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The Choir Fam Podcast is a venue for conversations about the current state of choral music. Hosts Dean Luethi and Matthew Myers seek to bring the worldwide choral community closer together through their discussions with a variety of guests who work with choir in its various forms. The goal of the podcast is to provide listeners with interesting tidbits of knowledge they could use in day-to-day choral rehearsals and to bring light to the ways that issues in the choral field are being observed and addressed.
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“My job is to make people love choral music as much as I do, and that’s a lot. I really love choral music. My job is to say ‘you should care about this.’ You might care about it because it’s ravishingly beautiful or because it has a story to tell you. Even if you’re not a person who relates to choral music, you can relate to stories. We’re going to weave some sort of through-line through this program that tells you something about life that we hope resonates with you whether you’re a musician...
“You’re not going to ask a bunch of choir directors to donate to your organization — you’re going to have to go find other people who probably don’t have the type of experience with choir that choral leaders do. It’s about trying to translate not just your own personal love of choir but the reason that your choir exists, what it does for its community and its participants, the impact that your choir has on various spheres of influences. How do you translate your value to intersect with what t...
“It's hard to focus on anything educationally if certain basic needs aren't being met, so you're trying to navigate and be proactive as much as possible. I have students who have their own needs and things they're going through that are influencing the classroom. Every year, every group, it's a different dynamic. Every student in this group deserves the opportunity to have a good experience with this. Now, they've got to buy in a little bit. They've got to own their piece of it. You can't do ...
“I was one of those people that had some biases against pop music. Being in show choirs and seeing the ways that the songs were transformed and arranged really opened my eyes to different styles of music and changed my perspective. I no longer view popular music as being all that different from classical music or film scores. There's just something about arranging: taking all these pieces of a song and figuring out how to put them together. It's almost like doing a puzzle. It unlocks some of ...
“The Spanish language is not treated with the attention and nuance that we often do for many of the languages used for singing auditions. There’s this myth that Americans can't make certain sounds, but in other rehearsals, we work really hard at intense French and German sounds. A lot of composers who aren't familiar with the language set the text in ways that don't make sense and change the meaning. I'd like to keep working at repairing the positionality of Spanish in academic places.” Dr. R...
“I ask them to sing with maximum efficiency, accessing their singer’s formant, and from there, we’ll ask for specific sounds. Sometimes conductors get stuck asking them to blend, to listen. When we do that, it’s like giving them an 8-pack of Crayola and asking them to color. Instead, we start the rehearsal with a 64-pack and then throughout the rehearsal we might pick out the light blue #2 to color that section of the music. They’re able to access the full breadth of their vocal powers in the...
"In my third year of teaching, I started to have vocal problems. I was taking voice lessons. I was singing professionally. It was feeling great. Suddenly my voice was gone, and I couldn't get it back. I took a leave of absence to get some speech language therapy. That's why I'm so passionate about using our voices in the choral ensemble in an effective way and having us as conductors find how to use that voice so that they don't need to manipulate things. Dr. Jennaya Robison is the Artistic D...
“I love the way that contemporary a cappella engages singers who might not necessarily see themselves as ‘choral singers’ to be able to sing together and maybe discover a love of more traditional choral music. For me, it’s all about engaging more singers. Group singing is such a beautiful community, and I’ve seen the ways it can really change lives, create beautiful spaces for self-expression, and do some good for the world in a time where we really need it." Rob Dietz is a multi award-winni...
“We were all asking ourselves, ‘what can we do to counter this, what’s happening in the world? How can I help my singers understand and navigate what is happening in our country right now?’ I made this huge shift in my thinking about what choral music should be and why we should be doing it. It's not just ‘what are you singing and is it gorgeous?’ but ‘how are you making a difference? How are you impacting the world?’” Dr. Joy Hirokawa is the Artistic/Executive Director of the Mosaic Youth Ch...
“My mantra for my teaching is: I want to create good humans while also creating good musicians. I tell every ensemble that on the first day of school. What they care about is 'Does Mr. Brown see me? Does he value me? Does he care for me?' Then they'll start singing. I care more about the human heart than I care about the perfection of the music. Yes, I care about the music, but if my students aren't in the right mental headspace, then the music won't come.” Jeremy Brown is serving his third ...
“Start with the way that you structure your rehearsal, your classroom, your feedback. In terms of feedback, we talk about not giving people more than three pieces of information to work on. Working memory is affected by ADHD in particular. ‘Here's what you're doing well, here's what you can improve on, here's how you can improve it.’ That structure helps with their ability to anticipate what you're going to say and quickly implement that into their own music making.” Dr. Peter Haley serves as...
“We’re often put in positions that make us uncomfortable with the inner struggle of how to keep our job and have our program recognized enough to get support versus how to carry out our true mission with students. If I’m trying to continue to fall in love with the choral art, I think the way to do that is looking for literature that will balance the soul-searching and academic needs of the students and the entertaining needs of the audiences. Looking for literature for all of those reasons of...
Thank you for listening to our show this season!! Here are the favorite choral pieces from our guests in the fifth season: Christmas Oratorio, Johann Sebastian Bach Mass in B Minor, Johann Sebastian Bach (x2) Trois Chansons Bretonnes, Henk Badings The Sweetheart of the Sun, Eric William Barnum Ein Deutsches Requiem, Johannes Brahms The Music Makers, Edward Elgar The Ground, Ola Gjeilo Kalinda, Sydney Guillaume Measure Me, Sky, Elaine Hagenberg Messiah, George Frideric Handel Las Amarillas, S...
“More competitions are being organized, and it has become a way for these conductors and choirs to work on their skills. By joining these competitions, the rate of their progress accelerated. People join choirs for different reasons. For most of us, we started only because we loved singing, because we found a place where we can share our voice with friends with the same interest. This desire to join competitions would just be a product of years of singing with a choir.” Mark Anthony Carpio is...
“We had 10 sopranos, 4 altos, 2 tenors, and 1 bass, and they were all volunteers. We were spending hours trying to learn this music that we didn’t have the numbers for, so I ended up writing almost 100 church arrangements, and I made the voice leading very stepwise. Being that close to the music made me a better writer because I’m not just writing for ensembles I don’t hear regularly. I’m there in the rehearsal process, and I know what’s hard and what might be easier to grab onto.” Mary...
“We ended up forming a new string orchestra at the high school, and I led every rehearsal and conducted every concert. I remember the very first day. I looked at my teacher and said, ‘how do you start them? Do I breathe?’ I tried something, and it didn’t work. Then I did the sniff, and everyone came in. Now I teach conducting, and what I want to give the students is a sandbox where they can make mistakes and figure out what works for them.” Conductor Albert Pinsonneault is the Associate Dire...
“Everything changed for the gay choral movement because they had twins: music and mission. They weren’t just there for the music, and they weren’t just there for the mission. I’ve been feeding my twins every day, and I feed them equally. Audiences that are interested in just music for music making are dying out. There are a lot more reasons to get them in: many concerts can reach into the community and be of service.” Tim Seelig is a conductor, speaker, author and educator. He is the Conducto...
"I start every morning at the junior high, and we co-teach together. It's great for alignment in the program, for familiarity with the students and getting to know them and hopefully continuing in choir. Our students see that we collaborate. I like that they can see that because it shows them how to go about relationships. People need be modeled how to treat each other and work together and talk to each other.” -Daniel Gutierrez "It was super rewarding to be so invested in those pieces, and t...
“I think during my formative years, shying away from my true self – my authentic self – that's definitely shaped how I approach being in front of choirs, using choir as a platform to really encourage kids to be themselves. I think there's a vulnerability to singing where it really is an avenue to accessing the truest parts of ourselves, and so that's kind of my life mission now that I get to be in front of choirs.” Chris Maunu is a conductor, educator, and composer dedicated to inspiring you...
“You never know what anybody's potential is. I think about that now as a teacher, that we are expecting 17-, 18-year-olds to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. It’s so early in your life to make those decisions, and so much can change during those really formative years. I want to help them to be the best version of themselves in the field and achieve the goals that they would like to do.” Jennifer Sengin is the Raymond R. Neevel/Missouri Professor of Choral Music and Dir...
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