Constructing Successful Student Choirs for the Second Quarter of the 21st Century

Part One – Daunting
Part Two – Beyond Mere Possibility
Part Three – Listening
Part Four – Leading
Part Five – Following
Part Six – Courage vs. Shyness
Part Seven – Collaborating
Part Eight – Goodbye to Me First
Part Nine – Choral Music … Much More than Singing
Part Ten – Revealing Riches and Building Lives

Singing utilizes over a hundred muscles throughout the body to control breathing, articulate texts, and manage the sustained sound created by air passing intentionally over the vocal cords. The core mechanism involves the abdominal muscles, sometimes referred to as the diaphragm, and intercostal muscles (ribs) for breath support, laryngeal muscles for pitch, and facial/throat muscles for resonance. Is it any wonder that the vast majority of successful professional opera singers maintain daily workout and physical fitness routines?

If that weren’t enough complexity, it is also incumbent upon all ensemble singers to constantly listen for good tuning and thus adjust pitches as needed, to add to the balance and blend of the overall choral sound, to unify all vowels, and to nuance the sound with sensitive dynamics, elements of phrasing, and stylistic unity.

When one considers all that, it might seem that singing might not be worth all the effort. However, those of us who have given ourselves to choral music know that all the complexity is indeed worth the time, energy, effort, and work we give and inspire others to invest.

The capacity of the human brain to multitask is stunningly impressive. Under the right conditions and with capable leadership, many of these tasks can be bundled together for quick progress and enormous advancement in a fraction of the time a purely scientific view might indicate.

As choral directors in the 2020s, “under the right conditions” becomes one of the greatest challenges before us. The “capable leadership” is the high bar we endlessly set for ourselves, regardless of our levels of expertise, experience, or musical prowess.

Practically speaking, I teach that good singing begins with the act and constancy of listening. Really listening, not just in one dimension but in a muti-layered fashion. When one is serious about listening, many cues will be detected, signs which cry out for unity, harmony, balance, and sustaining. Moving beyond music into our everyday lives, think how much better our culture would be functioning today if we all truly listened to one another. And selective listening or just perceiving the face-value message is not adequate for healthy societies. It’s not helpful in choral music, either.

If we are singing good texts – words which encourage, provide comfort, invoke empathy, inspire compassion, and express deepest feelings – the ethos of the message can easily transform into rich pathos when sung by kind hearts inside caring human beings. If our singing consists of only fight songs, tribal demands, provincial themes, or one-dimensional grievances, the art becomes dwarfed and the effect becomes self-indulgent and non-redemptive.

Furthermore, part of the “under the right conditions” includes a choral space carved out of an oftentimes cruel culture, sacred and set aside as a time and place where EVERYONE is loved, accepted, and encouraged to be our best selves. This providing of the right conditions is now a more intentional task than it has ever been throughout my career. It is a crucial component in choral and community success.

As my years in choral music leadership tick upward, I am newly astonished to discover just how much my students (children, high schoolers, university students) teach me. The education I regularly receive from my decades-younger students is a treasure I never anticipated receiving when I was a young conductor. The magic of what is experienced in the San Antonio Youth Chorale is inextricably connected to our commitment to the two-way street of learning. The more fascinated I am with my own learning, the more I can inspire my students to maximize their own choral experience and to allow it to affect every fiber of their non-musical lives.

Indeed, choral music is about more than mere choral singing. It’s about blending, working as a team, learning from one another, experiencing awe together, and figuring out a way to love our neighbors and thus touch our communities for the better.

Randy Edwards