Improving a Volunteer Choir

I recently nabbed a few minutes with my busy colleague Angela Westhoff-Johnson, music director and choral director extraordinaire, to interview her about how to take a volunteer choir to the next level.

Very few church choirs have the luxury of hiring professional singers, which is obviously one way to quickly raise the level of musicianship in a group. The music director for a volunteer parish choir/ensemble therefore has a complex task that not only includes improving musicianship, but also keeping the experience enjoyable and meaningful for the people who are not getting paid to be there. Volunteers may be devoting many hours to any ministry in the church, and music is no exception. As the director, you want them to want to keep coming back, while also wanting them to improve. Here are a few ideas.

Social functions

Promoting friendships and a sense of community is important, especially with smaller choirs. People want to feel that they belong. Some ideas: hold a beginning-of-the-year choir party on the first night of rehearsal after a summer break (more on that in the next point); go out for coffee after a morning liturgy; celebrate choir member birthdays during rehearsal once a month; serve a simple supper between a feast day liturgy and the rehearsal that follows, such as on Ash Wednesday.

Take a vacation

Angela is a strong advocate for having the choir take the summer off, using cantors during those weeks instead. There are several good reasons for this, just one of which is that choir members miss singing in the choir and return each autumn with renewed enthusiasm.

Fostering musicianship

Especially when you are building a choir program, dedicate half an hour of rehearsal time each week to pedagogy — sight singing, vocal production, etc. Treat this part of rehearsal like a voice lesson.

Consider having each section come half an hour early to rehearsal and work separately with them. Perhaps sopranos and altos one week, and then tenors and basses the next. As the choir gets larger, then consider separate S, A, T, B sectional rehearsals. It’s not a bad idea to do this with instrumentalists, too.

Bring in a white board or projector and write music notation sight-reading exercises to progressively challenge your singers. For interval training, Angela likes the 1, 1-2- 1, 1-2-3-2-1 (etc.) exercises. This is a great way to teach singers intervals, which are important for sight-singing. Skipping scale degrees as you sing also helps develop an internal sense of rhythm. 

A few mistakes to avoid

Angela says that the biggest mistake you can make as a director is selecting music that is too advanced and doing it poorly. Instead, start by having your choir sing in unison; by doing so, the choir cannot hide behind parts. Unified vowels, good tone, ensemble cutoffs — singing in unison is the best way to address these issues. As Angela puts it, “if you can’t sing in unison, you can’t sing in parts!”

Get away from using the piano as a crutch during rehearsal. Singers can become lazy when they always get their pitches and rhythms fed to them by the piano. With the Responsorial Psalm, for instance, play it once through on the piano, then make the choir sing it unison, a cappella. 

“That was mostly not too horrible!”

How do you compliment your choir? Compliment their improvement. “That sounds so much better” is more effective than saying “that sounds great” when it doesn’t. Be genuine. Find things that are good and point them out: “You sang that with a supported sound,” “Altos, you shaped that line better; thank you.” Strategic compliments can be useful too: “I really like that very open ‘Ah’ sound” for example; it makes them think about what vowel sound they are singing in other places too.

You cannot be gracious enough when working with a volunteer choir. Thank them for their ministry; it is a large commitment they are making to devote that time each week.

Soloists

Use soloists sparingly. If you are wanting a smaller vocal texture in a piece, it is much better to have a section sing. Contemporary music tends to lean on the use of soloists more, but even in that genre, try to expand to using a section or schola whenever possible. (There are exceptions, such as the cantor singing the Responsorial Psalm. But there are many places in scores labeled “cantor” that are equally effective using a small group.) One of the reasons for using soloists sparingly, is that leaning on soloists too much tends to contribute to a lack of commitment among other choir members who feel unnecessary if they’re not the soloist. As the director, you want to encourage the reality that everyone needs to be here to create the choral sound that we all want.

You deserve a break

Consider taking a break during a long rehearsal; for instance, rehearse from 7 p.m. to 8:20 p.m., take a 10-minute break, then go over select pieces again from 8:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. This is as much for promoting social camaraderie between choir members as to provide a mental respite from an intensive rehearsal.

 

This article was originally published in Today’s Liturgy © 2018 OCP. All rights reserved.

 

About the Author

Rick Modlin

A pianist, composer, arranger, orchestrator and conductor, Rick Modlin has written and performed extensively in jazz, contemporary, classical, musical theatre and church music. During his over 30-year tenure with OCP, he has composed, arranged songs, and edited countless pieces of music and resources. Along with serving as a pastoral musician for more than 25 years, Rick has also played keyboard for several national Broadway musical tours. The longtime manager of music development at OCP, Rick is now director of music publishing creative.