Latest Blog Posts
Stick Time: Formation
It’s amazing what a slight change of formation can do to for a performance. A choir need not leap about to provide a little visual interest. Here, such a change provides a fresh moment to this concert from the 2011 ACDA National Conference. Of course, a “flash mob formation” (my term) does provide some challenges. […]
Stick Time: Singing in Unison
Unison singing is like wearing spandex. Anything that isn’t great is awful; there’s nothing in between. The first minute of this selection has the men and then the women singing unison passages. Note how they work to match vowels carefully and strive to assre that articulations within this rhythmically-charged melody line are exactly together.
Learning from Steve Jobs
Liz Garnett has a great article on lessons we can learn from Steve Jobs. Here is a part of it: Fourth, as Weber points out in the study that still acts as the starting-point for all sociological studies of charisma, the charismatic leader has to continue to demonstrate their powers. Because their authority is founded on a quasi-magical […]
Sunday Inspiration: High Lonesome Mass
Musical expressions of faith come in limitless variety. Here, the text of the Credo from the Ordinary of the Mass is set to bluegrass music. (ACDA members might recognize the banjo player.)
Sunday Inspiration: Westminster Abbey Choir
Take a moment to reflect and refresh.
Good thing our instruments are inside
“Real” instruments are too dangerous: Andrew DiMarzio loves to play his tenor sax at home and at school, but the bus company said the case for his saxophone is a safety hazard aboard a crowded school bus. Hope they never learn that singers carry their instruments with them, or whole choirs might be banned. But […]
Extraordinary Creativity through Exercise
A friend pointed me to these thoughts about how the physical body can service – or sabotage – genius: When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or […]
Bad Showchoir
This looks like something I might have choreographed:
Stick Time: Singing in English
Ever listen to a choir and wonder what language they were singing only to be shocked to realize they were singing in English? (Having taught in seven states across all four time zones in the continetal U.S. I’ve faced that more often that I would want.) Here’s a choir from Norway singing English and frankly […]
Innovation Includes Having a Network
In my October 18 ChoralBlog "Innovation is 'In'", one of the points I stressed was *Innovators are connected–they know where to find and get help, and they flourish in cultures that encourage collaboration. In a recent Harvard Business Review "Management Tip of the Day", the editors do a little unpacking of the old adage, […]