I neglected to take a photo during the session, so here is a pic of two very positive people to set the sceneAt last week’s Harmony College, I was running the Directors’ Stream, in my capacity as LABBS Chorus Director Development Specialist. (Nice job title, eh? Useful for when I need to tell people what my role is in the association these days.) Our theme for the weekend was ‘Keeping it Fresh’, and one of the ways we kept things fresh for our delegates was having input from a variety of the faculty on hand for the event.

This included a rather wonderful double act from guest educator Doug Harrington and Helen Lappert, director of Amersham A Cappella on the subject of planning for freshness. I wanted to have a mull on it today as not only did include lots of useful practical advice, but there were some interesting resonances with the session I had done on Saturday on the psychology of Flow, and with Philip Zimbardo’s ideas about our relationship with time I explored some years ago.

Nickie James welcomes the assembled delegatesI am just home from a rather wonderful weekend with the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers, in which singers from all over the country gathered in Nottingham for a weekend of education and musical bonding. LABBS hasn’t used the Harmony College format for some years, having focused instead on themed and regional events on a rolling schedule. This has had the advantage of reaching more of the membership in total, as well as allowing those with multiple roles (quartet singer and chorus director, for instance) to access education for each. But there is a buzz about a big occasion like this that anyone who was there would not have wanted to miss.

I have, as you’d imagine, a pile of notes about things I learned and ideas I want to explore, both from the Directors Stream I was running and the plenary sessions. But in the first instance, as I’m writing this the morning after I got home, the impressions I’m processing are about this sense of occasion, and how it impacts on the learning process.

Johari Window model: this version (c) Alan Chapman

While we're thinking about music teams (well, I am even if you haven't been), it seemed a good moment to reflect on an analytical grid that was developed specifically as a way to think about how team members work together. It's name, Johari, makes it sound rather exotic I always think, but in fact it was named after its inventors, who went by the names Joe and Harry.

The grid categorises information about a person as either known or unknown, both to themselves and to the rest of the team. 'Information' here can be knowledge, skills, thoughts, feelings - basically anything that can be known or unknown about a person. The point of the analysis is that the more that is known to all (the open quadrant, top left), the better a team can communicate and cooperate.

I am delighted to announce a new set to add to my collection of themed workshops: in addition to those for choirs and choral directors I am now offering three designed specifically for music teams. Many choral groups have a team drawn from the membership to support their director in the musical development and leadership of the ensemble, usually involving some combination of assistant director, section leaders, vocal coach, librarian, and possibly performance coach.

The team members are generally appointed on the basis of their general musical/vocal skills, but many find, once in post, that their role also demands a variety of rehearsing and coaching skills in which they may not have much prior relevant experience. Learning on the job is a fine thing to do of course - often the director who appoints them will be doing likewise - but people feel more confident if they can receive some guidance and feedback on the way.

Good Friday brought Royal Effect quartet to visit for a coaching session. They are preparing for the Sweet Adelines Region 31 Convention in May, and brought their contest set along in a state where the technical challenges were largely under control leaving us to focus on the artistry of their delivery. The two songs are very different in shape and feel, but we found ourselves working with both of them in terms of narrative.

Their ballad is essentially a declaration of love that elaborates on a single, central idea. This gives it a great sense of purpose, but can make it harder to find the variety and contrasts a performance needs amongst the unity.

It becomes much easier to find shape and narrative if you recast the song as a dialogue rather than a monologue. Having established the scenario - the moment in the journey of a relationship - that the quartet imagined this moment to be taking place in, we brought the imagined beloved into the room.

The Thursday afternoon before the long Easter weekend is not a sensible time to drive up the M6 from Birmingham to Warrington. Possibly you knew that already, but when we agreed the date for me to go and work with Cheshire Chord Company on their new ballad, it had escaped my notice that Easter was so early. Just as well, I thought as I crept along in nose-to-tail traffic for 80 miles, that I was going to have such fun making music when I got there. Bright-siding is easy when you’re visiting a chorus with such a culture of positivity.

My remit was, as in my previous visits, to help them explore the music at an early stage of development, to deepen their understanding of what the song and arrangement were doing, and why they were doing it like that.

Harmony InSpires is a chorus with a special place in my heart, as they were the first group I coached - and therefore the subjects of my first blog post about coaching - after starting this website in 2008. Back then they had recently taken on their new name, and, though rapidly growing, were still a small chorus. They have continued to grow in both number and confidence, and it was lovely to see both some familiar faces on the risers, and lots of new recruits.

This was my first visit since their current director, Peter Cookson took over a couple of years ago, and he had asked me to come along to wear two specific, but distinct, coaching hats. One was my arranger’s hat, to work with them on a chart they commissioned last year, and are now just at that mostly-know-it-but-still-making-decisions-about-delivery stage. This is the perfect time for coaching on questions of shaping, trajectory, and overall intent, before anything gets too practised in.

Most Sundays in the centre of Didcot are possibly not that exciting, but every March for the last 6 years, there has been an event worth travelling to. And this year’s A Cappella Spring Fest saw people come from as far afield as the Isle of Wight and Selby to participate in a day’s celebration of unaccompanied song in the Cornerstone Arts Centre. This was my second year as a tutor, and, like last year, I was leading the Contemporary A Cappella stream.

The format of the day was similar to last year’s, though the team tweaks marginally from year to year in response to feedback and experience. This time the ‘Fest Flash’ song - a song to be flashmobbed out in the shopping centre where Cornerstone is situated over lunchtime - took a much more central role for all participants. As before a core of singers who had opted to work on it during the morning formed the nucleus of the performance, but this time all other participants had enough work on it scheduled in also to join in.