June 2010

I recently received an email from Dr Carl Smith, a choral director based in El Paso, discussing among other things ideas from the book Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman. In particular, he was interested in the idea of ‘savoring’, and how that might intersect with the conductorly notion of charisma. He said:

To Seligman, "savoring" is is "...the awareness of pleasure and of the deliberate conscious attention to the experience of pleasure." Perhaps another way to describe the term is "being in the moment."

I have very recently learned (and am STILL learning!) to focus on what is happening right in front of me NOW and enoying the pleasure. In choral rehearsal at with the small church choir I conduct, it means to listen intently with a smile and with positive feedback to myself and the singers. IS THAT A PART OF "CHARISMA?"

My immediate response was: good question.

Last year, over on the Facebook group for Barbershop Arrangement and Composition, Jim Emery raised the following question:

I do actually have several arrangements that are OK but not stellar. One was performed in contest by my international competitor level quartet. Several others found their way to our quartet CD. But they seem kind of vanilla. Short of just "getting more creative", I'd love to exchange ideas for how to approach sprucing them up.

(Actually, while I’m at it I’ll make this implicit plug for the FB group more explicit. It’s not maybe as active as it might be, but it has some really good people involved in it, and has a wonderful range of experience, from relative beginners to some of the biggest names out there. If you’ve not been over there, do go check it out.)

Anyway, Jim’s was one of those questions that has stayed with me. He’s really put his finger on a particular dilemma: it’s all very well to recognise that you want your arrangements to be more creative, but how do you go about making that happen?

Back in 1996, when Highcliffe Junior Choir won the title of Sainsbury’s Youth Choir of the Year, I heard their founder-director Mary Denniss make a comment in an interview that has stayed with me ever since. She was asked if she ever had children join the choir who couldn’t sing in tune. ‘Well, yes, of course,’ she replied, ‘but they pick it up after a while.’

It wasn’t just that she was so pragmatic that struck me, it was the fact that she said it so kindly. It occurred to me that much of her success in turning ordinary school children into one of the country’s best choirs lay in this calm and confident trust in her singers’ ability to learn.

HIC's integrated social space

The last weekend in May saw Britain’s barbershoppers return to one of their favourite venues for this year’s BABS Convention. The Harrogate International Centre provides not only a good-sized auditorium and enough ancillary rooms for changing and warm-ups for 37 choruses, but a wonderful central space for the social interactions that fit in an around the formal events of contest and shows. The continuity of space from area to area and level to level allows everyone to feel they are part of the same occasion, while the way the space is broken up into somewhat separately defined areas gives a sense of cosiness and intimacy.

The convention had enjoyed considerable publicity beforehand, including an article in the Independent on Sunday the previous week, which rather confusingly presented a picture of the quartet The Cardinals from 1949 as an illustration for a feature on 2008 BABS champions Monkey Magic. It also gave a nice example of how the journalistic research process is well-suited to perpetuating errors and misunderstandings; I’m sure any of their interviewees would have been happy to put the writer right on their assertion that ‘when entering competitions members are restricted to performing a list of traditional songs’.