Latest Community Posts

You have a wonderful opportunity to teach healthy singing and give the singers a great choral experience. Keep that as your focus, rather than putting on an impressive show. This will be difficult, given your “very fine private high school”, but for now you have the advantage of lower public expectations than the “A” choir. If […]

In high school I sang an excerpt (Good Tidings to the Meek) from Thompson’s Requiem – does anyone know where I can get a recording of the complete Requiem?  I’ve only found small excerpts. Does anyone perform this work?

I have been hired recently at a very fine private high school to direct their newly created 45 member “B” choir.  I am loving the challenge and the kids, but I do find some inherent problems. I could use some advice.  First  hurdle is that there are very few strong singers (virtually none).  The cream […]

Roger Dean has recently released my piece “Winter Solstice” for women’ choir (mostly SSA) and harp or piano (catalog #15/2715R). The piece is in two movements and lasts about nine minutes. The piece was commissioned and premiered  by the Santa Fe Women’s Ensemble and sets gorgeous nature texts by two New Mexico poets.. The music […]

We are about to record a setting of Lacrymosa by Lithuanian composer Mindaugas Urbaitis. How should we pronounce the Latin? Presumably it should be Germanic rather than Italianate? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  

hi all,   just wondering if anybody has good suggestions for a 30 minute work for womens chorus and string quartet, preferably that can fit into a program with folk music (Tormis, Bartok . )   thanks!   Hebe 

I have a single copy of these old octavos, published in the 1950s by Summy-Birchard Publishing and would dearly love to give them a shot with my choir. I don’t know if Summy-Birchard still exists.  I would imagine it has been swallowed up by Hal Leonard or some other major nameplate.   Earl George’s writing […]

 Good morning, Listers:   Youth choir I conduct has recently expended quite significantly and so did the requests for scholarships. We need to put in place a firm policy for granting full/partial and tour scholarships for the next year and beyond, and I hope you could share your ideas or, better yet, any documents you […]

Good morning colleagues:   Let’s see how many of you have dealt with this particular issue.  I had a new member join my choir recently.  She is bright, artistic, assertive and dedicated, everything you could ask for from an enthusiastic new singer.  She is also stricken with too many illnesses to list here, many of […]

 On Good Friday,after 62 years of life, I have finally been able to hear Bach’s St. Matthew Passion which turned out to be, perhaps, the best thing I have ever heard anywhere. I am still floating and glowing days later. To give it it’s due, the performance was presented be local professional and amateur forces […]