If you're going to spend your professional life getting up in front of groups of people and telling them what to do and how to do it, sometimes - maybe alway...

I think everyone seeks validation in life, as a matter of course. We all want to feel like we matter, like we can achieve something positive. Choral conducti...

I have never ever had a perfect performance. I’ve done some great, even remarkable concerts, but the truth is that something always goes sideways in a perfor...

I direct a number of choirs at various levels, and I also teach at the university level. So I spend a fair amount of my time (usually in seasonal cycles) aud...

…is the wrong note. End of story. Apparently this is a quote from Robert Shaw, but honestly,  it’s just the plain truth. I’ve always felt that this was gener...

I am a runner. I started running a few years ago, mostly for weightloss and fitness, and I got hooked. Now I’m one of those crazy people who doesn’t even che...

I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. I conduct choirs for a living. Multiple times per week, I stand in front of a group of people of a wide variet...

One of the most challenging aspects of choral rehearsal is communication. Now, that word covers a lot of ground; but in this case, I’m referring to the commu...

Want to shake things up in your rehearsals? Wish you knew how to get better, or just want make some kind of change? Try any or all of the following. 1. Put y...

I had a conversation yesterday with a young choral conductor, who has recently taken on her first “real” conducting job, working with a non-auditioned commun...

In rehearsal today with my men’s choir, we were working on on a lovely arrangement of Loch Lomond. This is a well-known standard, which is both good and bad....

This comes up an awful lot with my students, so it seems worth putting here. Ok, first, we all agree that a warmup is a necessary thing, right? Look, I’ve he...

Last fall, I started a new men’s choir. Our initial recruitment was what I like to call the “Y’All Come” approach: we made it clear that we welcomed any man w...

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about breathing as it relates to the choral singer. As a singer and voice teacher myself, I obviously take the connection of ...

Not too long ago, I read somewhere that “an amateur is someone who practices until they get it right; a professional is someone who practices until they can’...

Conducting is a lonely profession. Oh sure, we all have friends and a professional network, but the fact is that when it comes down to rehearsals, it’s reall...