Latest Blog Posts

Chris Rowbury deals with the positives and negatives of both approaches, under-rehearsed and over-prepared.   Here’s a bit:   if you worry away at something too much, your intellect gets in the way and stops you from doing it well. Rather like the amateur golfer who is asked to analyse their swing. As soon as […]

Richard Sparks finally returns to the blogosphere with this post on mindsets in learning: The basic premise is that there are two basic “mindsets” about learning (this came out of her research on how people cope with failure) and these affect profoundly how you lead your life: the fixed mindset sees tests and challenges as […]

I enjoy David’s blog posts and frequently feature them here on ChoralNet.   In a recent post he introduces Latvian composer Imant Raminsh, a composer I admire:   This year we feature two smaller works by Imant Raminsh.  Born in Latvia, he moved to Canada at the age of 5, was educated in Toronto, and […]

  Curtis E. Hansen, the only remaining living ACDA steering committee member, celebrated his 90th birthday on March 18. Hansen, along with steering committee members J. Clark Rhodes, Elwood Keister, Harry Robert Wilson, R. Wayne Hugoboom, Archie Jones, and Warner Imig, were ACDA’s founding members. They held a very important luncheon meeting on February 23, […]

Paul Carey, composer-blogger, calls it like he sees it in this rant against music publishing.   He speaks against:   1.  Formulas They hope we will consistently give them what they want (speaking in the choral publishing world for now, as that is what I do the most): a formulaic 3-4 minute piece, with an […]

This is the best I could come up with for April 15:    

Don’t miss this interview from NPR on Bobby McFerrin and his new album. On any given night, McFerrin can be found delicately walking a tightrope of vocal improvisation, carrying nothing more than his four-octave vocal range and his childlike sense of play. Next month, he’ll sing and conduct an orchestra in Italy. It’s not a […]

Hat tip, A Cappella News: Teichfischer, 31, lost her job in publishing two years ago. “We thought if you bring people together who have the same situation, then things will be much easier to form a social network,” she says. “It’s really worked out.” She and about three dozen others meet two mornings a week […]

I write this on the morning after my Birmingham Concert Chorale completed a successful performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.  What a work!    It is a pity that I didn’t enjoy the work until the night of the performance.  We only had two months to prepare it – and that is quite difficult for a […]

Dan Kreider gives us another essay – this one about the essence of rhythm:   it’s essential that we transmit the essence of the indicated rhythm – not merely the mathematically correct moment for the musical events. The details of rhythmic units are usually easily identified and altered to convey the meaning behind their construction. Of […]