Coaching

I spent Saturday with my friends at Bristol A Cappella, revisiting their set from the European and BABS Conventions back in May in preparation for the World Mixed Chorus contest in Germany next Spring. By now they are deeply familiar with the music and their performance plans for it, and this presents the opportunity to do the kind of deep work that only becomes possible when you no longer have to focus on what you are doing and can direct your attention to the how.

Much of our work focused on listening techniques, finding ways to enhance everyone’s perception of what they were doing, since the first stage of refining your execution is increasing the acuity with which you hear the detail. Duetting inevitably played a part in this, with a lot of micro-adjustments making themselves through the process in addition to the explicit observations singers made as we walked through the process.

In the character of robots...

Wednesday took me back to Coulsdon for another visit to Surrey Harmony. Two months on from my previous visit, they had had time to work with the ideas we explored in June, and we could see what was working, what needed further support, and what could usefully be added. And once again, we were working both to support the development of their director’s rehearsal and conducting skills and to build the skills of the singers.

Indeed, these two things often work hand in hand. Their MD Penny had a clear idea of the challenges she was facing: things that she knew she wanted to improve but was struggling to get the results she wanted. Hence, the coaching processes of diagnosis and intervention served both to help solve the problems and to model ways to go about solving them.

Wednesday took me down to Coulsdon to see my friends at Surrey Harmony. I last visited them just as we were coming out of covid, and I have very fond memories of the joy of being able to get back to coaching again with them. Since then they have had a change of director, and their new one, Penny, is by chance someone I had previously known through the Association of British Choral Directors.

Our remit on this occasion was to help the director with her musical leadership skills to develop her effectiveness in rehearsal. Part of this involved mediating between the classical choral experience she brings with her and the barbershop heritage of the chorus. There is a good deal of common ground in the praxis of the two genres, but there are also differences that one doesn’t always realise are there until you find yourself in the middle of a miscommunication. This was a journey I travelled myself nearly 30 years ago, and it informed the research questions of both my books, so it was a question I felt I understood well.

Our MDs of the future

Last year’s joint LABBS/BABS Directors Weekend had such large numbers of delegates that we had no room to accommodate, or indeed to meet the needs of, aspiring directors of tomorrow. So I promised that we would do something specifically for them in 2025, and it happened on Saturday.

The day was modelled on the introductory one-day courses I run periodically for the Association of British Choral Directors, but tailored to the needs of this one choral genre. So, the morning had class sessions on various aspects of the MD’s role, including tuition on the fundamental elements of conducting technique, while the afternoon was spent doing practical work, with each delegate taking it in turns to direct the rest in song and receiving individual coaching.

I’ve just spent a happy Sunday with SpecsAppeal, working with them on techniques to help them build their unit sound as a quartet. I’ve known them for some years, having arranged for them a number of times, but this is the first time I’ve actually coached them. I have enjoyed seeing how they have grown as an ensemble over time, and we all came into the day with a sense of alignment between what they are currently focused on and what I felt I could help them with.

Sometimes a coaching session is all about exploring a particular repertoire, and you might have thought that this might have been the case on Sunday as I had arranged both of the songs we worked on for them. But in fact, there was relatively little they needed from me in terms of concept or shape; they had picked the songs and knew exactly what they wanted to do with them, so other than helping them execute those intentions more effectively in a couple of places, there was very little we did that wouldn’t apply to any song they might have chosen to sing.

If you are familiar with Italian at all, you will not be surprised to learn that the quartet I spent Saturday afternoon with usually sings on Mondays. It was a session focused on techniques and methods rather than preparing for a specific performance occasion: the repertoire was chosen as useful vehicles to work on, but the intent was to work on things that could then be transferred to all their other songs.

There were two broad areas we focused on: first, vocal technique, second, ensemble techniques. They arrived as four singers comfortably in control of their vocal apparatus (I note that the tonal centre did not waver all afternoon), but with potential to develop greater resonance.

A working majority of the directors present: the ones who didn't quite fit in the pic are also lovely!

On Saturday we held the annual Directors Day for the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers. Over the years we have focused increasingly on finding ways to include as much practical, hands-on work for all delegates as possible, as that is a core skills which can only really be developed by doing. This often involves, as it did this year, work in small groups where people take it in turns to direct and sing for each other, facilitated by a coach.

The faculty always meet the night before to road-test our coaching models. This is partly so that we go into the day confident about how they work, and having figured out where the pitfalls may lie and what to do about them. And in fact it often seems as if the very act of contingency planning makes it less likely that our anticipated difficulties arise as we can head them off before they happen. But it’s also so that we get some time to nourish our own praxis, both as directors and as coaches. We learn a lot in these sessions to inform both the coaching that follows the next day and our own week-to-week directing.

Saturday took me back to work with my friends in Bristol A Cappella on the set they are preparing for both the European Barbershop Convention in early May, and the BABS national Convention at the end of the month. As I mentioned after my last visit, whilst we have been working together for many years now, this is the first time I have arranged for them, and it brings a whole new level of intimacy to the relationship. One of the singers remarked to me about how much they wanted to do me proud, to which I replied that that was how I felt about them.