Recently, we offered a free virtual meetup to practice “Choir Nerdery.” If you missed it, I have carefully curated some of the most useful and interesting moments for this episode. Discussion topics were derived from survey responses from 120 educators.
The full 2 hour and 15 minute work session is available unedited over at Patreon or Substack for show supporters.
We had a great time discussing
Fundamentals of literacy instruction
Concepts related to rhythm instruction
Structuring of programs. Gendered ensembles, leveled classes etc.
The Science of Reading for Music.
Dividing the beginning groups into ever shifting groups.
A look into a 10th grade literacy lesson at my school. (full version only)
Don’t miss it! Not only will you get some tips and tricks related to previous PD offered here, but from some other awesome teachers offering their perspectives, problems and approaches.
Choralosophy presented by Ludus. Visit Ludus.com/choralosophy for the cutting edge in fine arts ticketing and marketing solutions.
Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com.
For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and FB!
www.sightreadingfactory.com is the best literacy tool on the market today. Enter Choralosophy at checkout to get 10% off memberships for you AND your students!
RyanMain.com is now expanding to a family of composers! Visit endeavormusicpublishing.com and of course, enter Choralosophy at checkout for a 10% discount!
Receive 10% Discount on your orders at http://www.graphitepublishing.com where you will find the works of Jocelyn Hagen, Eric Barnum, Timothy C. Takach, Paul Rudoi and MANY more.
“It is not my job to answer the questions. It’s my job to ask the questions.” Programming for our choirs carries with it a wide range of challenges, from the skill levels of our groups, and their needs to the considerations of speaking to an audience. There are many ways to wrestle with this balance.
Renowned conductor of the Crossing Donald Nally joins me this week to think through the programming question from his perspective as both a director who has worn the “professor” hat, as well as the being the conductor of a high level professional ensemble. Donald shares his general philosophy and practice for creating a program that serves as its own piece of art.
This episode gave me a lot to chew on for choosing repertoire for choirs at all levels. You will learn a lot from this conversation too, from discussion about music with political implications, programming for storytelling, considerations for sacred music in non sacred choral contexts, and much more. The Crossing also has a new album called “Motion Studies” that serves as an interesting case study for the depth and breadth of what our art form is capable of communicating.
Choralosophy presented by Ludus. Visit Ludus.com/choralosophy for the cutting edge in fine arts ticketing and marketing solutions.
Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com
For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and FB!
www.sightreadingfactory.com is the best literacy tool on the market today. Enter Choralosophy at checkout to get 10% off memberships for you AND your students!
Donald Nally was the John W. Beattie Chair in Music and director of choral organizations at Northwestern University. He collaborates with creative artists, leading orchestras, and art museums to make new works for choir that address social and environmental issues. He has commissioned over 180 works and, with his ensemble The Crossing, has produced 30 recordings. Donald and The Crossing have been nominated for nine Grammy awards, winning Best Choral Performance in 2018, 2019, and 2023. He has held distinguished tenures as chorus master for Lyric Opera of Chicago, Welsh National Opera, Opera Philadelphia, the Chicago Bach Project, and for many seasons at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.
Enter Choralosophy at Checkout for a 5% discount when you shop for folders, robes and other gear for your choir program! www.mymusicfolders.com and www.mychoirrobes.com
Donald’s collaborations include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Park Avenue Armory, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Menil Collection, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Beth Morrison Projects, Lincoln Center, Mostly Mozart, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, the Barnes Foundation, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the National Gallery, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the American Composers Orchestra, Klockriketeatern at the Finnish National Opera, the Institute for Advanced Study, Big Ears Festival, and the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana, where The Crossing holds an annual residency.
In addition to his work with The Crossing, Donald has been visiting resident artist at the Park Avenue Armory, music director of David Lang’s 1000-voice Crowd Out at Millennium Park in Chicago, Lang’s 1000-voice Mile Long Opera on the High Line in Manhattan, and chorus master for the New York Philharmonic for world premieres of Julia Wolfe and David Lang. His 60-chapter series Rising w/ The Crossing, a response to the 2020 pandemic, gained national attention and was featured in The Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR’s Performance Today; it has been archived by The Library of Congress as a cultural artifact as an “important part of this collection and the historical record.”
RyanMain.com is now expanding to a family of composers! Visit endeavormusicpublishing.com and of course, enter Choralosophy at checkout for a 10% discount!
Receive 10% Discount on your orders at http://www.graphitepublishing.com where you will find the works of Jocelyn Hagen, Eric Barnum, Timothy C. Takach, Paul Rudoi and MANY more.
“I cannot believe I’ve been muzzled by my own people.” All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, CA cancelled a concert that was set for June 2nd, 2024 citing the “pain and anguish felt by 18 Black members of the church.” The response was that Michal and the choir, and the music they were set to perform from the African American cultural and musical heritage, was prohibited form being performed at the majority white All Saints until further notice.
I am joined this week by Bass soloist Michal Dawson Connor, who was caught in the middle of this controversy. He tells his side of this frustrating story and pulls no punches. A story that ends, for now, with the church’s “Racial Justice Advisory Board” being in control of what music is or is not allowed in the church, rather than the Music Ministry. When we in choral music preach diversity and inclusion, is this really what we mean?
This topic, in a broader sense, has been explored MANY times on this show going all the way back to some of the first episodes. Namely, what is the role of African American Spirituals and Gospel music in the telling of our American story, and in what ways can the cultural sharing through music lead to unity, healing and reconciliation? What does it mean to be diverse and inclusive? Can these things be achieved while drawing strict lines around categories, and gatekeeping? There seems to be a consensus in music education on these questions amongst scholars of the art form. Experts like André Thomas, Anthony Trecek King, Marques Garrett, Brandon Boyd, and even philosophers and race scholars like Anika Prather, Sheena Mason and Teodros Kiros just to name a small few have appeared on this show to speak on these important philosophical ideas. “Tough Conversations” play list linked above and embedded below.
Choralosophy presented by Ludus. Visit Ludus.com/choralosophy for the cutting edge in fine arts ticketing and marketing solutions.
Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com.
For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and FB!
www.sightreadingfactory.com is the best literacy tool on the market today. Enter Choralosophy at checkout to get 10% off memberships for you AND your students!
Michal Dawson Connor is an accomplished performer and composer of choral, chamber, and solo vocal works, with a particular emphasis on Slave songs created before the Civil War. He was born in Jamestown, New York, and is a proud alumnus of Carnegie-Mellon University and L’Ecole Hindemith in Vevey, Switzerland – where he studied voice with Blake Stern and Helen Boatwright. Championing American composers has always been a high priority for him, and Mr. Connor has concertized extensively throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, specializing in the rich vocal repertoire of Charles Ives, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, and many others.
Enter Choralosophy at Checkout for a 5% discount when you shop for folders, robes and other gear for your choir program! www.mymusicfolders.com and www.mychoirrobes.com
Mr. Connor’s Broadway credits include featured performances in the Tony-Award winning productions of “RAGTIME” and “SHOWBOAT”, as well as starring roles in productions of “THE MOST HAPPY FELLA”, “BIG RIVER”, and “PORGY AND BESS”. In addition to soloing on multiple occasions for President Ronald Reagan, he’s immensely proud of performing for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Reverend Billy Graham, and Elizabeth Dole. Mr. Connor is a published author of “THE SLAVE LETTERS” currently available on Amazon.com. On network television, he was a guest star on “FRIENDS”, as well as several appearances on the Emmy-Award winning show “EXTREME MAKEOVER: HOME EDITION” and “THE SURPRISE GARDENER”.
Tough Conversations Playlist on YouTube!
Tough Conversations Playlist!
Receive 10% Discount on your orders at http://www.graphitepublishing.com where you will find the works of Jocelyn Hagen, Eric Barnum, Timothy C. Takach, Paul Rudoi and MANY more.
The scientific consensus is that our ability to understand human speech has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. After all, there are whole portions of the brain devoted to human speech. We learn to understand speech before we can even walk, and can seamlessly absorb enormous amounts of information simply by hearing it. Surely we evolved this capability over thousands of generations… Or did we?
Cognitive scientist, Mark Changizi joins me this week for a fascinating exploration into the hardware and software that allows humans to understand, interpret and make sense out of music. In his book “Harnessed,” he makes the case that human speech has been very specifically “designed” to harness the sounds of nature, sounds we’ve evolved over millions of years to readily understand. Long before humans evolved, mammals have learned to interpret the sounds of nature to understand both threats and opportunities. Our speech—regardless of language—is very clearly based on the sounds of nature.
Even more fascinating, Changizi shows that music itself is based on natural sounds. Music—seemingly one of the most human of inventions—is literally built on sounds and patterns of sound that have existed since the beginning of time.
Choralosophy presented by Ludus. Visit Ludus.com/choralosophy for the cutting edge in fine arts ticketing and marketing solutions.
Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com.
For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and FB!
www.sightreadingfactory.com is the best literacy tool on the market today. Enter Choralosophy at checkout to get 10% off memberships for you AND your students!
MARK CHANGIZI is a theorist aiming to grasp the ultimate foundations underlying why we think, feel and see as we do. His research focuses on “why” questions, and he has made important discoveries such as on why we see in color, why we see illusions, why we have forward-facing eyes, why the brain is structured as it is, why animals have as many limbs and fingers as they do, why the dictionary is organized as it is, why fingers get pruney when wet, where emotional expressions came from, and how we acquired writing, language and music.
He attended the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and then went on to the University of Virginia for a degree in physics and mathematics, and to the University of Maryland for a PhD in math. In 2002 he won a prestigious Sloan-Swartz Fellowship in Theoretical Neurobiology at Caltech, and in 2007 he became an assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 2010 he took the post of Director of Human Cognition at a new research institute called 2ai Labs, and also co-founded VINO Optics which builds proprietary vein-enhancing glasses for medical personnel. He consults out of his Human Factory Lab.
Enter Choralosophy at Checkout for a 5% discount when you shop for folders, robes and other gear for your choir program! www.mymusicfolders.com and www.mychoirrobes.com
He has more than three dozen scientific journal articles, covered in thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. He regularly keynotes at both scientific events and at art galleries and museums, and has appeared on many television shows, including regular appearances on Discovery Channel’s Head Games and National Geographic’s Brain Games. TED has featured him in three areas of his research, namely illusions, color vision, and pruney fingers. He curated an exhibition and co-authored a (fourth) book — ON THE ORIGIN OF ART(2016), by Steven Pinker, Geoffrey Miller, Brian Boyd & Mark Changizi — at MONA museum in Tasmania in 2016 illustrating his “nature-harnessing” theory on the origins of art and language.
Receive 10% Discount on your orders at http://www.graphitepublishing.com where you will find the works of Jocelyn Hagen, Eric Barnum, Timothy C. Takach, Paul Rudoi and MANY more.
