Latest Blog Posts
Stick Time: Conducting Study 5
Today, let’s look at two quick things in this brief excerpt from the 2011 ACDA National Conference. The first is poise. One would be hard-pressed to find a choral environment with a higher stress level than standing on the stage at an ACDA National Conference – yet note how comfortable and relaxed our colleague appears. […]
Stick Time: Trust in a Choral Rehearsal
In this brief excerpt from her interest session at the 2011 ACDA National Conference, Sandra Snow discusses the issue of trust in a choral rehearsal.
CJ Replay: Commissioning Choral Music
Many interesting and accessible works for children’s chorus are the result of a commission from a particular children’s chorus or choral event. Commissioning a new work allows young singers the opportunity to work with a composer or arranger and to gain knowledge of the creative process from concept to concert. Children can be involved in […]
Music With Sacred Text: Vital to the Choral Art
Music with Sacred Text: Vital to Choral Music and to the Choral Art Choral music educators recognize that choral music may fulfill diverse objectives. At one end of the spectrum is aesthetic education and artistic performance which can insure development of musicality and sensitivity. At the opposite end of the spectrum […]
Don’t make me sing about Allah!
More choir controversy in the news, this time about singing religious songs: A student has left his high-school choir after the group sang an Islamic song which contained lyrics in praise of Allah. James Harper, a senior at Grand Junction High School in Colorado, protested when the after-school men's choir chose to sing 'Zikr', by […]
More about IPAnow!
I blogged about IPAnow! a couple of days ago. The program is a wonderful tool that transcribes texts (Latin, Italian, German, French) into International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols by applying rules utilized by scholarly lyric diction textbooks. Since then, I had the opportunity to have an email exchange with Kelly Turner, the creator of […]
Domingo advocates music in schools
Most readers of this blog agree that music should be considered a core subject taught in schools, and it's not really a surprise that most professional musicians think so too. But it's always nice when a high-profile celebrity endorses it on national media, so Placido Domingo's flat statement that "music education should be mandatory" in […]