Latest Blog Posts

A Cappella News points us to this: The A Cappella Condom Song is back! In August 2008, when www.condomcondom.org was launched by the BBC World Service Trust as part of its Condom Normalization mass media campaign, it was primarily to showcase the campaign and enable people to download the ‘Condom a Cappella’ ringtone. Within the […]

ChoralNet member Steve Szalaj shares this with the choral community:   Recently, the New York Times ran an article about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir being a part of the first live international satellite broadcast called Operation Telstar on July 23, 1962. The article relates personal stories and the significant cultural/political/social importance of this event against […]

Covey tells us we must “seek to understand” before we can be understood as teachers.  With that in mind, I share this list that I found referenced on Jeff Carter’s blog – the mindset for this year’s freshmen student:   1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.   2. Email is […]

Malcolm Gladwell says "Our instinct as humans…is to assume that most things are not interesting." in What the Dog Saw, he challenges that assumption with stories of great interest that come from ordinary individuals. We've seen the redeeming aspect of reality television, in my generous opinion, in the discovery that mundane things ARE interesting. Part […]

My new graduate student Peter Haley keeps pushing new sites my way.  First it was the “Sing and Compose” pen and now it is Forvo.   Forvo describes themselves as the “largest pronunciation guide in the world.”   From their website:   Ever wondered how a word is pronounced? Ask for that word or name, […]

It isn’t the latest story, but it is still great news that Chanticleer will sing in Chicago at the ACDA National Conference.   From December 2008:  

Finally, a vibrato controversy I can sit back and enjoy: Performance practice covers countless topics, most of which have been written about extensively, but there’s one issue which I’d like to raise here: orchestral string vibrato.  It has become commonly accepted in the 21st century that until the post-war period string players did not use […]

  I was delighted to receive a message from Martin Morrel, who sent me this note after reading my previous posts on Monteverdi: I happened to run across your interesting post, which prompts me to call your attention to my Web site, www.italianmadrigal.com. I have made available quite a number of transcriptions of Monteverdi madrigals, […]

A virtual choir festival in Estonia: Thousands of people across Estonia on Friday took part in a landmark virtual choir festival, gathering in front of big screens to sing the small Baltic state’s cherished anthems. Organisers said crowds massed at over a hundred open-air locations in this nation of 1.3 million people to perform eight […]

Ah the joys of a new year!   We are all in that mode, aren’t we?  Read here how Terminal Degree sees the first few days: There’s fear in the eyes of the freshmen and transfers. They’re walking around with crumpled schedules, asking for directions, and wandering into the wrong classrooms. One young man was […]