BCCF Choral Directorship Course

What to Expect from the CDC

Choral Conductors: How to make your singers love you even more than they already do... and hear them exclaim, “Where did you learn to do that?!?”

So you find yourself in that hallowed spot, standing in front of a group of eager singers. You raise you arms and anticipate the wonderful sound that will instantly materialize: full and rich, perfectly balanced and in tune, gorgeous pure vowels!

“Wait a minute!” starts the conversation going on in your brain as you smile, in as encouraging a manner as you can possibly muster: “What is that warbling? Altos, you’re so flat, I just cannot have the piano strings let out any longer! And I still haven’t seen anything but the top of that tenor’s head, as he tries to figure out where I am in the music”. You put these mental conversations aside and hope that your encouraging smile will help. But when you have reached the bottom of your choral bag of tricks and the music is still stuck on the page, where will you turn next to help you and your singers make that gorgeous sound that’s been flying around in your own head?

If you can take one week out of your busy schedule to immerse yourself in the joys of getting folks to sing better than ever before, then look no further than the British Columbia Choral Federation’s Summer Choral Conductor’s Workshop, held each year at the end of August. There is a place for everyone at this wonderful workshop: it does not matter if you come from a background of voice performance and have sung for years; or if you are just finding your way around your church’s new organ and are not the “singing type”; or if you love working with children, want to start a “Kiddies Choir”, and only have your Grade 5 piano exam under your belt; or if you love to sing and have just enough musical experience that, by default, the choir wants you to lead them!

You will be placed in a group with “like-experienced” colleagues, so that the pace of the sessions is neither too quick nor slow. And, do not worry, just because you may be dealing with which way that second beat goes when you’re in ¾ time, it doesn’t mean that you are not studying with the best choral experts in land! Margaret Riding and her able team of organizers have gathered together the top talent in conducting, accompanying and vocal pedagogy. All of these great teachers understand that each one of the participants will come to the sessions with varying degrees of experience and expertise; they will give you ideas and tools to take your singers to unimaginable heights! One of the standard phrases from last year was, “I just can’t wait until I get back to my singers and see their faces when I try this one on them!”

Make sure to take advantage of the individual coaching opportunities. There is nothing quite so humbling as seeing yourself on video, when you realize why your singers react to a certain gesture with a particular sound! Some of us realized that we wanted to micro-manage our poor singers to the point that we were bouncing around, gesticulating every syllable and note and giving the text with our over-active mouths, all at the same time; others of us broke through some restrictive thinking and freed up our bodies to allow our singers to express with a glorious, free tone; and all of us learned that it was better to simply show a gesture than to talk endlessly “about” it.

One of the most touching things about the workshop last year was the realization that all the participants really wanted to share their ideas and experiences. Especially during the all-too-short breaks, we were gleaning ideas from each other. We shared ideas about repertoire, warm-ups, vocal problems and anomalies, administration and fundraising (yes, we did get into that “f” word!), and even came up with solutions in dealing with that rather “diva-ish” soprano who insists she still should be singing first, and could not possibly defer to second soprano!

So if you want to spend a week singing and laughing and learning more than you ever could have imagined, do yourself (and your choir) the favour of attending the next BCCF Choral Directorship Course workshop.

Fiona Blackburn started her “choral life” as a soprano in the Vancouver Chamber Choir and caught the conducting bug a few years ago. She has led the Mission Community Choristers, Maple Ridge Choral Society, AcademyWest Schola Cantorum and is the artistic director of the newly formed British Columbia Girls Choir. Fiona has her Bachelor of Music and Education degrees and, in 2002, was awarded the Don Wright Scholarship for Excellence in Choral Education through the University of British Columbia. When Fiona is not encouraging others to sing, she fills her time with solo and recording work, adjudicating festivals and leading (AND TAKING!) voice and choral workshops.