Thinking

advice for choosing a choir

I was the guest editor for Whole Note magazine’s May 2012 edition. This Toronto area-based music magazine is known for releasing its ‘Canary Pages’ in May– a listing of choirs and other singing opportunities in the Greater Toronto Area for anyone who’s looking to join a choir, or perhaps looking for a change. I was asked to write about choirs and community for this year’s edition(you can read it here). I also had some long, wonderful discussions with two Toronto-based conductors: Isabel Bernaus, conductor of the Jubilate Singers and Common Thread Community Choir; and Becca Whitla, conductor of Echo Women’s… Read More »advice for choosing a choir

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beautiful women singing in a beautiful city

The Twentieth Anniversary Season Concert for Echo Women’s Choir happened this past Sunday. I had the pleasure and privilege of guest conducting a substantial portion of the concert. I don’t have any video or audio–yet–so you’ll have to take my word for it: these 80 women sounded wonderful. The program was pretty eclectic: some gospel, some worker/protest songs, an Arabic love song, a few pieces from the Republic of Georgia. The central piece was a composition called ‘Sun’ (conducted by my colleague Alan Gasser), with text by Eliot Rose and music by William Westcott–this full-on, massive sounding,insane piano-accompanying, hard-to-sing vocal… Read More »beautiful women singing in a beautiful city

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sing for love

At the risk of killing romance, I’m going to be honest: I hate valentine’s day. I buy pre-packaged branded valentine cards for my sons to give to their friends, and my kids will come home this afternoon with bags full of the same kinds of cards that bear not more than a tenuous connection to love. Same for the chocolates and roses we’re supposed to purchase for our lovers this one day: consumerist expressions of love. So I’m a cynic, a valentine scrooge: bah humbug on love, valentine style. But this morning, I’m rethinking the value of a day in… Read More »sing for love

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Phenomenon of Singing in Phenomenal Newfoundland

Well, that was an incredible 4 days. Up at 4:30 am on Sunday to catch a plane to St. John’s for the Phenomenon of Singing International Symposium VIII, At Memorial University Newfoundland, the academic part of a GI-NORMOUS choral festival called Festival 500. Let me tell you, there really were no downsides to this journey. In fact, I’m not really sure what to say, or where to start. Highlights from the Symposium: Kate Munger, who began Threshold Choirs in California about 10 years ago–groups of women who singing to people who are dying. She was warm, thoughtful and best of… Read More »Phenomenon of Singing in Phenomenal Newfoundland

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it’s like falling off a cliff, over and over

The vocal pedagogy that I practice and teach mostly draws from the work of Fides Krucker. I just got back from a lesson with Fides, and through my vocal and pedagogical training with her, I’ve come to understand singing as an integration of contradictions that demands the quiet but complete bravery of leaping off a cliff. In one of my first singing lessons with Fides, back in 2003, she was coaching me through a vocal slide, trying to get me to find air flow without pushing or straining the muscles around the vocal folds. She told me “it’s like you’re… Read More »it’s like falling off a cliff, over and over

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Firefly Creative Writing is Eating the Math

For the second year now, The Stop Community Food Center is running Eat the Math, a challenge to citizens all over Ontario is try living on a diet that a person on social assistance might receive from a food bank… and to blog about it. I would have done this but was too busy with my face in my school books and teaching to notice the call going out. So you can, like me, live this test through Chris Fraser of Firefly Creative Writing. And because she’s a creative writer, her blogs are particularly entertaining and wrenching. It’s a shocking… Read More »Firefly Creative Writing is Eating the Math

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if i collapse onstage, just drag me off and keep singing

last night I saw a documentary about an incredible group of singers: young @ heart. I was in the library with my kids, and my two-year-old pulled the DVD off a library shelf and handed it to me saying “der you go!”  Seemed like a sign, so I took it out and watched it.  I laughed and cried.  I was inspired and challenged. If you’re not familiar with the doc, it’s about a  chorus of seniors in Massechussetts that sings surprising repertoire.  Surprising in the choices (80-yr-olds singing Sonic Youth? The Ramones? David Bowie?) and surprising in how poignant and… Read More »if i collapse onstage, just drag me off and keep singing

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