Latest Blog Posts

I repeat the same 11 pieces at my winter concert every year! These 11 pieces are special to my students and our audiences. These 11 pieces are easy to learn and passed on from choir member to choir member. These 11 pieces bring our alumni back year after year. In this blog post I share these 11 pieces, video recordings of each piece from […]

One of the oddest things about Vocal Music Education as a profession, is how little we are required to learn in our schooling about the voice. Vocal Pedagogy courses are often the purview of voice performance majors, which is very odd considering how many more students will be impacted with vocal instruction by a person […]

Margaret Hillis in 1978, Terry’s Photography “There’s only one woman I know who could never be a symphony conductor, and that’s Venus de Milo.” Margaret Hillis I first learned about the new biography of Margaret Hillis (Margaret Hillis: Unsung Pioneer, Cheryl Frazes Hill, GIA Publications, Inc., Chicago, 2022) last spring. I quickly pre-ordered it from […]

In ChoralEd Episode 12 and 13, Dr. Roger Hale and Angelica Brooks discuss vocal exercises for posture, breathing, and relaxation.  In Episode 12, Dr. Hale describes the anatomical features of our posture and breath.  This technical discussion is accompanied by exercises that improve student awareness of the head, neck, spine, body, and breath. In Episode […]

Our recent posts have focused on the impact of stress on the brain (not just on our “feeling” state) and how we can mitigate it by taking time in our day and in our rehearsals to pause and move and breathe.  Today we look at another way to enhance brain health for us and our […]

The November/December 2022 issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “Vocal Pedagogy in the Overlapping Rehearsal Contexts of Musical Theatre and Choral Music” by Robert C. Jordan with Catherine A. Walker. Following is a portion from the article. _________________ Many secondary choral music educators have been asked to collaborate with  their theatre colleagues to […]

I repeat the same holiday music every year at my annual winter choir concert. It’s not a secret. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s part of my choir culture. I will share one more thing about my holiday repertoire: I haven’t started to teach any of it yet…..not one single song. Check out my latest blog post to […]

The Music Department is an alternate universe where pupils are often unrecognizable from who they are outside of it. The shy become confident. The agitated become calm. The lonely become included. The quiet become heard. And the lost become found. Music reveals the real child. Vaughan Fleischfresser You probably recognize this colleague just by looking at him […]

I am taking a bit of a Choral Ethics break during the next few weeks, and this is a Choral Ethics Blog repeat. My review of a new biography of Margaret Hillis will be on December 1. But if you have a Choral Ethics dilemma or query or comment in the mean time, please email […]

Equanimity is an important concept in mindfulness practice and cultivating equanimity can be a primary benefit of a regular meditation practice. Equanimity is a mindset that reflects the capacity to take life as it comes, and not become caught up in anything that happens to us. It gives us a sense of balance and the […]