Month: June 2026

We are revisiting a topic today to bring in more perspectives. Dave Ritschard teaches choir in Alabama, where they are considering ADDING sight reading to the All State Choir audition. Dave is opposed.

Today, we are diving headfirst into a hot-button topic that recently blew up on Facebook: what is the true purpose of an All-State choir? Is it a reward reserved strictly for the pinnacle of high school choral achievement, or is it a spark meant to transform smaller music programs from the bottom up? Joining me to parse out this classic debate is Dave Richard, a choral and drama director at a school in Marshall County, Alabama.

From growing up as a missionary kid in Papua New Guinea to navigating a 6th–12th grade schedule, Dave brings a unique perspective centered on student access. This perspective bumps up against mine in some friendly back and forth. He recently went public with his concerns over the Alabama Vocal Association’s plan to add a required sight-reading component to auditions, arguing that it creates massive equity issues for rural programs where students receive zero elementary music education. I, of course, hold a different view also citing equity concerns, setting the stage for an incredibly honest, constructive clash over the fine line between defending musical excellence and accidental gatekeeping.

🎧 Tune in now on YouTube or your favorite podcast app!

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Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself with your related ideas and experiences on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com Also, don’t forget to grab a reading rope for your classroom wall from the shop! Music Reading Rope

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For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and FB!

David Ritschard (pronounced Richard), or “Mr. Ritz” as his students know him, is a 6–12 choral and drama teacher in Douglas, Alabama. After completing his first year teaching, he has become passionate about building choir programs in rural communities and creating meaningful musical experiences that inspire students to stay involved in music for life.

Dave grew up in Papua New Guinea, where his family served as missionaries, and is a graduate of Jacksonville State University with a degree in Choral Music Education. As both a choir and drama teacher, he is particularly interested in music literacy, accessibility, student participation, and the role of honor choirs in music education.

Find Dave on TikTok and Instagram at @mr.ritzchoir

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What happens when you look at your choir’s packed performance schedule and realize you’ve been teaching the repertoire, but not the actual skills? But aren’t middle school kids too young for a rigorous choir class experience? Besides, won’t it drive them away if we don’t make it an easy A with lots of fun concerts?

We often talk about wanting music classes to be treated with the same respect as core academic subjects, but are we holding ourselves to that same curricular standard?

Joining me today is Ryan Lindley, an outstanding middle school director who found himself asking that exact question after finishing his eighth year in the classroom. Ryan realized his grading structure only measured one standard: performance. He set out to rewrite his entire curriculum to focus on deep, sequential music literacy, proving that middle schoolers are never “too young” for high expectations. We talk about the logistics of individual testing, building student autonomy, and modeling growth in real time.

🎧 Tune in now on YouTube or your favorite podcast app!

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Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself with your related ideas and experiences on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com Also, don’t forget to grab a reading rope for your classroom wall from the shop! Music Reading Rope

Be Sure to Find Choralosophy on TikTok!

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and FB!

Ryan Lindley is a music educator, conductor, and clinician based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He currently teaches fourth through eighth-grade chorus for the Oshkosh Area School District, serving students at Perry Tipler Middle School and the Advanced Learning Program charter school. His teaching emphasizes project-based learning, social-emotional learning, and the creation of inclusive, student-centered music spaces.

Mr. Lindley holds a Master of Music in Music Education from Boston University and a Bachelor of Music in Music Education from the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh. In addition to his school teaching, he is the Music Director of Badger State Youth Choir: Oshkosh and serves as President of the Oshkosh Chamber Singers. He is actively involved in professional leadership as the Middle Level Repertoire & Resources Chair for the Midwestern Region of the American Choral Directors Association and as the Middle Level All-State Coordinator for the Wisconsin Choral Directors Association.

An accomplished musician, Mr. Lindley is a frequent clinician and presenter, with professional interests that include middle level choral pedagogy, SEL-informed rehearsal practices, and curriculum design. Outside of music, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Madeline, and their two children, Isaiah and Eleanor.

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Have you ever noticed that good pedagogy and the perfect methodology only goes so far? The job of a teacher, conductor or a coach is a complicated cocktail with almost infinitely changing ingredients. The main variables can be found within the groups themselves.

In this episode, I’m sitting down once again with Gary Seighman, choir director and Chair of the Music Department at Trinity University. Gary is out with a fascinating new book published by Meredith Music and GIA called The Choir Playbook.

We dive deep into the striking parallels between athletic coaching and choral rehearsing, exploring how over-analyzing mechanics can completely paralyze execution—whether a kid is at the plate or a conductor is on the podium. Gary shares how moving past surface-level band-aids allows us to build adaptive, high-performing musical environments.

What We Preview in This Episode:

• The Ecological Approach to Rehearsing: Why training your choir to “expect the unexpected” and adapt on the fly builds a more resilient ensemble than rigid, predictable repetition.
• Joint Action Theory and the Mirror Neuron System: The hard science behind how ensembles create a subconscious “collective organism”—synchronizing breathing, body language, and heart rates to predict musical movements rather than just reacting to them.
• Lego Vowels vs. Silly Putty: A look into Gary’s toolbox for vowel unification and why teaching English text requires fighting a lifetime of native, lazy speech habits.
• Defeating Teacher Burnout: Why stepping completely outside the choral bubble to explore sports, sci-fi, or Pixar movies is exactly what your default mode network needs to unlock massive creative Eureka moments in front of your choir.

If you are tired of shallow fixes and want to understand the deep neurological and physiological mechanics of what actually happens when humans make music together, you are not going to want to miss this conversation.

Grab your notebook, clip board and whistle and stick around

🎧 Tune in now on YouTube or your favorite podcast app!

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Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself with your related ideas and experiences on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com Also, don’t forget to grab a reading rope for your classroom wall from the shop! Music Reading Rope

Be Sure to Find Choralosophy on TikTok!

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and FB!

Gary Seighman is Professor, Director of Choral Activities, and Chair of the Music Department at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, one of the nation’s top private liberal arts universities. He is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Most Innovative Programming Award from the Texas Choral Directors Association. His choirs have performed for the National Collegiate Choral Organization, the Texas Music Educators Association, and the 2026 Southwest ACDA conference. He is a regular guest artist with Worldstrides Performance for their Carnegie Hall festivals and has conducted across the world with multiple European tours, and 6 trips to East Asia conducting the Peking University Summer Opera Program, and performances throughout Taiwan and Japan.

His book, The Choir Playbook: Tools for the Imaginative Conductor, was recently published by Meredith Music and GIA. His degrees are from is from Westminster Choir College, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Maryland. Seighman enjoys other creative outlets including signed as a model and actor with Avant Agency, where he has appeared in print, online, billboards, radio, and television. He also loves coaching soccer, softball, and baseball for his 9 and 11-year-old children.

Find Gary on Social Media:

https://www.instagram.com/gary_seighman?igsh=MTJncjhqcGdpNW15Mw==

https://www.facebook.com/gary.seighman

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Should would we reject AI, or embrace it? Or maybe neither? Like all new technologies, there will be problems. Early adopters, and late ones, and some that NEVER get on board. In what areas can AI tools help artists and educators be better at their jobs? But also, which AI tools are a genuine threat to the arts and artists?

Today I am joined by Beth Philemon, and we are diving headfirst into a topic that makes a lot of people in the arts deeply uncomfortable: artificial intelligence. I know the immediate reaction for many of you is absolute frustration or exhaustion. You see AI and you think about copyright theft, corporations exploiting artists’ hard work without consent, and the massive environmental footprint of these data centers. Those are incredibly valid, serious concerns, and we are not here to gloss over them or pretend they don’t matter.

So if you are aggressively anti-AI, I want you to stick around for this exact conversation. Beth and I spend a good chunk of this episode wrestling with those ethical minefields, the realities of intellectual property, and what this technological shift means for the future of composing. But we also look at a very practical paradox: how keeping a human firmly in the loop of these tools might actually protect our time. We discuss how automation can handle the brutal administrative and data tasks that burn teachers out, ultimately freeing us up to spend more time focused on the embodiment of our art form—real human connection and real singing. It’s a nuanced look at a messy topic, and you won’t want to miss it. Let’s jump in.

🎧 Tune in now on YouTube or your favorite podcast app!

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Tune in, and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself with your related ideas and experiences on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com Also, don’t forget to grab a reading rope for your classroom wall from the shop! Music Reading Rope

Be Sure to Find Choralosophy on TikTok!

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and FB!

Beth Philemon is a choral conductor and AI strategist based out of Raleigh, NC. She consults on enterprise AI transformation and data strategy for organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to performing arts institutions, translating fluently between corporate strategy and artistic leadership. With more than fifteen years on the podium across K–12, collegiate, church, and community ensembles – and ongoing work as a guest clinician and conductor – she works at an intersection most people are told to choose between: artistry and strategy. She holds an MM in Choral Conducting from Northern Arizona University and an MBA from North Carolina State University. She founded Choir Baton in 2017 to grow the choral community via social media. Today Choir Baton provides online education for new, emerging, and returning community singers via the CB Academy and for choir teacher-conductors via CB Institute, in addition to the Choir Baton Podcast. Her mission is #MorePeopleSinging for lifelong musicianship. For more information visit ChoirBaton.com or BethPhilemon.com

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