Insights and information
about music, brain health, aging, and much more.
What Conductors Actually Do, Part 1
I know. We work magic. We make your whole day worthwhile. We light up the room. We have you leave rehearsal with a spring in your step. We cause you to forget your troubles and float on clouds of inspiration. We fill your souls with good things. Well, that’s on a...
Song Spotlight – Jingle Bells Hallelujah: A Holiday Mashup
By the time you finish reading this post, you will have listened to my piece Jingle Bells Hallelujah. My purpose in writing this blogpost is to flesh out for you some of the background that appears very briefly in the printed score for this piece. You are a curious...
A Caregiver’s Perspective: Dementia & the Transformative Power of Music
Editor’s Note: The benefits of group singing for people with dementia are well-documented, and apparent in the joy on their faces as they sing. Chicago-based Sounds Good Choir runs two choral programs with a total of eight choirs throughout Chicago and its suburbs:...
Singing Together Is Magical—It Might Just Change the World
A few months ago Margaret Huyck, a Sounds Good singer and a family friend for 50 years, asked if I would come and lead a sing-along of “golden oldies and protest songs” at a Chicago Hyde Park Village CHPV) gathering; (Margaret is also one of the co-founders...
SONG SPOTLIGHT: When the Song of the Angels Is Stilled
Singers regularly come up to me at rehearsal—and I imagine this is true for all of our conductors—and tell us how much they are enjoying the music. Repertoire is not only an important feature of our choirs for older adults. It’s one of the building blocks of any great...
Guess Who’s Singing Beside You? John Mueller: A Poet, a Playwright, a Porsche Racer
As I reviewed the transcript of my conversation with John Mueller, I kept hearing Frank Sinatra singing “That’s Life,” his 1966 hit about life’s ups and downsThe song features this refrain: “I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.” John...