Latest Blog Posts

This was a bit alarming: Gloria Y. Gadsden, an associate professor of sociology at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, was escorted off the campus on Wednesday because of jokes she had made on her Facebook page about wanting to kill students. On Monday the professor posted this update: “Had a good day today, didn’t want […]

A story from The Chronicle of Higher Education has me exploring another tool to communicate with my choir quickly and efficiently.  Don’t miss this.   Here is the article from the Chronicle and here is how I announced it to my choir.  If you follow my tech presentations, this looks like the logical solution to […]

A story in The Chronicle of Higher Education caught my eye the other day about copyright.  It discusses lessons from the history of book publishing, the evolution of copyright and what might happen in the future.  It has some fascinating history – a few excerpts:   Nothing is sacred about intellectual property: But he believes […]

Liz’s blog provides a list of tips to minimize choir’s performance anxiety. My favorite is this: If your normal rehearsal warm-ups are about getting people up and going after work, you’ll find that using them just before a performance produces a completely over-hyped choir poised to sing sharp and rush tempi. Meditative warm-ups that slow […]

One of the many things I like about Tim Sharp as Executive Director of ACDA is his continued presence in choral music as a conductor.   Read about his new choir, the Tulsa Oratorio Chorus and their most recent performance:   Both these pieces demonstrated how well Sharp has taken over the chorus, and how […]

This sent to me by Frank Albinder from the Wall Street Journal: For the many stroke victims devastated by the loss of their ability to speak, music may hold the key to unlocking language, according to a new study. In the study, patients who were taught to essentially sing their words improved their verbal abilities […]

Jeffrey Tucker describes his first experience hearing Palestrina, and describes its top five features:  There is no master/slave relationship [i.e. melody/accompaniment] There is a beat but you don’t hear it Each part moves independently You can’t really conduct it, so it is music without a dictator. It can be sung by a choir of any […]

You will love this:       And how they made it:       Thanks to Eric Whitacre for bringing this to my attention.

    Angie Johnson guest blogs on composer Paul Carey’s website about the recent ACDA Children’s Choir Conductors Retreat in Cincinnati.  You don’t want to miss the next one! Usually, I am happy to walk away from a conference with a few new techniques, pieces or ideas and this conference did not disappoint us. In […]

David Griggs-Janower pointed me to this powerful article by conducting star JoAnn Falletta:   We feel betrayed perhaps by Wall Street greed, by ineffectual governance, by political leadership.  But music has never betrayed us, never let us down.  It constantly gives back to us, as a boundlessly beautiful repository of the past or a vibrant […]