Latest Blog Posts

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 […]

Author Dan Pink pointed his twitter readers out to this great video – created by his daughter and friends!    

[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 […]

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.

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 […]

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 […]

This is a followup on my previous entry, An Opportunity for Every Child.   How We Are Going to Do It Over the last two years I have traveled the country holding round table discussions, children’s leader summits, focus group and industry meetings, attending association and guild events, and engaging in numerous detailed discussions on […]

A soprano has a bad night:   There were times when I didn’t even want to look at David, even though I knew I should. I mean, he is the Conductor and all. I suppose I should have looked at what he was doing occasionally. But I knew he’d be giving me the Evil Eye […]

Choral music lifts spirits.  Even in a flood.   This from Nashville during the flood: The Morgan Park students were forced to leave their hotel rooms, abandoning their costumes and personal belongings, and headed for higher ground. “When we went to the upstairs, to the ballroom, we sang, and people were like, ‘Wow,’ recalled choral director […]

Branding means so much these days, whether you know it or not.  A brand is “a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.”  (look here for a great presentation on the topic, viewed over 500,000 times).   Tim Sharp is a savvy guy.  (i’ve had to stop using the word “sharp” to define […]