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In the digital realm where voices meet ideas, there’s a podcast that’s become a community hub for Choral Music: The Choralosophy Podcast started in February 2019. It was just a small gathering of a few hundred colleagues, sharing their love for choral music. Then, the unexpected happened. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, episode 33 of … Continue reading "Episode 187: Five Years of Changing and Expanding the Conversation and"

Activist, author Chloé Valdary is a diversity and anti-racism trainer with a refreshingly loving approach. This week, on Valentine’s Day, I am encouraging us to approach our ensembles, our classes, our colleagues and our neighbors with Agape. In music education, we have a very popular, and important euphemism: “I want my students to see themselves … Continue reading "Episode 186: It’s Time for Anti-Racism with Love, with Chloé Valdary"

Nicholas Weininger, software engineer and composer, joins me this week to discuss the power of the Hebrew language in choral settings. Both in terms of its sonority and aspects of diction, but also in the contributions many ancient Hebrew texts can make to our philosophical discourses to this day. We discuss the difficulties finding choral … Continue reading "Episode 185: Bringing the Wisdom of Hebrew Texts into the Choral Canon with Nicholas Weininger"

This podcast has become the place to go for Music Literacy pedagogical training tools for teachers over the last five years. As a result, I have never received as much correspondence about content NOT created by me, than Dr. Marshaun Hymon’s February 2024 Choral Journal Article called “A Skills First Approach to the All-State Choir … Continue reading "Episode 184: Should We Stop Assessing Sight Reading at All State Choir? With Drs. Marshaun Hymon and Chantae Pittman"

Are there core skills that MUST be acquired in order to teach music? Should there be? This week, I welcome Lynn Atkins to discuss the current challenges we face getting young teachers ready to teach music in an era when our current students and recent graduates had a pretty serious interruption in their education. In … Continue reading "Episode 183: At a Crossroads in Higher Ed with Lynn Atkins"

We are doing something different and fun this week! Just me, and three young colleagues about half my age. Over the last few months, I have gotten several requests to do an episode dedicated to the issues and concerns faced by the next generation of educators. What better way to do that than host a … Continue reading "Episode 182: Getting off on the Right Foot with a Young Teacher Panel"

This week, I welcome a colleague who shares my crusade of teaching teenagers to be the best they can be through choral music. Jimmy Robertson is a veteran teacher from Garland, TX. In this episode we discuss the ways in which being a teacher can, at times, drain us of our joy. We both love … Continue reading "Episode 181: Finding Equilibrium in the Teacher Life with Jimmy Robertson"

The quest for diversity in Western art music has led to the influx of ‘Westernized’ African music into the choral canon, albeit tagged as ‘world music’. This approach to the inclusion of diverse repertoire has led to the homogenization of indigenousAfrican folk tunes by non-indigenous composers, thus creating Western-sounding African music. In this episode, we … Continue reading "Episode 180: The Performance Practice of African Choral Music with Chukwuebuka Ezeakacha"

Another year of Choralosophy has come to a close! In this episode I have collected short clips, commentary and show highlights from the top 10 episodes and milestones of the year! The criteria is a a bit complex, because the longer the episode is out, the more total people will hear it. So, to make … Continue reading "Episode 179: YOUR Favorite 2023 Episodes!"

Over the last few weeks I have noticed a storm after the calm in choral music circles. We saw a boil over in Texas when a clinician withdrew from a conference based on a letter from two members that made her feel unwelcome, and a downstream fallout stemming from how the organization handled the issue. … Continue reading "Episode 178: What the Heck is Going on With Choir People?"

This week, Dr. Anthony Trecek-King joins the Choralosophy conversation by joining me to discuss two related topics. The teaching of musical fundamentals in our classrooms AND how we can have better and more productive conversations about social justice and the inequities in our society. We range from concrete, in class activities to try with a … Continue reading "Episode 177: Teaching Skills not Songs with Anthony Trecek-King"

Over the last year, I have seen Dr. Thomas present twice on the importance of ensuring that the African American Spiritual is passed on to the next generations through our choral ensembles and music classrooms. In these presentations he also speaks eloquently about the challenges we face in doing so. We have parents, students and … Continue reading "Episode 176: Cementing the Spiritual as American Art with Dr. André Thomas"