Latest Blog Posts

The Arts Action Fund of Americans for the Arts, the advocacy group for the American Choral Directors Association, graded the members of the U.S. Senate on their support for the arts. The grade was based upon criteria such as voting in support of the arts, joining the Senate Arts Caucus, and more. Senators had three […]

Liz Garnett creates yet another interesting column, this time on the communicative mode of conducting gesture. Quoting a research study by Michelle Sampson of Roehampton University. Referring to a study in which singers and conductors watched videos of conductors in action, I observed that when the singers watched the video clips, they could usually write down immediately […]

We've all seen lots of bad choir logos, and lots of unimaginative ones which put the choir name on a staff, or substitute a treble clef for a G (or worse, S).    But recently I've run across a few good ones, which I thought I'd highlight here. This isn't the result of any systematic […]

A recent article in the UK Daily Telegraph discuss the earlier onset of puberty and how it impacts boychoirs: Growing numbers of boy singers, known as trebles, are having to leave prematurely because they can no longer sing the high notes. Instead of singing until the age of 15 or 16, many now stop at […]

Gotta love creative thinking, even if it comes in the form of a criticism.  This from The Atlantic Wire about tonight's Simpson's episode: This Sunday, an episode of The Simpsons featured a title sequence storyboarded by Banksy, the graffiti artist and provocateur. Banksy's opening included a minute-long interlude apparently set in a Korean animation sweatshop, […]

A compelling new website I just found, Killing Classical Music, a site “dedicated to rescuing the world’s best music from a slow, certain death at the hands of tired traditions and oppressively ordinary thought.”   On it, I read this great post about “spaces.”   At some point, any discussion about re-imagining the possibilities and […]

An interesting way to use Garage Band! (Part 1 and Part 2)   Ever done anything like this? Listening to students individually takes time—a precious commodity for choral directors. MENC member Shari Tarleton uses GarageBand to assess her choral students individually in a group setting, and it’s saved a lot of time and effort.   […]

acappellanews gives us another great article about how singing brings health benefits. Speech and Language therapist and cofounder of The Brainwave Singers Robin Matthews said “We know that singing makes us feel good. Now science is discovering how singing can help people suffering from Parkinson’s to Aphasia (stroke),” he said. “Singing uses different parts of […]

A world record, it seems: A choir of 2,000 attempted to set a world record on Saturday by singing one of Switzerland’s best-loved traditional songs, a herdsman’s melody from canton Fribourg. Saturday’s performance at Villars-sur-Glâne was recorded on camera, and a legal attestation will be sent to the Guinness Book of Records for approval. The […]

I applaud every move in the book publishing industry as authors go direct to their customers and I long for the day music publishing abandons the paper-postage business model.  (You’ll find recent posts of mine on the topic here, here, here, and here.   In an article published on Gizmodo, Micheal Ashley charts the benefits […]