Insights and information
about music, brain health, aging, and much more.
Song Spotlight: I Heard It Through the Grapevine
If you’ve ever wanted to sing this song, now’s your chance. We’re singing a version for choir this summer based on the No. 1 hit by Marvin Gaye. His cover version topped the charts starting on December 14, 1968. Mark Brymer, one of the top arrangers of pop working...
Song Spotlight: Walkin’ My Baby Back Home
It's always interesting to hear a rather different version of a song that you feel like you know inside out... well, make that many different versions! Let me take you on a musical tour of many decades, with this hit song as our vehicle, “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home,”...
Guess Who’s Singing Beside You? Tom Wolff
If the Sounds Good Choir were a baseball team, Tom Wolff would be a utility infielder—the guy who shifts between shortstop and second base and plays both positions well. In choral parlance, Tom might be called a utility vocalist. That’s because he can come into the...
Is Laughter Really the Best Medicine?
What did the drummer name her twin daughters?Anna 1, Anna 2. What's small and red and has a rough voice?A hoarse radish! Whether these jokes made you groan or giggle, undoubtedly a smile crossed your face as the meaning became clear. Research shows that you don't need...
Bring on the Funny
We asked for your best (worst?), most groan-inducing, belly-laugh provoking musical jokes and puns... and you sent us plenty. Some of you gifted us with a list of your favorites, while others shared entire websites devoted to music-related humor; one person even wrote...
Perfectly ordinary, perfectly funny
There is a wonderful world of funny things that happen during rehearsal. Most of the time, they are just a natural outgrowth of the camaraderie and relationship that any conductor has with singers. Recently, for example, at a Gold Coast rehearsal that I led, we were...