A Few Introductory Thoughts

​Let me start simply: I am truly grateful to be your new Artistic Director. I admire this choir, its history, its legacy, its community, and its musical contributions to our Capital Region. I have a vision for this choir, for its sound, for the kinds of choral singing I know we can produce together. Frankly, I have always had this vision of choral music, 

and in Octavos I feel I have an outlet to share this vision.
 
When I stand in front of the ninety-some-odd singers of our choir, I can hear the potential in the sound, feel the potential in the breath, in the energy. I’ve always felt community choirs aren’t given enough credit. You’ve done the hardest part already, haven’t you? You’ve shown up. And as a conductor, I am grateful. At the end of the day, I don’t make the sound, you do. I can wave my arms, I can tell you what to do and how to do it to the best of my knowledge, but I don’t make the final product: The sound. And I hope that together we can continue to craft this product into something greater. You are more than just singers, you are musicians. Artists. That sounds more artistic, doesn’t it? It certainly carries more weight, more emotional input, perhaps? That is why we sing, why we make art together as people, I think: because we want to feel.
​ 
​With this in mind, my goal for now is to continue to communicate, as clearly as I can, the choral techniques I feel are too often brushed off in choirs of any level: fundamentals of singing technique and diction, and in starting with this, we can elevate the level of technical understanding to form a more firm foundation from which to raise our emotional depth of understanding. In digging into Messiah this idea couldn’t be more clear to me. The Advent/Christmas section is of course wonderful, joyful music, but to me the emotional depth really hits at the start of the second part: The Passion. “Behold the Lamb of God,” “Surely He Hath Borne our Griefs,” and “He Trusted in God” are emotionally intense, not only because of the subject, but because of how that subject is set musically. The sharp dotted rhythms demand a sharp level of diction, and these vocal lines are an ideal example of why I focus so much on the technical production of vowel sounds. I’ve sung under choral conductors who understand singing technique, and I’ve sung under ones who clearly don’t, to me it’s not enough to simply say ‘sing with a pure vowel’ or even less helpful ‘sing with a better sound,’ you have to explain your meaning. You can’t run until you can walk… and practicing music is a lot like practicing a sport or going to the gym, and there are many similarities in their merits, but I’ll save that for another time.
 
I hope you have enjoyed my rehearsal process so far. And in this Messiah run I hope you have begun to get a picture of the kind of conductor I am, and the kind of music making I aspire to share.
 
—Andrew