Conducting

Here are the answers that people have asked so far about the Conduct with Charisma workshop next November.

I spent a most interesting and productive evening on Tuesday evening with Hallmark of Harmony in Sheffield. They are in the process of developing a five-year plan for the chorus: they have already identified their four primary goals, and have a working-group assigned to each generating ideas about how they will achieve them. They asked me to come along in advisory role to work with them in profiling development needs for both chorus and musical leadership team.

The plan was, therefore, to meet with their director, Andy Allen, and some of the Music Team before the rehearsal, then to go and spend the first part of the rehearsal observing. They had organised things carefully so that I had opportunities to see all of the team in action. Then, in the second half of the evening, I took on a more orthodox coaching role, working with both the chorus and directors.

NAC delegates enjoying the sun at lunchtimeAt the weekend I had the pleasure of presenting at the National Association of Choirs annual conference, held this year on the shores of Lake Windermere. It was a most friendly and cheerful event – no doubt aided by the beautiful setting and glorious weather, though it was also clear that the one of the things the conference offers is a chance to maintain and renew the friendships people have made through the association.

The event was topped and tailed with association business: the AGM on Friday evening and a members’ open forum closed Sunday’s events. An exhibition of trade stands runs throughout the main body of the conference, and, as the last time I attended, the presentations include both practical sessions and informational ones. This year, Saturday’s programme was focused on choral skills, while Sunday saw a presentation by a tour company.

The Coton Centre in Tamworth is a wonderful venue for musical training eventsSaturday saw the Association of British Choral Directors Midlands Region hold a training day for conductors. There were two streams, one led by Sue Hollingworth for school teachers about the Sing Up programme, and I was presenting on the other for choral directors.

It was the second event at which I have been presenting recently where the group of participants felt almost perfectly constituted to offer a real range and breadth of perspectives. We had directors of church choirs, community choirs, long-established choral societies, male voice choirs and youth choirs. We had all ages from school-age to senior. We had beginners, seasoned directors, and those with some experience looking to build on their work so far.

Tuesday evening took me to Peterborough to work with Rhapsody Chorus and their director Helen Glavina. Their choice of repertoire for the evening was driven by the programme for their BBC Choir of the Year audition tomorrow (good luck!), but my remit for the evening was to help Helen refine and develop her directing technique. It is a supreme act of trust for a director to allow her technique to be dissected in front of her singers, but for those who take that leap, there are some immense benefits that can’t be achieved any other way.

The Director's RolesI spent an hour and half earlier this week with a director of a women’s chorus helping her identify ways in which she can develop her own and her singers’ skills. It’s an interesting process – directors are by temperament inquisitive and enjoy analysing what’s going on in musical and interpersonal situations, but their role tends to focus this attention away from themselves and onto all those people who both outnumber and rely on them.

At the start of the session, I presented her with the diagram above as a starting point. There are multiple different ways you can divide up a conductor’s various roles, but this seemed as good a starting point as any – its purpose was not to provide an exhaustive theory of conducting, after all, it was just there to give focus and structure to our discussions.

What is the collective noun for charismatic directors?
Saturday saw leaders of singers from around the country meeting in Birmingham for my workshop ‘Conduct with Charisma’, which regular readers will have seen advertised on my front page for the last few months. As you know, I have been blogging on this subject since last summer – and I have been researching it for over 3 years now. It started out as an off-shoot from my choral conducting book, and has developed into a fully-blown fascination in its own right.

Charisma is one of those things that a conductor is supposed to have, but is usually placed in a box marked ‘magic – do not think about’. Not helpful, especially to someone starting out in the craft, since it can so easily undermine your faith in your own legitimacy as a director. (Or is it only me who worried about this?)

So the day’s central theme was to explore the social dynamics of charismatic encounters, to understand that it’s not just about what the director does, but about a particular type of relationship between leader and group, and within the groups itself, that arises in particular types of situation.

The current issue of Research Issues in Music Education has an article examining the various functions of a conductor. In some ways it is an exemplary bit of research: well-rooted in the literature, clear in its rationale and methods, logical in the the drawing of its conclusions. But in other ways it demonstrates the problematic disconnect between conducting research as it appears in doctoral programmes and education journals and the lives of real musicians.