One of the highlights of my life was the 11 years I spent with The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble. We sang, we recorded, and we gave singing workshops. Every summer at Smith College for two weeks—and that’s how I got to know and love Northampton! Also long weekends in Brattleboro and Woodstock, VT. One day workshops in NYC. And one-offs at various places where we were also giving concerts.
The group had been formed as a performing organization and the workshop teaching had been an add-on. Teaching is a prime income source in the performing arts and over time became the backbone of what we did—we were, in my judgment, a teaching group that also sang, not a singing group that also taught. and we brought much joy to many amateur and aspiring professional singers at those workshops.
The goal was proficient one-on-a-part small ensemble singing. We welcomed people of all achievement levels and worked on improving their skills relative to where they were. Some people were learning how to sing a round or hold a harmony part. Others were exploring the finer points of interpreting polyphony. Sometimes there was tension between aspiration and practicality, and a large part of our jobs was handling exactly that: gently showing people what they were capable of and what they could be capable of with appropriate work. And also, sometimes, what wasn’t reasonable.
One discussion that kept coming up in the group was how to define our objective. Was it to teach or to provide recreation? The answer of course was a balance of both, evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Teaching by itself was welcomed by some and drove others away. Cruise Director attitude wasn’t valuable to most. And the recreation part came both from the music itself and from the annual renewed connections of friends who came back to the workshops year after year.
I was doing a lot of work with my therapist and with men’s groups at the same time and found that the facilitation skills of the singing workshops cross-pollinated with the other parts of my life. Each informed the others. I grew into what I did. And loved how the personal management skills interacted with the music making.
In The Mankind Project there is much emphasis on using “I statements” and taking responsibility for one’s self. Thus a centerpiece of my singing/teaching work became encapsulated in a speech I made at the beginning of each workshop. Usually something like this:
The human voice is a secondary sexual characteristic like a peacock’s feathers, a display characteristic which develops at puberty. Handle other people’s voices with gentleness. Telling your neighbor “you’re flat” is just like insulting their looks. Take personal responsibility for your music-making rather than policing the others in your group. A better response to an intonation issue is “I can’t find my place in this chord, can we practice tuning it?” The group facilitator may have to step in if that doesn’t work but it keeps the group dynamic clean. And that chord might not ever be really in tune—the voices in that particular group that day may be doing the best they can that day. Another example of “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”
I learned A LOT at those Smith workshops! And it was you, Richard, who showed me a style and place for my particular imperfect voice. Though I always wanted to sing Monteverdi!