Coaching

Over the past few weeks, Magenta has undertaken a quartet project which has done all kinds of good things for us, individually and collectively. The initial rationale behind it was two-fold: first to generate a little more repertoire for a long gig we have coming up, and second as part of our 2011 goal to build all singers’ independence on their parts.

Back in May I asked who might be interested, and had 14 volunteers out of a choir of then 18 singers, which we all thought was a pretty good response rate. One later dropped out, but we still had 4 different quartets on the go, heading for a night in mid-July when we would all perform to each other. (The numerate will notice that this involved some doubling up.) I offered the three quartets in which I wasn’t singing a couple of 1-hour coaching sessions each en route, so long as they made sure they had rehearsed together before coming to see me.

I had a fun evening on Tuesday coaching Welwyn Harmony. Earlier in the year they had commissioned an arrangement from me of ‘When I Fall in Love’, and part of our agenda on Tuesday was to work on this. I never lose the thrill of the first time I hear an arrangement sung – it’s like being in two places at once to hear something that used to just exist inside my head becoming physically audible!

And of course the possibility that I might be asked to coach a group I’ve arranged for is an important force to keep me honest as an arranger. It’s so easy, when you’re sitting at home by yourself to think, ‘Well it’s a bit awkward, but I’m sure the baritones will manage it.’ But if you know you’re going to have to face them, and indeed help them round the obstacle course you’ve constructed for them, it’s a great motivation to make the effort to make the lines singable.

On Sunday I was back with my friends in Bristol Fashion, for my fourth coaching visit since May 2009. And what a difference they have made in two years! The clarity, resonance and confidence in their singing has really improved, and each time there are more singers on the risers – it is a sure sign that things are going well when you have more people wanting to join than are leaving.

One of the encouraging aspects of coaching this chorus is that each time I go, I find the things we were working on last time well embedded and secure, allowing us to move onto new challenges. The chorus uses the technique of bubbling for continuity of breath and enhanced resonance with so much more ease and security than this time last year, and the issues over synchronisation we focused on last August are likewise much improved.

I spent Monday evening in Sheffield working with Carfield Community Choir on their performance skills. Last time I saw them we were working on ways to develop a sense of ensemble, and they have definitely developed a much greater sense of cohesiveness since then. They are now at the stage where they are ready to move on from a definition of success that is about not making mistakes to one that is more artistically ambitious, and it was a great pleasure to help them explore this new and exciting territory.

Jim Henry in action

Another of the many delights at the recent BABS Convention was a masterclass run by Jim Henry on the first afternoon. Dr Jim was at the convention as bass in the 2009 International Champion quartet Crossroads, but of course he is also director of the Ambassadors of Harmony and Director of Choral Studies at the University of Missouri-St Louis. So it was only sensible to get the benefit of his choral expertise while he was there!

He spent an hour or so working with a large chorus made up of the Great Western Chorus of Bristol augmented by a large number of audience members who were invited to participate. He worked on standard elements of choral craft - breath, vowel and placement – with a brief diversion into the world of rhythmic integrity. So, the content was nothing surprising, but what was striking was the degree of improvement he effected in a very short time.

Three things in particular struck me as central to his effectiveness – and they were less to do with what he was doing than how he was doing it.

Warming up on Saturday morningI was back in the Bristol area for the weekend to work with Fascinating Rhythm chorus. Since I last coached them they had had a very successful contest experience, scoring an average of 71.8 at LABBS Prelims in April,* a significant jump in their scores since the previous November. One of the questions that we faced for the weekend was to what extent was a case of out-performing themselves as a fluke and to what extent it represented a leap in standard that was capable of consolidation.

I realised overnight on Saturday that I had been pushing the chorus considerably harder than I had on my last visit, and reflected that it was probably a subliminal response to their new higher scores, and in two dimensions. On one hand, I was responding to assumptions I had about the working methods and levels of discipline and stamina it takes to get to a level that scores in the 70s, so was going in to work at that level of intensity. On the other, I was expecting a certain standard of performance, and anytime I didn’t get it, I worked at getting the quality up to that suggested by their recent success.

I was recently re-reading Mark Forster’s helpfully-titled book Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play and – as you often find on re-visiting books – noticed a point that hadn’t particularly struck me before. The book as a whole is very good at getting inside the psychology of procrastination, of what’s going on when we resist doing things that feel a bit too hard. The particular issue that caught my attention this time is when you’re getting down to something and your brain suddenly pops up with something else that needs your attention.

Tuesday night saw me returning to the London City Singers for a refresher on the things we’d worked on at their retreat back in February. This gave me another chance to learn about how people retain things we’ve worked on together – a central part of my ongoing quest to become ever more effective as a coach, and to understand the inner workings of my fellow singers.