Conducting

The 2018-19 music season will be my final year as conductor with the Academy Chorale (100-voice community chorale that I founded in 1997) and Academy Orchestra (50-piece symphony orchestra that I founded in 1998), and I have also accepted the job of directing the adult choir at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Berwyn, PA.

In making the decision to retire from the Chorale and Orchestra, I began to wonder how I would use my life in a positive way in the future. Destiny opened a wonderful door. My parents were lifelong church musicians and my siblings and I were all raised singing in their choirs. After college, the Army, and graduate school, I became the director of music in three well-respected church music programs around the country, besides presenting over 500 workshops throughout the US and Canada for church musicians. The bottom line is that church music feels like home to me, so I accepted the opportunity to be music director at Trinity, which began in September 2018. For me to make a positive impact on the future is well worth it.

Book writing

• Instructional books for choir directors have been published, Rejuvenating Senior Voices, available from GIA in both Directors’ and Singers’ editions, and Igniting Choral Rehearsals with a forward by Anton Armstrong.

Workshop teaching

• I have given Choral Booster Shot Workshops to multiple Philadelphia area retirement home choruses, taking decades off of singers’ sounds and increasing their enjoyment.
• In spring 2016, I presented a similar Choral Booster Shot Workshop for the combined church choirs of northeastern Pennsylvania, sponsored by AGO. Later that summer, I lectured at another NPM in Houston, TX (National Pastoral Musicians Convention for Catholic Music Directors), on the topics of Surefire Recruiting for Church Choirs and Layered Learning for Volunteer Choirs.
• In 2017, I presented choral workshops to choirs (Pittsburgh) and music directors (Florida).
• I recently returned (January 2019) from a lively workshop in Houston, TX held at Clear Lake United Methodist Church.

Voice teaching

I teach several private voice lessons each week, many focused on rejuvenating senior voices.

Personal music making

Looking ahead, I have done much soul searching about what is really important to me in this next decade. I not only want to be of service to my chorale and orchestra and the readers of my instructional books, but after 50+ years of conducting and enticing music out of others, I am back to making music myself as a violist with the semi-professional Academy Festival Trio, comprised of viola, oboe, and clarinet.

Luthier

Over the past five years, I have made from scratch one viola (11 months, almost 400 hours) and restored and re-graduated (re-carved from the inside) another viola and three violins. My next project is to re-stain and varnish two of those violins.

Tennis/Ping Pong

My wife Janet and I play tennis year-round, and play spirited ping pong at other times. In my 14 years as the choral and orchestral director of Germantown Academy, I coached tennis and ran the ever-popular ping pong club.