Resources

The shortest distance between the schooled choral director and teaching a jazz choir is the A Cappella Jazz Ballad. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina wrote some of my favorite choral music. My first “ah-ha” moment singing in a choir came while singing portions of his Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass) in my college choir. 

In my teaching career I’ve had the opportunity to teach in three very distinct, very different school districts in the northwest. Oddly enough, my first school district was urban, my current school district is suburban, and the third district, in which I have spent the majority of my time, is rural. Each position has had certain advantages and challenges depending upon socio-economic status of the students, administrative support, and the content I was required to teach.

Overheard from some teachers … “I would like to start a jazz choir, but I just don’t know where to start!” Or… “I have a jazz choir, but I don’t always know what resources to use or where to find them.” Here are a few resources. Maybe this will help.

As a former (and still recovering) girl’s volleyball coach, I used to base my recruitment of singers on the same principles as my recruitment of athletes. After all, choir is like sport; a team activity, full of high performance drive, a dedication to excellence.

Middle School. It’s the most awkward, difficult, strange and beautiful time in a young person’s life. I know I’m crazy for saying this but…I’m a middle school teacher for life. There are just under a million reasons why teaching middle school or junior high singers is a challenge.

Sunday morning is the time we all gather as a community to offer praise and thanksgiving to God for the “innumerable benefits procured unto us,” (Book of Common Prayer) and to bring our challenges, concerns, and heaviness to the altar of God beseeching to be heard and helped.

Forming a positive working relationship with choral colleagues is one of the great benefits of ACDA membership. But what about the colleagues in other music disciplines? Specifically, what about colleagues next door or across the hall?

As I look out my office window, I see tiny sprouts of green on the trees throughout Boise. There’s a lot of outdoor activity on the Boise State campus and you can sense a renewed energy as students return from Spring Break.

I have six children (not including the 200+ at school, of course) who regularly and incessantly ask me that very question. They find it to be such a useful word that it is invoked in virtually every imaginable situation. When they were very small I recall finding those questions elicited emotions ranging from amusement to delight in me.