Page 47 - April.indd

and a voice teacher. The English teacher, a displaced invent approaches that would relate to their abilities
Southerner with a charming drawl, was leading us and wrote arrangements that would give teenagers a

through Contemporary American Literature, with measure of confident performance. From there my
an emphasis on analysis and explication. It was here young family moved to Abbotsford, where I became
that I learned about TS Eliot’s objective correlative chairman of the performing arts program, teaching
and other tools for thinking about art. I wrote a paper choir, jazz band, symphonic wind ensemble, hand-

comparing the literary methods of two poet-compos- bells, drama, and acting for twenty-five years. At one
ers who wrote their own libretti: Wagner and Menotti. point, I was directing seven choirs, including a very

I remember him applauding my “brilliant” premise fine church choir. Our Christmas choir was a volun-
and then giving me a C+ for not carrying it out more teer choir of 400 singers in a school of 800 students! I
eff ectively. left high school teaching in 2003 quite exhausted.
The theory teacher was the American composer

Ben Johnston who, by good fortune, I drew for the reg- TELFER: When I first started composing music in the
ular second-year course at the University of Illinois. late 1970s, I realized that, at that time, many choral
He was such a perceptive analyst. He’d find the cru- conductors had no idea how to determine whether a

cial point in, say, a Chopin prelude and say, “Chopin piece of music in a contemporary style was any good,
chooses B« at this point, so the piece ends like this... so I gave workshops on how to choose music. Soon af-
[plays] ... but if he’d chosen B , the next chord would ter that, I gave workshops on rehearsal techniques for

have to be [this] and the piece would have to end like contemporary choral music because many conductors
this... [plays].” I remember once he assigned the analy- wanted to have their choirs performing new styles (e.g.,
sis of a Haydn sonata and started pointing out various aleatoric music) but did not know how to rehearse that
ideas we would need to explore. He finished up forty music. Meanwhile, a number of conductors across the

minutes later with the astonishing (to me) statement: country were approaching me individually, asking me
“And so, if your analysis doesn’t tell you the meaning if I would write sight-singing materials because they
of the music, then it is an incomplete analysis, or a bad were not getting results with the sight-singing materi-
one!” That was a truly profound insight for me. als available at that time. Over the years, I gradually
My real mentor was my voice teacher Bruce Gov- wrote materials on other topics as the need became
ich, whom I encountered at that early stage of adult- obvious: singing high pitches, singing in tune, improv-
hood when I was developing my ground principles of ing performances.
life and work. His greatest gift was to open his voice
studio to me; he was a brilliant voice teacher who ap- WASHBURN: My original training was as a teacher,
proached every student individually. Every lesson was and I got a high school job in the Chicago suburbs
unique and full of revelations for the student of ped- right out of university, which was unusual for that time.
agogy. I taught only a year before heading back to graduate
studies, but it was an invaluable experience, consider-
2) Music education plays such an important ing how many future music teachers I’ve taught since.
role in the development of young minds. How Later, I taught part time at Vancouver Community
have you contributed to music education over College for thirteen years, covering choirs, conduct-
the years? ing, music history, vocal musicianship, vocal chamber
music, bass, and even tablature at one time or another.
NICKEL: I started teaching at Lethbridge Collegiate But most of my educational contributions have been
Institute in Alberta while living and working on the made through the extensive educational outreach pro-
farm of my father-in-law. I soon realized that much grams of the Vancouver Chamber Choir for conduc-
of my university education was of little help with tors (National Conductors’ Symposium), composers
students from the farming community. I needed to (Interplay Composers’ Workshops; Young Composers’

CHORAL JOURNAL April 2021 Volume 61 Number 9 45