Latest Blog Posts

It is always a sunken-treasure-surprise to come across a jewell of the past, known only to a few, that now is available to everyone. I have experienced several such epiphanies, as new works by Bach, Handel, and recently, Vaughan Williams, are "discovered" and brought to light by the musical world. This has been my recent […]

Liz Garnett talks about changing your vocabulary regarding dynamics so that your singers don’t get that unsupported, airy sound when singing soft. I have been developing a vocabulary of expression to substitute for words like ‘loud’ and ‘soft’ for some time, depending on the repertoire I’ve been working with: intimate, conspiratorial, introspective versus joyful, triumphant, […]

  h/t ChoralNet user marija peljhan

The Wall Street Journal reviews an a cappella opera premiered by Opera Memphis and Playhouse on the Square, which has a sort of pit-orchestra consisting of singers, for which they use the Bobby McFerrin-invented word “voicestra”: [Michael] Ching’s remarkably inventive opera is a celebration of what voices can do and still, with the exception of […]

If you are a choral conductor who likes to plan ahead (and is relatively tech-savvy), check out these two google calendars for ACDA Chicago:   Gold Track here in iCal format. (XML format here) (updated 3/8/2011)   Scarlet Track here in iCal format . (XML format here)

Liz Garnett articulates a problem I often have: what to say to singers who ask how the performance went. I never know what to say, and it’s not always because I don’t want to admit it was awful. Often I just don’t know. Liz explains why: It’s not surprising, then, that directors find it hard […]

Not long ago and in a country far away, I attempted to explain to a taxi driver taking me from the airport to a conference location why I was there and what I did for a living. After explaining I was a choral conductor and I was visiting to hear choral performances at a choral […]

An inspiring story of singer Charity Tilleman-Dick, American soprano and recipient of a double-lung transplant.  

Just a toy, really, but here’s a word cloud of recent forum posts on ChoralNet:     Larger words are used more often.   By comparison, here’s the cloud for ChoralBlog:     These images were created by Wordle.

I'm slightly aware of this rather common practice:   1.  sponsoring a composition competition  2.  requiring fee from the composer 3.  cash from the composers is given to the competition winner as the "prize" – or it helps fund their organization   I'm not a composer, so I don't see this sort of thing much, […]