CMS Young Men's Chorus - Visit 2

Today I focused on Kyle's musicianship. There was never a single moment in the rehearsal where I wasn't absolutely confident that Kyle not only knew everything on every page of every piece of music, but he also knew exactly how he wanted every note, phrase, and whole piece shape to sound. He has many, many strategies for each teaching move. In the piece, "Praise his holy name," Kyle was working on getting the men to sing with more accent. In a span of about a minute, he modeled what he was looking for, explained that an accent had a loud attack and then decayed quickly, and then had the men try that section while "karate chopping" their hands. After that, Kyle didn't stop listening for the accents, and would stop the choir when they didn't perform the accents as well has they had previously. After he worked on the accents with the men, the rest of the piece felt more rhythmic in general. 

Every time he modeled, while he might have had a more singular goal, he was able to communicate so many musical ideas that were also picked up by his singers, and that were also then present in his gesture. I feel like he was audiating his ideal sound while still being able to listen to exactly what he was getting, and added helpful teaching tools into his gesture, like pulling a string vertically for taller "ah vowels", to get the sound he was hearing closer to what he was audiating. And, of course, the whole time he seemed to be having fun which was infectious to his singers.