Customer Reviews

Sound Advice: Becoming a Better Children's Choir Conductor

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Jean Ashworth Bartle is the director of the Toronto Children's Chorus, an excellent children's choir and one of the best in the world. This book is a wonderful addition to children's choir conductors around the world.

The first few chapters are about teaching children to sing. They cover aspects such as teaching style and delivery, lesson content, and common problems found in children's singing. Following chapters cover a checklist for ideal rehearsals and performance preparation, developing music reading literacy, discipline, organization, auditions, conducting an orchestra, touring and recording, and great appendices.

As one can see, most of the book is dedicated to things which are NOT actually conducting, for very little of conducting is actually conducting. Bartle's writing style is densely packed, and the reader should take care not to gloss over important sections.

One of Bartle's main theses is that children can achieve great artistic performances and don't need to sing "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" or Johnny Goodguy's latest arrangement of "Y.M.C.A." They can sing Bach, Leonard Bernstein, and folk songs/demanding music from cultures all over the world.

Often a new choir director finds that their training has left them somewhat unprepared when it comes to the subjects of discipline, rehearsal pedagogy, auditions, conducting an orchestra, and various other administrative aspects of "running a program." This book seems designed to focus on those skills.

Consequently, there is little in the book regarding vocal technique, conducting gesture, score study and analysis, and other related topics--there are other great books out there on those subjects.

For other books on church choir directors, consult books by John Bertalot. Other related books are Directing the Choral Music Program by Kenneth Philips and Chorus Confidential by William Dehning. Great books on vocal technique include those by James McKinney, Oren Brown, and Clifton Ware.

Though church conductors will also find great ideas, I think Bartle's book is an excellent resource to any children's choir or community choir conductor, especially beginners. Enjoy it!