Choir Fam Podcast

“I really thought I wanted to be a high school teacher, but the first job I got was in elementary. That turned out to be the best ‘teaching-me’ experience I could have had, because I learned that if one could get music across to people without much background, you can get it across to anybody.” Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt is Professor Emerita of Choral Studies at the University of Toronto where she held...

“We were doing some Anglican chant, and we went on to the Hogan ‘Ride On, King Jesus.’ It was as if it was the first time we had ever seen light. It was a revelation for me and for the singers and led to a lot of rebranding of who we are, our values, whose music is important, and the right balance we should be striving for. I felt like I had finally found a place where I could express my full musi...

“If people think you value them, they will do anything in the world to make the music for you." André J. Thomas is an Associate Artist with the London Symphony Orchestra. Thomas is Professor Emeritus of Music at Florida State University. He was visiting Professor of Choral Conducting at Yale University from 2020-2022. He also served as faculty member at the University of Texas, Austin. Dr. Th...

“Let your passion guide you. That has been such a huge help to me in this journey because I know that I’m doing it because I love to do it. Don’t get caught up in going through the motions. It’s easy to be on autopilot and push things to the back of your mind so you can keep putting out work, good performances, or good rehearsals, but always try to be in tune with yourself and listen to what your...

“It’s people first. You need to address the humans that are there in front of you and help them be where they are. There are some kids who are hungry, who haven’t had anything since their last meal at school the day before or the week before. The human part of them has to feel safe before they can care about whether that’s a late sixteenth note.” Dr. Lynn M. Brinckmeyer recently retired as Profess...

“Social practice is the ability to let peer groups problem-solve together and work things through. This is what I try to practice a lot of in the learning stages of music making. The phrase I use is ‘You learn music with us so that someday you can go learn music and make it without us.’ If they’re not identifying how to problem-solve and correct on their own, they are less likely to go out and be...

“It’s powerful to see [the Dallas Street Choir] perform. It’s powerful to see the invisible become visible. Both the audience reaction to take an invisible, isolated population and see them for the very first time in many ways, but it’s also powerful for them to be seen.” Jonathan Palant is Associate Dean of the Arts and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Texas at Dallas and is fou...

“As first-year teachers, we have more power than we think we do. Our voice is heard more because we’re the new person in town. As young teachers, I think that our confidence is still growing. We’re still learning to navigate what to ask and how to ask admin... You can always ask for something, and the worst thing they’re going to say is ‘no’ or ‘not yet.’” Christina Hall is a master's student...

"The timbre of the singing voice [in Malaysian music] is definitely different from singing Western art music mainly because of the language itself. The way the language is being spoken accesses a different space in our whole instrument. If you want sing the music of a different culture or language in that particular tone, listen to how a person would speak the language, and you won't go...

"The repertoire will always have some sort of example of something that you're talking about in music theory, and it helps really build that connection between the studying of music and the doing of music. The more and more I teach theory, the more little leaves I uncover, and I'm able to help students make that connection more and more every year." John Guarente is Professor o...

"My entire philosophy of choral music is that of all forms of music it is the one that has the capacity to produce a state of transcendence, and as a composer that is my primary function. Bear in mind, I don't write music for choirs; I write music for people. If you perform the music correctly, it can open a gateway, a higher state of consciousness." Born in 1964 in Dublin, Ireland,...

"The first year is the worst. The kids will want everything that’s not you, and that’s OK. They don’t want to know what you know until they know that you care about them, so you just wear them down with kindness and that sense of wonder about music. That’s my trick. I try and find what they wonder about music and then find ways to hook that into the materials I’m choosing.” Monika Tabor serve...

"Every time on stage when we connect with the choral music and I see the students moved or touched by choral music, that's the moment I fall in love with choral music. The love of choral music is affirmed again and again by the connection you make with these humans and the music." Xiaosha Lin is currently assistant professor and director of choral activities at Whitworth University...

"In this small community, they’re going to hear Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in their backyard. The festival has the intention to broaden the horizons of this community through music. That’s why we do what we do: to learn and grow and teach and support each other." - Shelby Laird "I've always been in love with the choral rehearsal. It is so methodical and engaging. Every step is pl...

"The choir totally operates in Estonian. Luckily I think my musicianship is good enough that I can fall back on those skills even when I don't understand most of what the conductor says in rehearsals. When we start singing again, I can pick it up and improve on what we're doing. Sometimes I get what's happening based on context, and I'm also learning the language enough to...

"I had already taught about a third of the students that we had at the opening of the school. We were able to hit the ground running. We spent a lot of time getting to know each other and team building. We built our own culture and have decided what we want to be." - John Parezo "It's been a really cool experience for me to teach elementary students for the first time. What&apo...

We want to hear from you! We'd love all our listeners to answer our Season 2 lightning-round questions for us to share with our audience. We are looking forward to getting to know you better. Email choirfampodcast@gmail.com with the following info: Subject Line: Choir Fam Minisode First and last name, pronouns optional City and state you live in School where you teach or study, choral organiz...

Thank you for listening to our show this season!! Here are the favorite choral pieces from our guests in the second season: Even When He Is Silent, Kim André Arnesen St. Matthew Passion, Johann Sebastian Bach Chichester Psalms, Leonard Bernstein Prayer of the Children, Kurt Bestor, arr. Andrea Klouse Ave Maria, Franz Biebl (x2) Ein Deutsches Requiem, Johannes Brahms Geistliches Lied, Johannes Brah...

Choir Fam Minisode 2 includes Lightning Round answers from two of our Choir Fam listeners: Dan Walls Rockford, Illinois Choir teacher at Boylan Catholic High School in Rockford, Illinois Christina Fangman Pasco, Washington Music teacher at Amon Creek Elementary School in Kennewick, Washington We want to hear from you! We'd love all our listeners to answer our Season 1 lightning-round question...

"In choir we have a chance to learn to embody a different culture through its language. When you're singing pieces in another language, there's a moment where you have to feel that you speak that language if only for a few words, if only a few moments. I think that has the capacity to create a kind of empathy regardless of whether that's your culture or not. To embody it does c...

"My goal as an artist, conductor, and thought leader is to make sure that we always start with 'why are we singing? Are we picking these pieces because people are telling us that we should, because they’ve been prescribed by lists? Are we picking these pieces because these are culturally relevant topics for the people who are part of our communities of singing? Why are we doing it?'...

"The middle school was a three-story building. At the bottom were all of the 'rough' kids. There was a second floor that was moderate. All the kids who had resources had their classes on the third floor. I'm teaching choir down in the bottom where there's a fight every 90 seconds. Over the course of my five years there we ended up through the choir program merging the enti...

"I try to be flexible with the way I write for people. For me it's a service when I get commissions, so I want to be able to serve the community that I'm working with in the same way that I would tailor a lesson to my classes depending on what the students need. I would do the same for what an organization needs with composition." Conductor/Composer/Producer Anthony J. Maglione...

"I first spend time building trust between me and then ensemble and then having them build trust within the ensemble. If they don't trust me, we won't be able to do a particular level or type of music. We spend so much time learning to work together." - Matthew Gardner "I entered my teaching career with all these ideals about teaching choral music, but what if they don&apo...

"That was the beginning of me working with a homeless women's choir. As someone who grew up doing music my whole life, it was just part of my DNA. This broke open everything I had ever thought or experienced about music, and it gave me some really new opportunities and new ways to look at the power and purpose of singing. For the people I was working with, it was part of what would get t...