The Art of Choral Conducting

This is a video that I stumbled upon online, which features several different points of view (from conductors) about The Art of Choral Conducting

I will let the video speak for itself.

http://www.s12.si/kultura-umetnost/izven-okvirja/707-the-art-of-choral-conducting

The Concert of Honor part #2

Well, after two months of searching for a location (church of school) to have my Choir Project rehearsal, we hit a road block. All churches are too busy or do not have the time or space to allocate for this project.

I unfortunately have decided to put the project on hold until June (when I can pick up the search for a church space again). I do not want to have this project cost $40-50 per singer (to rent a space and buy their music), I rather find free (donated rehearsal space) to keep the costs down to $20 per singer. Keeping that in mind, I also feel that the cost of this project to each singer will either harm the number of singers I can get (I already have 25-30, but I need 45-50).

Further information on this project will come to light in my next post.

Thank you

A concert of HONOR

I am embarking on a project that is very close to my heart. The project is to form a mixed choir to perform a concert (in July or August). Now I know that I am not fully-trained yet as a choral conductor, but I am putting for a great effort, because this concert is to honor my mother (Darlene Davis) since she passed away on March 20th 2010 with cancer.

I realize that it will be a tough process to get the choir prepared for the music, since my rehearsal skills (outside of being a section leader) are at a beginning conductors level.
So far the process has been somewhat smooth. I have found 25-30 singers, and will continue to seek another 10-15 singers (for a near total of 45). I have begun to score study the music (with rehearsals starting in a couple of weeks (rehearsing weekly on sunday evenings from 6-8) with music that will be at a medium level, because my choir is new and a lot of singers have not sung in a couple of years (all singers ranging in age from 18-27).
Now to aquire a rehearsal space is still an obstacle. I have called and asked a dozen churches if they could host this choir project only until our concert (and then the choir will dissolve), but I have been met with "NO" from all of them.

However, if luck is on my side, today I will have a church to host these choir rehearsals.
Also, since I am a young/beginner conductor, I have found that asking for advice from my professors at Pacific Lutheran University, and other conductors I have met over the past 10 years has been rather helpful. Advice for choral literature, rehearsal techniques and forming a program, has been the main focus of these conversations. Now, I just hope everything can fall into place, so the choir and I can begin this "Choral Journey".

New Website

My new Website www.alanmusic.com is officially launched.

I have a section for my video series "The American Choral Journey" and a section for the Grad Schools with NEW links (for all those that want to research graduate choral conducting programs).

I hope you all enjoy my new site, and I will be posting my blogs on both my NEW site and this blog (until I get everything completely moved over).


Thank you.

What we say....

I have in my many years as a choral singer performed under the direction of 12 different conductors. Each conductor has their own style and all get great sounds out of their choirs. However when I was observing some student conductors lately who were rehearsing choirs, I found them saying (more often than not) a lot of contradictory comments to the choirs. Here are some examples:

Choir finishes singing through a piece and the student conductor says
"Ok, soprano's, this next time through the piece could you FOLD into the sound without singing QUIETER.

After the student said that and then moved forward with the rehearsal I began to think about what was asked of the sopranos.
1. They were asked to FOLD into the sound. Folding, usually consists of diminished something by halves or fourths (depending on how you would fold a napkin).
2. They were asked to NOT sing QUIETER in order to blend with the choir (which I believe not singing quieter and yet folding the sound are contradictory to one another).

After observing some more student conductors I found a lot more contradictory comments. This lead me to ask myself,
how often do we sit back as conductors and analyze what we say to our choirs and if what we say is being understood (the way we want it to be)?