Latest Blog Posts

Ariel Rubinstein gives some entertaining advice for grad students in econ which might apply to music as well: Do not attend too many seminars in your own field. Otherwise you may simply end up adding a comment to the existing literature, which is mostly made up of comments on previous comments which were themselves only […]

Happy New Year!

In 2004 while on sabbatical study leave in Cambridge, England, and thanks to the kindness of my faculty sponsors there, my family and I were able to attend the annual King's College Lessons and Carols service that takes place in the King's College Chapel on Christmas Eve. As the program states, "the service starts a […]

This from an article titled the Choral Dirge – complaints about choir concerts.  I agree with most of them: 1. Composers like to write tediously slow, earnest music. Most of the contemporary repertoire sounds like a dirge, with the same superficially complex harmonies borrowed from the Lauridsen and Whitacre cannons. There’s little rhythmicality and joy […]

I first shared these chant videos on the ChoralBlog on July 22, 2011.   Take a moment to enjoy this Sicut Cervus and work towards performing more chant in the coming year!    

It is that time of the year when we take stock of our efforts.  I don’t think we’ve ever done that with the blog here, so I did this year.  I was interested in the blogs that inspired ChoralNet members to respond.  This is what I found.   As of December 13, 2011 there were […]

This blog is the second part of a post I started yesterday.  Since it is that time of the year when we take stock of our yearly efforts, I was interested in the blogs that inspired ChoralNet members to respond.  This is what I found.   As of December 13, 2011 there were thirty blogs […]

Try hot yoga! Or a nose hat!   Calgary Philharmonic Chorus has a big hit this winter – singing Tweets about how to keep warm!  When I first saw it, there were 20,000 hits and that has turned into 56,459 at the time I posted this on 12/13/2011.   This from the Calgary Herald:   […]

Joshua Bronfman pointed me to this site that featured “Aria” by John Cage:    

Remember this from Vocal Pedagogy class?   From ScienceMag.Org: A curious vocal pattern has crept into the speech of young adult women who speak American English: low, creaky vibrations, also called vocal fry. Pop singers, such as Britney Spears, slip vocal fry into their music as a way to reach low notes and add style. […]