Playing the piano and conducting a choir reflect great musicianship.

Musicianship instills the ability for a musician to sight-read and conduct a 4-part choral anthem that includes a soloist. Therefore, the conductor provided cues, tempo, and vocal expressions at the appropriate time. Very often, his task was to direct the choir, and play the piano simultaneously. Fortunately, My prior training in vocal, and instrumental music empowered me to use, the skills necessary to organize singing groups of non-musicians. Most of the time, those choir members interpreted choral music, with various levels of difficulties. The tone quality of  the group as a whole required the mastery of vocal drills. Each singing section received the training that uplifted its vocal performance level beyond expectations.

Choral anthem is one of the distinct genres of choral music that requires a level of classical training with 100% accurate performance of the written score. For many years as a choral director, I did not have an accompanist, mostly due to budget restrains. Therefore, I was responsible for the overall performance. My level of musicianship had to surpass the level of difficulty of the choral repertoire. I choose songs that were up the group’s level of performance.

After evaluating the group of non-musician singers, I had to settle for the appropriate anthems that can be successfully interpreted. However, I quickly established a vocal balance within each part, namely, soprano, alto, tenor and bass, and between sections. I created great harmonic tone between the ladies’ sections, soprano and alto, the males sections, tenor and bass, interconnecting the inside voices, alto and tenor, and the outer sections, bass and soprano.