAmerica wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving
I didn’t know ChorusAmerica had a YouTube site, but they do . . . and here they are wishing the world a Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks, ChorusAmerica!
Favorite Thanksgiving Video
This is my favorite Thanksgiving video associated with choral music. Wait – strike that – this is my favorite choral music video of all time. Does anyone know of a better three minutes on YouTube? If I am remembering the original broadcast correctly, this hymn came at the very end of […]
Should Small Churches do Messiah?
Talented student Josh Bullock recently passed this on to me: It is a joke . . . not a judgement! Alternate title: Did Jesus wear underwear?
Stick Time: Flavor of the 70s
Periods have their own flavor, don’t they? A work of the Baroque “feels” different than one from the Rennaisance. Given the explosion of compositional techniques over the past 150 years, even smaller increments of time seem to have become little “mini-periods.” Here is an example of composition from the mid-1970s.
Choral Caffeine: Audition Success
“Those who fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” It’s broken my heart to observe that axiom play out in far too many vocal auditions. How many talented, well-intentioned high school singers have missed an opportunity to display their skills in the best possible light simply because no one told them what to expect and […]
An outstanding example – Michael Trotta
Conductor Micheal Trotta tried something new to learn about his students–he interviewed them all. Instead of spending a semester or more to learn everyone’s name, Trotta decided to interview every student. The process took a couple of weeks but his efforts paid off. “It’s impossible to get to know students in a large group that […]
Quote of the day
Quote of the day: You’re singing like I feel. And I’m on codeine. —my church choir director on Thursday
Your Soon-to-Be ACDA App
We are working daily on the "ACDA App" that I will reveal at ACDA's seven Division Conferences in February and March, 2012. I hope to see many of you there, but in the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on what the App should contain that will be of most use to you, […]
Use ChoralNet wrong, go to jail
Boy, we’d better review ChoralNet’s terms of use page. The Justice Department wants to make violating a site’s Terms of Use a criminal offense. I bet most of you haven’t read them in a long time, if at all.
A day in the life of Eric Whitacre
This is too good to pass up. See the full story here, a few of my favorite excerpts below: Morning: Eric gets lost on the way to his studio because all of his hallways keep splitting into more and more separate hallways. Afternoon: Eric and Hila have lunch together on a giant lilypad […]