East Carolina Conducting Institute

This week I have been mesmerized and elated to have conducted a marvelous group of folks in a few pieces of music: 1) Rheinberger's Benedixisti, 2) Dan Forrest's A Basque Lullaby, 3) Robert Lau's Sing to the Lord a New Song, and 4) Ken Neufeld's arrangement of  Morton Bay. The Benedixisti I have already talked about, so I won't say much. Though I liked the piece a lot, I think it could use a final bar line after the 3rd measure. A Basque Lullaby has a different text. It talks about fairies, silver wings, and flower buds, which is set to a GORGEOUS musical setting. Sing to the Lord a New Song is fantastic. I conducted it on our culminating concert on Friday. It's portions of Psalm 148, 149, & 150 set to mixed meter of 7/8, 3/8, 3/4 and it has a middle section of 4/4. It's way fun, and I will definitely be returning to that piece when I get a capable church choir. Morton Bay is a fermata frenzy...I didn't like it as much as I thought I might.

Dr. Bara is going to be a treat...I might not want this next two years to end if it's anything like this past week. He's brilliant and funny and an extremely good and patient teacher. Great combination for any kind of teacher...as a matter of fact, I don't think teachers should be anything BUT that.

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Rheinberger...

stunning composer. I had the most pleasant experience conducting his Benedixisti with a group of musicians from all over the country - mostly North Carolina, but California, Illinois, and Connecticut were represented...and certainly represented well here at ECU's Summer Choral Conducting Institute. I spent my podium time thinking about what my hands and arms were doing. I am guilty of not spending much time in score study because I felt I would neglect my conducting gesture. Perhaps that's a cop out, but I really wanted to focus on delivering a comfortable and expressive gesture without having to stop the choir to explain my musical interpretation. I felt I would have spent more time talking to them rather than showing them.

Good stuff. It's going to be a splendid week!

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New Post? OMG!

Congratulations Mr. Musical Mind, you've managed to not post for an entire semester. Maybe that means my mind is only musical...momentarily? Momentarily musical. That's probably it. My mind is quite momentary these days.

But it's off to East Carolina University to study choral conducting with Dr. Dan Bara, an Eastman School of Music DMA recipient as well as a graduate from the University of Michigan. It will be a challenging two years, but I've never been one to turn down too many of those. After three years of experiencing what teaching choral music is like in the rural high school, I am ready for a lot more guidance.