Latest Blog Posts

From the Front of the Choir gives us twenty ways to build your audience.   The first one is hilarious:  use a smaller venue!   use a smaller venue – of course you won’t fit a bigger audience in, but the audience you do get will seem bigger and give the choir confidence, you might […]

Hymnography Unbound points us to the news that the Dominican nuns sang the Stabat Mater as a Sequence in the late 13th century, which was much earlier than had been thought.   This site has more information.

It’s a new academic year brimming with possibilities!  Are you excited?   Are you ready to get into that all familiar habit of overcommitting at the beginning of the year and then finding yourself awash with too much to do in the time you have available?   Zen Habits gives us some reasons we find […]

  Not enough choral directors review choral concerts!   But here is one — Jeffrey Carter reviews Libera:   Lovers of the British cathedral sound, and of the boychoir sound (and I count myself among these happy few), were in blissful delight as Libera worked their way through two long sets. To be clear, theirs […]

ACDA makes another technological step forward this month with an online application process for the 2011 National Conference in Chicago, IL.  Read all about it here.   And here is more about the application process.   ACDA partnered with “OpusEvent,” a company that also hosts online auditions for the MENC Honor Choirs and the All-American […]

Via The Chant Café, a public-domain classic instruction book on Gregorian chant available in its entirety online. Explains the neumes, the pronunciation, the modes, reciting tones, chironomy, psalmody, the quilisma, etc. Obviously there’s been more research done since 1910, but for those interested in chant for liturgical use based on the Solemnes traditions, this book […]

OneLicense.net is a clearinghouse for churches which want to get licenses to reprint hymns, songs, and anthems in their bulletins or project them on screens. Like Harry Fox for recordings, OneLicense.net allows one-stop shopping as a convenience to publishers and musicians alike.   Their latest initiative is the "Practice Track License", which allows you to […]

James Feiszli is one of my heros.     I recently had the opportunity to introduce him at the leadership conference of the American Choral Directors Association in Chicago and I described him as a “historic figure” for ACDA.  I meant it – through his efforts, ChoralNet came into being and continues to exist and […]

Fascinating.   My new student Peter Haley pointed this out to me a couple of days ago.   Has anyone tried this?  

I get to teach Diction for Singers this year.   And I’m out looking for resources!   I ran across this video and thought some of you might find it funny: