We love to experience new coaching opportunities and are thrilled that Steve Scott will be joining us at our Excellence Training Weekend (ETW) this September. Steve has been a barbershopper since the age of 11 and was inspired to pursue an education and career in music. His degrees focus on choral music, singing health, choral conducting, and vocal pedagogy (the art and science of vocal instruction). He has taught voice, led ensembles, advanced research in vocal topics, and sung in high-performing choruses and quartets. He is currently in the role of Music Education Specialist for the Barbershop Harmony Society. He clearly has a lot of passion and knowledge to share with us!

What do we expect?  Well, if you read his blogs, you know that he is a believer in voice matching for riser placement and in providing spacing to allow each voice to best contribute to the ensemble. He is an advocate for vocal health. Most of all, he loves to focus on the individual: finding individual strengths and identifying alignment or other issues that may be getting in the way of each person bringing their best.

As always, we will work as a full ensemble at ETW, trying new approaches (who knows how many of them we will “keep”?) and pushing the envelope to keep striving for growth. This year, however, we will also experience some small group coaching. We have time set aside for Steve to work with the leads, basses, baritones, and tenors as separate groups, while the other three parts work with Renee as a trio. This will be a great opportunity for each of us to identify a new “one thing” that we can adjust to make our singing more effortless and to unify our sections.

ETW is a time to experience unity, both when we sing and in our down time, when we can relax and be together, and have time for some of those extended conversations that can be difficult to have on rehearsal night. It is always a bit of a miracle to think of how we bring our differences together for a common purpose. Each one of us is on the risers because she has the ability to contribute an essential ingredient to the mix – and as each individual becomes more skilled, the whole ensemble benefits.

We know that we will have a great time getting to know more about Steve – and we are sure we will also learn a lot about his beloved wife and daughter – and that he will come to know the best about each and every one of us as well!