MSU Children's Choir: Observation #1

I observed Kyle with the MSU Children's Choir on Tuesday night. My initial observation is that Kyle is GREAT with these kids! He is completely calm and approachable, but always using jokes and humor to connect with the students. It is obvious that he knows them well and he uses their names when he speaks to them individually. It is also clear that these kids are very talented and clearly want to be there and participate.

What I really loved about Kyle's teaching is that he treated the children like adults - he expected musicality in everything and wouldn't let the students get away without it. This was clear even in his warmups, which I especially appreciated. He had the kids sing "Me, Meh, Mah, Moh, Moo." After the first key, he told the kids to "make a musical choice with this" and to make the exercise "go somewhere." I am a huge fan of using warmups (whether instrumental or choral) to practice musical aspects that can be applied in repertoire. I am constantly telling my solo students to add dynamics to their etudes, to practice phrasing, vibrato, shifting, and anything else that they are using in their pieces in the etudes themselves. I challenge my students to make their etudes sound like mini-pieces so that they get more comfortable executing musical choices on their instruments, making it easier to apply in their solo repertoire. It was very clear that Kyle follows this as well with his students, even at a young age.

Another thing I really liked is that Kyle has the choir sing the scale of whatever piece they are about to sing right before they work on a new piece. He also has all the children use the hand gestures when they sing scales and their pieces, giving them a physical connection to pitch throughout warmups and repertoire work. Because of this, the choir is able to sightread incredibly well. Their first piece, "Hands Across The Universe," was first handed out that evening, but the group was able to sightread the work from m. 83 to the end and hit most of the notes in tune. They also started working on phrasing and dynamics right away, even when learning notes, which I really liked. Rather than focusing on notes alone, Kyle is focusing on making music, which in turn will reinforce note learning. At one point during the reading, when they went back to try to catch more things, Kyle told the group, "Each time (we sing) you should be getting more musical, more notes, better vowels."

It was very clear that Kyle respected the kid's musicality and the students respected him as well. When Kyle was working with other parts, the children not singing were very quiet and stayed still in their seats. I was amazed at the level of control Kyle had without ever needing to address behavior or procedure for when some parts were singing and some were not. They started getting a little louder towards the end of the two hour rehearsal, but never overly disruptive. Kyle never needed to shush them. At one point, he asked for people not singing to be a little quieter, but this happened once and in the last 10-15 minutes of a 2 hour rehearsal.

I loved watching this rehearsal and I found myself wishing I had been a part of a group like this when I was younger. It looks like a great community and everyone, including Kyle, seem to be having a great time.