Several weeks ago, I conducted the Intel Singers and Intel Symphony Orchestra through three performances in three very different venues with very different acoustics.  All were in retirement homes with somewhat similar ages among the audience members. 

The first was sparsely attended in a very large ... Read More »

If I had to describe my goals for myself over the next year as a conductor it would be to improve my level of preparation for each and every rehearsal which, of course, leads to being better prepared at performance for both me and the ensemble.  Perhaps it is self-evident to everyone reading this why preparation is important, but it has been such a battle to actually accomplish for a very long time.  In addition to my job as a conductor, I also am a a father of 5 very active little boys, software engineer at Intel ... Read More »

I'm currently on a plane heading to Santa Clara, California and I've been taken aback by feelings of gratitude for music in my life today.  A few months ago I got a Zune 80 GB portable music player.  While I could go on talking about the fun I've had playing with my Zune, the real story is in the music.  A few days ago I was organizing my collection and ran across a piece called Read More »

I was in church the other day and teaching a lesson about missionary work... you know, sharing your faith with others.  Well, in the lesson there was a quote by Elder Ballard and he said " Read More »

So, I have some pretty high hopes with this blog post.  I want to know every single person on the planet who is currently blogging about conducting music or something related.  For example, if you're blogging about authentic Baroque Performance practice, I think that's pretty important to conducting so I'm going to call that related.  But, if you're blogging about your favorite opera singer who sings for famous conductors, I'd say that I'm probably not as interested. 

Here are the conducting blogs that I'm aware of rig ... Read More »

I must admit, when I started doing conductingblog, I don't think I really knew how much writing I was getting myself into.  Starting a blog sounded easy enough.  I just write a little about what I'm thinking with respect to conducting every so often and call it good.  But, I also wanted to add a good set of reference material on the website.  I wanted to do it because it drove me crazy when I started conducting that I didn't know what I needed to be successful nor did I really even know where to look to find what I needed in many cases.  It's t ... Read More »

Well, that was easy.  My original plan for putting video on the site was to use something I found on the web that did most of what I wanted.  Knowing that it wouldn't meet all my needs, I budgeted a few weeks to get it to work like I wanted.  But in further poking around, I found a commercial product that worked exactly like I needed now.  So, I got it, installed it and we've got video. 

Now for the fun part.  I took some instructional videos that I have and I've posted small snippets.  My hope is that when people see how great these are that they will learn from them and then buy copies of the full videos for their own library.  Of the ones I've posted so far, my favorite is definitely the one of A ... Read More »

Wow!  I'm so excited to finally kick off this blog.  I've been attempting for over a year to pull together all the materials and information to kick off this website and it's finally time.  What, might you ask would take me so long?  Well, the idea behind conductingblog is bring together in one place as much information as possible about conducting and I needed the ability for people to blog, post videos and other content on the web.  I think I'm finally bringing it all together.  I've learned a lot in my 7 years conducting that I'd love to share with the rest of the world.  But, even more importantly, I realize that there are others out there with vastly more experience that could share their wisdom if they had a place to do it.  I hope conductingblog can become that place.

What does conductingblog have to offer?  Well, first and foremost, conductingblog is a blog as its ... Read More »