Last weekend saw BABS heading to Southport for their 38th annual Convention under gloriously sunny skies.

The big story of the weekend was the presence of International silver medallists, the Musical Island Boys not only as visiting performers, but also as competitors. They had been unable to participate as planned in the Pan-Pacific convention earlier this year, and so the BHS had agreed to let them use the BABS contest as the occasion at which to compete for a qualifying score for the International Convention in Portland in July.

On the Sunday morning of the recent Sweet Adelines convention in Birmingham, delegates had the opportunity to participate in a workshop led by Sound Category judge Sandy Marron and Showmanship Category judge Judy Pozsgay. They work as a team in their own chorus, the increasingly successful Lion's Gate Chorus in Vancouver, and their material saw a wonderful integration between what are often seen as quite disparate aspects of barbershop craft.

I plan to write in more detail about the integration of vocal and movement skills in another post (it was originally part of this one, but grew into a separate one its own right), so will focus today on Sandy's approach to vocal pedagogy.

For the last six years I have turned down every request to coach or workshop on a Thursday because I had my own rehearsals with Magenta. And there have been some very tempting invitations! Sometimes we have been able to reschedule for a weekend, but not always. But now my lovely choir have generously agreed to move our rehearsal night in order that I can start accepting the invitations I have hitherto had to turn down.

Here are the answers that people have asked so far about the Conduct with Charisma workshop next November.

Bookings are now open for my second workshop on charisma for choral conductors, so put this date in your diary: 24 November 2012.

Some places have been earmarked for people who wanted to come to the January session but weren’t available on that date, but there are plenty left.

An overview of the workshop and a booking form can be found here, and a set of FAQs can be found here.

To find out more, you can also have a look at my reflections on the last workshop, and browse an increasing body of posts on the subject.

Please do give me a shout if you have any questions about the workshop, and do share these links and/or the attached flyer with anyone you think should know about it.

I look forward to workshopping with you!

There's a scene in the film The Iron Lady in which Margaret Thatcher is chairing a cabinet meeting just ferociously. Hardly anyone dares speak, and when they do she slaps them down. There is an edge of desperation in the way she wields her power so absolutely. It is a classic portrayal of how someone who was once seen by her followers as inspirational has turned into their despotic oppressor.

You see this same narrative trajectory in the relationship between directors and their choirs.

The title of this post is the subject line of an email I received recently from a friend who is grappling with the question of how to inveigle visitors to/potential members of her chorus to return and become actual members. This is a question that all choirs face, but it is exacerbated in this case because it is a group whose members are spread over a wide geographical distance, and who only meet once a month. So the opportunities for people to 'go off the boil' (as my correspondent put it) are significantly higher than for those choirs that meet weekly.

What they do so far is to 'pamper while they are at rehearsal, follow up once or twice between rehearsal (designated officer does this).' What they don't do is issue any music or learning materials until people are paid-up members, and the email implied that not being able to practise was a significant obstacle to ignition.

There are thus two distinct but related issues lurking in here: how to keep people's enthusiasm between rehearsals, and the pragmatics of giving out chorus property.

A ritual is a habit with meaning. Choirs have all kinds of habits: some good (clearing the chairs away after rehearsal), some bad (sneaking breaths in obvious places mid-phrase), some cultivated deliberately (smiling while singing), some developed by osmosis (going to the pub after a concert).

But a ritual is something both done deliberately and freighted with a specific import. It shares with habits that quality of repeated action, but it has a sense of self-awareness, of being invested with significance beyond itself. It functions to bind those participating in it together into a shared identity rooted in shared experiences. It will either implicitly embody or explicitly articulate some aspect of the choir’s values.