MMEA Mid-Winter Clinic 2015 Day 2, Part 1

I posted a three part post on Day 1 of the Clinic earlier.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The Friday morning sessions began with the Choir Open Forum at 8:00 AM.  Lead by MMEA Choral - Vice President Melanie Kjellberg of Andover High School.  The forum continued the annual discussion regarding MSHSL Large Group and Solo and Small Ensemble Contests coming up, as well as ideas for revamping the audition procedure for the MMEA All-State Choir.  It is a good forum to share ideas and concerns.  One important note is that the MMEA is always looking for section leaders for the All-State Choir camp in August.  If one is interested in participating in that experience, Melanie Kjellberg would love to hear from you.  Click the MMEA hyperlink to contact her.

At 9:15 AM, Dr. Jonathan Reed of Michigan State University lead an interest session entitled: Where the Boys Are.... Men's Choir 101: "This is not art..."

     Attending this session continued MMEA's initiative to bring more young men into choral music, and my own desire to re-evaluate and fine tune my approaches in retaining the young male singers at my school.  Of my interest sessions focused on young male's, I probably enjoyed Dr. Reed's the most.  He covered much of the same topic discussed by Dr. Sieck and Professor Bass on Thursday, but added some additional information points I found valuable.

    One resource the Dr. Reed referenced was Perspective on Males and Singing, specifically the chapter written by Dr. Patrick Freer, of Georgia State University.  Dr. is an expert in the male changing voice, and is a great resource for young adolescent male singers. I have attended a session lead by Dr. Freer in the past when he presented at the Iowa Choral Director's Association Summer Symposium a few years back.  (As a side note, his text on middle school choirs is a very helpful resource, even for experienced educators.)  The larger point that Dr. Reed made while referencing Freer's research, is that the current repertoire for young adolescent choirs has not caught up with the research, and educators MUST be willing to rewrite the score to work with the singers they have in their groups.

    The overarching point of Dr. Reed's presentation is that male singers want to feel successful and that they are improving as singers in their class.  At this age we as educators need to focus on the process, and not the end result.  So we should not worry about achieving performance perfection in our young adolescent ensembles, because it is a virtual impossibility.  What we should focus on is developing a fluidity in the vocal musculature as we work on transitions from the different registrations in and out of the passagio. (For more information on this reference the Dr. Sieck presentation here.) At this point we discussed a number of vocalization exercises, transitioning downward from the head voice through the passagio to the chest or modal voice.