Customer Reviews

Choir Crackups

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Being a choir director, I bought this book hoping it would supply some jokes or icebreakers that I could use at the beginning of practice with the choir; I read through the whole book in less than five minutes. No jokes, no icebreakers. There were little known facts, cartoons, silly vocabulary such as D.C. al Fine: Famous French composer, Out of the mouths of babes saying such as you might find in your email but nothing that I could really use for the choir; just a 5 minute entertainment. I was very disappointed and certainly would not buy this book if I had it to do over.

You'd think you would have to be a specialist to enjoy this book, but you do not have to know anything about music--though there's nothing wrong with that, of course.

John Yarrington, who has put together many a convocation of teenage choirs, knows how to find fun in the sight of warbling throats. He has written the teen classics SOMEBODY'S GOT MY HYMNAL and SOMEBODY"S GOT MY ROBE. If you think there's something sacred about the choir robe itself, well, avoid this book like the plague because it is the one item of wardrobe that comes in for the most leg-pulling. Let's face it, there's something humorous about a bunch of grown men and women, or teens, wearing robes that date back from the Middle Ages before tailors learned how to make the legs for pants.

Church musicians have a reputation for being overly serious, this on top of the suspect reputation that we get for liking teens too much. Neither is true! I like teens as much as the next person, but I keep a sense of humor about them. Organists have a creepy history in the media, due to the PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, obssesed with a child until she grows up to be a lovely young teen, and also Dicken's disturbing cathedral organist, Edwin Drood, obsessed with his own niece! Yarrington deflects criticism by smiling wide and printing, in CHOIR CRACKUPS, topical panels from the popular comic strips FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE and the great FUNKY WINTERBEAN. He knows what touches the funnybone of teens both here in the USA and in Canada. But one thing I should accentuate, this book is not only for teens and the adults who work with them. It is for general music practictioners too.

If you are curious about what a church musician finds humorous, buy this book, and read it out loud to your choir next time you find tension setting in to your next Stabat Mater. here you will find a list (a "Liszt" Yarrington amusingly transposes) of things to buy at a food court! You could buy "Mozart-rella cheese" or "orange Schubert." Or even "Little Debussy Snack Cakes," a take off on Little Debbie, so you know there's a Southern flavor here in CHOIR CRACKUPS. Yarrington teaches at Houston Baptist University where he specializes in the changing voice.

This should not even be classified as a book. It is more like a pamphlet, and it contains old, poorly presented stories and jokes. A VERY weak product, not worth the money I spent getting it. Disappointed that Amazon would carry such shoddy stuff.