Latest Blog Posts

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, […]

Not my idea of fun, but the ideas are refreshing: Conspirare is about to begin its new year with some very old music, and with a challenge: to deliver four unique concerts in three days. Its “Renaissance and Response” festival, held Friday through Sunday , will celebrate complex and beautiful music that’s rarely heard or […]

Twitter exposes me to a wide variety of choral expressions – this one from a twitter user I do not know that pointed me here.  Check out this Haitian choral music – also linked here for my Austrailian friends:  

I found this great story about singing and science at the Episcopal Cafe – how “science can now tell what it is about the voices of young choiristers that gives us goosebumps. It can tell us how they produce the sound, and how it could be artificially recreated.”:   More from the website:  “The hypothesis […]

In England, the Education Secretary has pushed back against a training video created by the musicians’ union which advises music teachers never to physically touch students, even to reposition their fingers on their instruments: “It plays to a culture of fear among both adults and children, reinforcing the message that any adult who touches a […]