On Rehearsing
A conversation with Kristofer T. Johnson, Director of Choirs at Phillips Exeter Academy and Artistic Director of the Rockingham Choral Society.
I first met Kris Johnson, a little over a year ago, while interviewing for a teaching position at Phillips Exeter Academy. At the time, Kris was the Chair of the Music Department and Director of Choirs at PEA, and was about to accept an appointment as the Director of the Rockingham Choral Society, which he holds now (he is currently on sabbatical from PEA, which in some part is how he was able to find the time to answer my questions so generously). It was in an open rehearsal of the Rockingham group that I first encountered his rehearsal guidelines—a list of maxims for rehearsing (or making music, or practicing, or living) that he’s developed throughout a career of leading many wonderful groups of all ages and abilities.
I was so taken by these guidelines that I asked Kris if, one day, I could share them with my good friends at Foray, and maybe ask him a few questions about where these ideas come from and what these guiding principals mean to him. He said “yes,” obviously, because here, in your email box, is the list, my questions, and his thoughtful, sage responses.
I think you’re super,
Charlie
ON REHEARSING
Start and end on time. It is respectful and loving as well as an important basic discipline from which ordered work flows.
This thing we do is about people first, then music, and then everything else.
Care for your materials and bring them for the work—scores and your trusty choir pencil.
First number all your measures. In this you are truly measuring the work to be done as well as organizing yourself to work well.
Respect the moment of correction. This moment of sacred concentration is where the work is shaped.
For yourself and for those who work with you, hold high standards but also deep and abiding compassion.
Have tremendous fun. But put the fun in the work.
Sing right away. Fill the duration of notes with vowel and sound—legato/energy is the basic expressive element in singing.
Work with the largest possible spectrum of dynamics but strive to remain within the sleeve of beauty (unless there’s a great reason to make an un-beautiful sound).
Create an energized pulse and rhythmic intensity in all you do. Consonant clusters with duration happen before the beat.
Let your intellect and soul inhabit each word that you sing. This makes your diction and singing energized, specific, and effective. This “choral lumpiness” is made from stressed and unstressed syllables, and it is often good and interesting!
Know that there is always a moment to forget about technical worries and concerns. This is when you should give yourself over to be transported by the essence of the music. Don’t let that moment come too early or too late in the process. No chops, no chance! No expression, no music!
Involve yourself with your collaborators through your eyes, ears, and body.
Find your favorite parts and enjoy them every time. Let them change and develop as your understanding of the piece grows.
The purpose of rehearsal is to learn everyone else’s part (not your own). Your own preparation is your contribution and welcoming gift to your colleagues.
During rehearsal it may seem like you are changing the music, but you are actually changing yourself and changing each other.
Relax. You’re among friends.
Always Be Tuning
INTERVIEW
Charlie: Where did these rehearsal guidelines come from?
Kris Johnson: These notions are cobbled together from the wisdom of many different teachers and conductors in my life these past 35-odd years. A few arose organically from practices that just proved to work and deserved to be named. All are essential agreements for a great rehearsal process. The list has grown slowly over the years.
If you had to single out one point, which one in your opinion is the most important?
I think that the last one, Always Be Tuning (which I often shorten in rehearsal to saying, ‘ABT’) is truly the most important. Although I really do care a lot about pitch, the notion of tuning is about active awareness, a cultivated presence in making music, being in rhythmic ensemble, listening intently and making constant little adjustments based in the current moment. It is a state of deep engagement or flow, full of challenge and intrinsic reward. In some ways, many of the other guidelines are subsumed in this notion.
How about next most important?
The next most important depends on the group or individuals and/or the day as well as the needs of the work they face. It is very tempting to say that #16, which is pretty abstract, encompasses the idea. Bearing in mind that rehearsal (or a practice session) is about expanding your own habits/capabilities or imagination rather than mastering some lick or ‘getting’ some chunk of new material. It is so tempting to lose sight that the music is ephemeral, gone virtually as soon as it spins out of us.
What’s the most easily overlooked guideline?
Empirically, it is probably starting and ending on time or caring for your materials. Philosophically, I’d like to say that it is #5. The ‘moment of correction’ is a term I’ve used for a long time. For an ensemble, this might be the moment when the director cuts off the group to address a refinement or something amiss. In that split-second, each musician is faced with a choice to get either really quiet and concentrated or to lose focus into chatting, bumbling onward singing, or some other total digression from the work. The righteous habit (evidenced by the best professionals) is a light stillness in that moment, a crescendo of concentration into the detail under scrutiny. That is a deeply virtuous loop, flowing faster and faster in a rehearsal process. When an ensemble’s focus collapses at each pause, momentum is hard to achieve.
Note: this work habit does shift a bit when you have really great section-leaders who may also be making corrections in some of those gaps (as often happens in orchestras and great choirs). In a good relationship, those leaders and the conductor develop a rapport about how and when to modulate those practices.
I think the same habit should hold true in the private studio and the practice room. In essence, I think it is a curious mindset to overcome disintegration of focus or frustration.
Is there anything purposefully missing from this list? Something other directors seem to be concerned with that is not important to you?
There isn’t anything purposely excluded, but I do think the list is a strong statement about my musical values. Certainly, others’ lists would look very different. There are things that many choral conductors prize that I feel less doctrinaire about. I don’t much believe in ‘blend’ as a verb. I prefer the color that really active voices can make when they really sing in tune and in time. That’s both an aesthetic choice and something that just sort of feels right to me. I also have been criticized in not enforcing various types of visual uniformity that are often part of a highly-disciplined choral pedagogy. I just struggle to find them important.
I’ve heard so many conductors or directors talk about how the music comes first, how musicians (especially student musicians) should respect the music above all else... Can you reflect a bit on how this compares and/or contrasts to point two, “people first”?
Well, music is the thing that we’re gathering around, but making music is fundamentally an endeavor that we do to express our humanity. Striving for some perfect ideal that sacrifices one another’s dignity and well-being is a rather joyless enterprise. Striving absent compassion makes us brittle. This is not to say that we don’t have high standards for ourselves and one another, but caring and kindness should be the foundation for the kind of excellence that rewards more than it costs.
Can you talk more about the term “sleeve of beauty”? It’s incredibly evocative, but I hadn’t heard it before.
The sleeve of beauty is the bandwidth in which you can be audibly expressive at its softest and fully engaged without overdriving your instrument at the loudest. In the choral context, insufficient energy or barking/shouting are out-of-bounds on either end. ‘Unless there’s a good reason…’
How do you know, as a conductor, that the time has come to forget about technical worries and concerns and focus on the essence of the piece?
I’ve come to trust my intuition about how to build the architecture of a rehearsal process so that the shape of it feels meaningful to the choir in this way. They can then enter performance feeling tremendous headroom, relatively free from anxiety and with an interpretive map in their minds of each piece and the show. Obviously, the choir is made up of many individuals whose own abilities and experiences dictate that as much as the rehearsal process. This is a big part of the three-dimensional chess that is leading an ensemble, and I’m afraid this is the art rather than the science. I think big empathy for how the choir is doing—both in their skills as well as their enthusiasm/engagement—is required to judge it correctly.
I’ve witnessed you starting a season or term of choir rehearsals asking the group: “what is choir for?” What’s your answer to this question?
Choir is the engine powering my connection with others. I’ve never known another method or vehicle that could help me engage as deeply and meaningfully with people as singing together. There is a powerful way of knowing someone, beyond words, that springs up when you’ve melded your voices together, especially over time. What’s more, I feel most myself when singing in ensemble or leading a rehearsal. Choir is pretty indispensable in how I move through the world.
This was really insightful! Loved it