Boston
Singers' Resource News Bulletin, April - 2006
AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREA O'CONNELL, EDITOR OF 'CHORAL SINGER' by Lynn Shane
Entertaining
and useful to vocalists of all levels, ‘Choral Singer’ is
a monthly newsletter with an international readership that is written,
edited, and published by Dedham resident, Andrea O’Connell. It is just one of several contributions
she makes that benefits New England singers.
From September to
May, Andrea O’Connell oversees the publication of ‘Choral
Singer’, the monthly newsletter dedicated to helping and informing
individuals who want to be better singers and, most especially, those
who want to be better choral singers.
After some 20 years at Harvard University in the newsletter publishing
industry, specializing in the field of health education, the Bryn Mawr
College-educated Dedham resident decided to focus her talents on the
subject dearest to her heart. To that end, in 2002, she started Blue
Lantern Press, Ltd., which publishes ‘Choral Singer’, at the
website www.bluelanternpress.com. Ultimately, her goal is to provide
educational material for singers in a variety of ways, with various
strategic business partners, under the Blue Lantern Press umbrella.
For now, ‘Choral Singer’ is where her efforts are channeled.
The subject theme of ‘Choral Singer’ has been a longtime passion
for Ms O’Connell. Her own vocal training has included extensive
work with Barbara Winchester at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Locally, she has sung with the Longy Chamber Singers under the direction
of Lorna Cooke de Varon, and with Musica Sacra conducted by Mary Beekman*.
Of Danish descent, she has recently become an enthusiastic member of
the Scandinavian vocal ensemble, Stämbandet, and she has been a
regular soloist at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Dedham for many
years. In addition, she currently serves as the Vice Chair and Chair
of the Grants Committee for Choral Arts New England, the board of directors
for the Alfred Nash Patterson Foundation, and she is on the board of
the Lexington-based Master Singers choral ensemble.
The audience that Ms O’Connell addresses with ‘Choral Singer’,
which has an international readership numbering in the thousands, includes
schools, churches and community groups. She chose the educational newsletter
format for its tradition of taking complicated, high-level material
and presenting it in a way that the non-professional audience will grasp.
This user-friendly approach has brought praise from educators at both
the high school and college levels as well as from professional singers.
A typical six-page issue of ‘Choral Singer’ contains an array
of topics that are helpful to vocalists of varying degrees of experience
and skill. In any given month you will find articles concerning specific
points of diction and pronunciation (both of English and of other languages),
breathing, vocal health, or relaxation. In the same issue you might
read an interview with local or international artists such Daniel Pinkham,
Denyce Graves, Stephen Mark Beaudoin*, Dawn Upshaw, or Patricia Van
Ness. Explorations of specific compositions such as Charpentier’s
“Messe de Minuit” or Barber’s “Reincarnations”
or, as in a recent issue, Van Ness’s newly premiered work “Requiem”
are also a feature of the newsletter. Within the pages of ‘Choral
Singer’ you will find ideas about choral repertoire, good choral
etiquette, and developing esprit within a chorus, and tips on successfully
touring with a chorus; all intended to reinforce and support –
not supplant – the director’s efforts.
‘Choral Singer’ presents its offerings to the reader in a
light-hearted way. It is serious about its subject, but doesn’t
take itself too seriously. Some past titles include:
* Focus and Articulation: Sucking on a Lemon (Mar, 2003)
* Feeling the Well-Placed Tone: The Not-Bermuda Triangle (May, 2003)
* A Window on Jewish Music: More than Lighting Candles (Sept 2003)
* A surefire exercise for range extension: Two Scoops or One? (May,
2004)
* How to sing ornaments more easily: So Many Notes, So Little Time (Dec,
2004)
* Technical help from an unexpected source: Sing Along with Kitty (Feb,
2005)
* Swedish Vowels for Beginners: Kom dansa med mej! (Dec, 2005)
The majority of the content in ‘Choral Singer’ is written
by Ms O’Connell who, like the articles she writes, is very engaging.
Her years at Harvard have tuned both her writing and her interviewing
skills to a fine degree so that she brings an easy, well-informed style
to each issue. Dr Ramon A. Franco, Jr., of the Mass. Eye and Ear and
Harvard Medical School, contributes the medical pieces, and Mary McDonald
Klimek, the well-known speech pathologist, voice therapist, and teacher
of the Estill Voice Training System has also contributed. (Note: Ms
Klimek has been the subject of a BSR Vocal Health Interview.)
Right under the title of each issue of ‘Choral Singer’ is
the motto “Building better ensembles voice by voice”. This
neatly expresses the goals of ‘Choral Singer’ which are both
to enhance the individual’s singing experience and to increase
the singer’s value to a choral ensemble. At the end of each issue
is a generous supply of online, print, and recording resource material.
Individual print subscriptions to ‘Choral Singer’ are obtained
via the Blue Lantern Press website (above). Site licensing is available
at group rates. Back issues and, now, reprints of individual articles
are also offered for a fee.
The Blue Lantern Press Advisory Board includes, in addition to Dr Franco,
NEC’s Barbara Winchester, Boston Early Music Festival Director
and Lexington organist and music director Jane Flummerfelt, and David
J. Tierney, the Director of the Rivers Music School in Weston, MA, and
Minister of Music at St. Paul’s Dedham. In May, 2005, Blue Lantern
Press, Ltd., was officially designated a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization.
In her own wordsl:
The connections to the choral arts that Andrea O’Connell has cultivated
over the years have afforded her some unique opportunities and perspectives.
She shares some of them with us.
Joe Stroup: You are very active with Choral Arts New England,
as Vice Chair and Grants Committee Chair. What do you look for, what
appeals to you in the grants that you read?
Andrea O’Connell: The questions we think about are: Is it
an interesting project? Will this be interesting to a large audience?
Is it something that’s actually feasible? Are they over-reaching
or is this a good idea for their particular context?
We try to reach under-served populations so we love it when we get applications
from places other than from Boston. We are, after all, Choral Arts ‘New
England’. We like to hear from new groups, too.
JS: How do you make people aware of the opportunities that Choral
Arts New England can offer them?
AO’c: We do try to publicize. But we also do a lot of hand-shaking
and visiting. Each grant committee member is responsible for a chorus.
We visit the choruses and talk to them.
Last year we held the Alfred Nash Patterson memorial celebration. We
did our own commission; a work by Daniel Pinkham. (One of the most popular
grant proposals, by the way, is commissions). We had a workshop. That
got the foundation a fair amount of press.
JS: Do you see a change in the way choral arts are being presented
in New England?
AO’c: I think there’s beginning to be a more wide-spread
realization that the choral arts need to come up with some very different
approaches because of dwindling audiences and because of so much competition
in the Boston area. I think we’re seeing more attempts at innovative
program such as groups getting together and producing one big blow-out
concert. That’s something that Choral Arts New England looks at.
They try to reward folks who are being innovative and creative.
JS: It seems that choral groups have a hard time being successful
without turning to professional singers and soloists. Do you see that?
AO’c: The farther away from a major metropolitan center
a group is, I think, the more likely it is to be thriving with non-professionals.
I was in Maine last week in the Community Chorus of South Berwick. They
had commissioned a piece by Kevin Siegfried called ‘At the Waters
Edge,’ on the poetry of Sarah Orne Jewett, who is local to them.
It was all amateur and it was wonderful. I see that trend being very
strong, still. On the other hand the expectations in the Boston area
are very, very high and there is so much professional talent that it’s
just a given that your soloists are going to be professionals.
JS: How does one get the local school and church choirs to grow?
AO’c: Education is what I focus on, establishing the tradition
in schools at an early age. Getting ‘Choral Singer’ into the
schools is exciting for me. I didn’t realize that so many music
teachers who become choral directors aren’t necessarily trained
in the vocal arts. They write me how grateful they are for the information
we’re providing.
JS: Getting back to ‘Choral Singer’; how has it evolved
since you started? Where would like to see it go?
AO’c: Initially, I was a little uncertain who my primary
audience would be so I tried to be all things to all people. There’s
still a little of that. I try to make it as broadly interesting as possible.
I might do church music one month and Broadway the next. The issues
tend to be somewhat thematic. We’ll pick a certain kind of repertoire
and, usually, the vocal technique and perhaps some language feature
will be connected to that in some way. We do try to link things together.
I would love to be able to do one version of the newsletter for schools
and one version for choirs. From my market testing it’s been borne
out that those are the two main audiences, schools and choirs, as well
as community groups. For now though, we’ll do the one newsletter
and hope that it’s reaching the right people.
JS: Good luck, then! Perhaps there are some more of the right
people among the BSR audience. We suggest that they take a look at the
site and review the free edition of ‘Choral Singer’ that is
there to read.
Related Links:
Blue Lantern Press, Ltd, and Choral Singer:
www.bluelanternpress.org
Choral Arts New England:
http://www.choralarts-newengland.org/
Stämbandet vocal ensemble:
http://www.stambandet.org/
BSR article on Mary Klimek:
http://www.bostonsingersresource.com/klimek.asp
BSR article on Dr. Ramon Franco:
http://www.bostonsingersresource.com/franco.asp