Latest Blog Posts
Iowa Stubborn, cont’d
I just went to a performance of The Music Man at the local middle school, and apart from the irony of seeing all these parents gush about their children's incompetent performance after seeing a show in which parents are parodied for doing that exact thing, it called to mind that my recent post about this […]
The Choir Flashmob
Well, it’s sort of like a choir:
Making Church Cool Again
The video below reminds me of this post from a year ago – and it caused a bit of a stir here among the ChoralNet faithful. See what you think about this video from our friend Jeffrey Carter, who heard about it from someone else: “Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media […]
The Rest is Noise
I’ve been reading a fascinating book recently which I can recommend: The Rest Is Noise, by New Yorker music reviewer Alex Ross. It’s a history of music in the 20th century. It wouldn’t be suitable as a textbook for a music history class, since there are no musical notation examples (although he doesn’t shy away […]
Keep the Arts in Schools
Author Dan Pink pointed his twitter readers out to this great video – created by his daughter and friends!
The War on Pronouns, cont’d
[one of an occasional series on political correctness in church anthems…] Today’s travesty: the anonymous Renaissance anthem Rejoice in the Lord Alway, which contains the line "let your softness be known unto all men", now corrected to "…be known to all the world". My wife, who directs the children’s choir, last year had […]
Repertoire lists
Richard Sparks is compiling the literature he’s performed over the last ten years and posting it on his blog. I love reading lists like this – they introduce me to names I do not know and sometimes reinforce similar programming thoughts. Check out Richard’s list and see if it means anything to you.
Conductor injures himself during performance, cannot continue
Read all about it! Gustavo Dudamel injured himself in the first half of a performance recently and couldn’t continue the performance: Dudamel lunged energetically early in the last movement of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto and pulled a muscle in his neck.Philharmonic president Deborah Borda said that the 28-year-old Venezuelan music director heard a loud […]
Opportunities and Realities
Here is the third part of my vision for impacting our world for choral music. There are two previous entries: An Opportunity for Every Child Doing it – In Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap, the author outlines seven survival skills for the 21st century. For each of these areas, we must individually, in […]