Two days in...

The first day back was a great success! A performance with my chamber choir received accolades from students and teachers alike -- including a congratulation from the headmaster. sweet.

We are beginning Schubert's Mass in G -- it has been a big hit. Today, all the choirs sang through the Kyrie with decent intonation/rhythm. It is so rewarding to watch them have fun with this piece! In addition the boys are doing a great job sight-reading and just generally pushing their musical limits. I'm excited about the rest of the year!

Ideas for 2012

1. Have singers sing solo and in small ensembles more often
2. Break into sectionals often
3. Find more music games to play - test theory and sightreading

Notes from my Mid-Term Student Evaluations

Mid-Term evaluation notes

Music History
Exciting Spring Concerts -
Test Review Sheets
More listening exercises in class
Relation to modern music (they can find!)

Chamber Choir
Homeland
Practice like we perform
Mark Lowe - Baritone
Work on Breating
A clear performance calendar
Variety in class - change the order
    (sectionals/ different warmups/ sightreading/ music games/ theory
Work in sectionals more often
More pop music
Sing more music

Big Red Chorus
Sing more songs - even if we don’t perform them
Sing at assembly more often (febuary)
Work in sectionals more to nail the notes before moving through the whole song
Pop Songs (forget you, bohemian rapsody, california dreaming)
    Classic sing along songs
More Discipline - give more demerits
Change/check voice parts
Keep warmups breif and make sure that they have a direct connection to the music
Explain scales better
Ask for student’s opion before hand
Watch John Hazen , owen powell-- he is a problem

Last Day of 2011

 The last day of the year is hear, I can't believe it. Time flies when you are having done. In true form we have a new performance today! We will be ending the year with a on the fly performance of We Three Kings and Silent Night.

Today we played the cup game and the bobby mcferrin sightreading game -- lots of fun with the boys.

Concertizing

Tis the season...

It has been a good couple of days worth of concerts! After a rough rehearsal last week, the boys have really changed it up and are back on track. We have two more gigs this week and then on to the break. I am already getting music for the new year -- exciting stuff.

On another note -- the school was able to purchase Sibelius 7 w/ audio score today! I hope that the audio score works as well as promised. Although, this will be a nice change over finalie (which is far to confusing and time consuming for me).

Here was the video of the day:

A day late and a dollar short

Today the chamber choir went into rehearsal short about 6 people (out of 17) and then preceded to terrify me. They seem to have forgotten all of their notes and phrasing. In addition singing in the theater has made their sound light and shallow. I am at a loss on what to cover. Thankfully they were able to run their entire program without music but the product was mediocre at best. Rather than a celebratory run through we will have to look at a lot of notes tomorrow!

On the other hand my beginning choir was great. Their music is much easier but they are smiling and having fun -- I have no concerns about their program. It is very weird how the semester is turning out. What a lesson on literature selection!

11/30

Today I was given less than 48hours notice for two performances, one of them was today -- and it went fine. The other is tomorrow. Fortunately, the boys have been great to work with and seem eager to perform as much as possible. In addition the other music staff and my department head have all been very complementary.

The lesson I took from all of this was:
Work to perfect what I can control and let go of what I can not.

This is easy to say and hard to do -- lets see how the next few days go!

I also sang in this choir -- we were reading this piece for the 1st time last night. Enjoy