Guidance notes on Repertoire Selection/Programme Planning

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Friday 11th October 2024
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One of my projects as I settle in with Rainbow Voices is setting up processes to involve choir members in choosing our repertoire. The plan is to harvest ideas from choir members and our audiences, and then have small working groups to compile programmes from these ideas for our main performances each year. As part of that process I was writing some guidance notes for the working groups, and realised that they may be useful to other folk too, so am publishing them here. Indeed, a lot of what follows is drawn from materials I have written for conductor training and/or conversations I have had with conductors I have been mentoring, so some of you may have seen parts of this in other contexts already!

1. Sourcing material

  • Assume you’ll be considering at least 3 times as many pieces as you’ll actually sing, better up to 5 times as many
  • Crowd-source ideas from within the ensemble
  • Keep an ‘ideas bucket’ on the go all the time
  • Look both for song ideas (and then investigate choral arrangements), and for original choral music and existing arrangements (what choirs are already singing)
  • Youtube is your friend

A Day of Discoveries with abcd

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Tuesday 8th October 2024
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Selfie or it didn't happen...Selfie or it didn't happen...

I spent a richly rewarding day on Saturday sight-singing through choral music by women. The day, hosted by the Association of British Choral Directors, was the brainchild of Amy Bebbington, who led us through the repertoire with clarity of gesture and purpose, and shared insights into the pieces’ backgrounds and musical detail. We also had the pleasure of the company of three of the composers whose music we sang, along with several publishers and agents. One of the things abcd has always been good at is connecting people who want to supply choral music with people who want to sing it.

Warm-Ups for Different Occasions

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Tuesday 1st October 2024
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Starting with a new choir last month has had me thinking a lot about warm-ups. What does this particular group of people need?, where needs are conceived both in vocal/musical terms and social/emotional terms. And with my first few weeks with Rainbow Voices having been preceded by an audition in which they decided to have me carry on as their new MD, and then followed a few weeks into term by a New Members evening, I have also been thinking about the difference between your regular, weekly warm-up and workshop warm-ups which set up stand-alone occasions rather than forming part of an ongoing working relationships.

From a structural perspective, I approach both types of warm-up in the same way (as outlined here). The rational objectives for both are the same: to prepare body and mind for singing together. But the emotional needs of the singers in the different scenarios are distinctly different.

Workshopping with Junction 14

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Tuesday 17th September 2024
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jcn14sep24

I spent Saturday in Milton Keynes where I had been asked to deliver a workshop on Vocal Health and Developing Resonance with Junction 14 Ladies A Cappella. I have worked with the group every so often over quite a few years, but always previously in the more standard coaching format. It made an interesting change to approach the day through a single theme. It was overall probably physically less tiring than a coaching day – there were many more opportunities to sit down – but also more cognitively tiring as we were dealing with information as well as skills.

The day was structured around exploring the fundamental elements of vocal craft, introduced in the order in which one needs to get them established in order to set up the instrument: body, breath, phonation and range in the morning, moving onto the resonant cavities in the afternoon. Each involved some sharing of concepts, some exploring in exercises, and some application to repertoire.

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