Choralosophy

Students are struggling in 2026. Standards are decreasing. Pedagogy has gotten worse over the last twenty years. And the education profession is slowly starting to wake up as districts continue to push us to work miracles with kids who struggle to do things that were basics in our lifetime.

A blog companion to this episode is FREE!

That’s my thesis, and this episode will provide some supporting evidence and resources for the teachers that don’t plan to take this lying down. First, we will cover the collapse — the numbers, which are brutal. Then the autopsy: seventy years of philosophy, a rigged definition of good teaching, and the largest educational experiment in American history, which the profession decided to ignore. Then we bring it into the choir room, because music education is not immune to this, nor are we a special case. And at the end of the show, my proposed way out.

So, stick around to the end and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Maybe even have some of your core assumptions about what it means to be a teacher shaken a bit. Not because I think I have landed a monopoly on the truth, but because our students deserve a community of educators who are as engaged in the art of teaching as we expect THEM to be in our content.

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos

Every time I open Facebook lately, some music teacher has a brand-new AI app to sell me. Dale Duncan is no exception, except his actually caught fire: hostile comments, people getting removed from his group, the whole thing. Now, I want to be clear about something before we start: I am not endorsing Dale’s line in the sand on AI. Mine is drawn in a different place, and you’ll hear that in this conversation. But I wanted to hear him out — really hear him out — and I think you should too, because the questions his critics are asking are questions every one of us has to answer.

In this conversation, Dale and I get into what the coach actually does and where it stops, why he used AI-generated promo art knowing it would draw fire, and the criticisms straight from his Facebook group. He responds so we can truly listen. He answers all of it, and I push back where my own line differs from his. And he admits something I didn’t expect: building the app never gave him the feels.

If you’ve already drawn your line in the sand on AI — or you’re still figuring out where it goes — this is the conversation you’ve been waiting for. Tune in now on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. Then bring your ideas and reactions to the episode over to the Choralosophers Facebook page or the FREE Substack comment sections.

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook

In 2022, Dale Duncan retired from teaching public school after teaching middle school in North Carolina, New Jersey, and Georgia for 30 years.  Dale is known by the choral music educator community worldwide as the creator of the S-Cubed Sight Singing Program for Beginners.  Since leaving the classroom, Dale has conducted the Allstate Choirs and regional choirs and has given professional development to teachers all over the country both virtually and in person.   During his career, he was honored as a Grammy Music Educator Semi-Finalist.  One of Dale’s most important life missions is and always will be to help middle school chorus teachers.  Dale loves his crazy cat, Odie, and sweet doggie Beaux…and he’s currently a Pickleball pro and Personal Trainer at Lifetime!

Creator of the S-Cubed Middle School Sight Singing Program offered on TPT

My S-Cubed AI Coach  on Studio.com

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos

She belts in musical practice after school and sings Palestrina on Sunday morning, and somewhere along the way we told her she had to pick one. Choir directors tend to reach for the tried and true: “darken it, round it, make it sound like a choir singer.” or RAISE YOUR SOFT PALETTE!

Today on the show, I’m joined by Dr. Nicholas Perna to take that instinct apart. Nick is a professor and the director of vocal pedagogy at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he runs the Berton Coffin Voice Lab. He’s a working tenor in musical theater and classical work, so he lives in both worlds instead of theorizing about them.

The heart of our conversation is vocal cross-training, and Nick brings the science. We get into his nasality research, which surprised me: the brightness we hear as nasal is not air going through the nose, and actual nasal airflow is a dull, dopey sound. We talk about his study on straight tone, why he refuses to use the phrase healthy singing, and his blunt practical advice for choir directors, including the first thing you should buy for your classroom. Hint: It is not music.

So, stick around and find your ideas and beliefs challenged and stimulated. I know I did as we worked from initial disagreement about the concept of “vocal health” into a shared understanding. Then bring your ideas and reactions to the episode over to the Choralosophers Facebook page or the FREE Substack comment sections.

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook

Dr. Nicholas Perna is Associate Professor and Director of Vocal Pedagogy at the University of Colorado Boulder. There, he directs the Berton Coffin Voice Lab and supervises graduate theses and dissertations in voice pedagogy. Perna was the 2025 Van L. Lawrence Fellow for research focusing on velopharyngeal opening in treble musical theater singers. He has publications in the Journal of Singing, the Journal of Voice, and VOICEPrints, and he authored a chapter in the Oxford Handbook on Voice Pedagogy. A Presser Music Foundation awardee, he has presented research on four continents at events such as the Voice Foundation’s Symposium, the International Congress of Voice Teachers, the NATS National Conference, the PAVA Symposium, and the Physiology and Acoustics of Singing (PAS). Dr. Perna’s research areas include voice acoustics, nasality and the singing voice, online voice teaching, and vocal cross-training. Perna is a Pan American Vocology Association (PAVA) Recognized Vocologist. For ten seasons, Dr. Perna has been the creator and co-host of the VocalFri Podcast (http://www.vocalfri.com), a vetted, cited, and trusted source for cutting-edge voice pedagogy and voice science information.

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos

As an in-demand vocal cross-trainer, Perna’s students have appeared on stages throughout the world. Student successes include appearances on Broadway (Wicked, Waitress), regional theaters, and national and international tours (My Fair Lady, Shrek, The Sound of Music). His clients have won prestigious competitions, including the Lotte Lenya Foundation Grand Prize and the International Chinese Art Song Competition. Students have also been apprentice artists with prestigious summer festivals, including The Santa Fe Opera and Glimmerglass Opera. Additionally, he is a sought-after mentor of fellow voice teachers. Those students have earned tenure-track and adjunct positions at universities, served as NATS Interns (4), and run successful private studios.

Perna’s tenor voice has been hailed by the Houston Chronicle as “an impressive sound,” and the South Florida Sun Sentinel praised his “emotionally driven performance.” He appeared multiple seasons with Opera Mississippi and was a finalist for the American Prize for Men in Opera. Perna was twice selected as a Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Artist singer. Equally adept on operatic and musical theater stages, roles to his credit include Don José in Carmen and Rodolfo in La Bohème, as well as Ravenal in Show Boat and Archibald Craven in The Secret Garden. Symphonic soloist appearances include Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Lloyd Weber’s Requiem, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

Perna holds graduate degrees from the University of Miami Frost School of Music and the University of Houston Moores School of Music. Previous faculty positions include West Virginia University, Mississippi College, and New World School of the Arts. During his tenure in Mississippi, Perna was a voice research associate at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He has also served on the faculty of notable continuing education programs such as the Westminster Voice Pedagogy Institute, Donald G. Miller’s Singing Voice Science Workshop, and the Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Workshop. Perna is currently president-elect (2026-2028) of the National Association of Teachers of Singing after serving four years as vice president for outreach.

IG: @vocalfriperna

YouTube: Nicholas Perna, tenor and teacher

• Info about singing with me at Carnegie Hall next April  
• The album that I just put out with the University of Southern Maine
• Pattern in the Pandemonium
• My social media on Instagram and TikTok
• The new Phoenix Chorale album coming out soon that features my music (FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THIS BUT IT’S COOL! lol) (More info here)

I rehearse a cappella. From the first day of rehearsal to the final product, no piano. I’ve been saying it for years, and I catch heat for it. So when I read Ross Duffin’s article in the Choral Journal, “Chasing Perfection: Better Harmonic Tuning for Choirs,” I knew I had to get him on the show. He makes the case better than I ever could, and he brings the math to back it up.

Today on the show, I’m joined by Ross W. Duffin, Distinguished University Professor and Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University, and founding artistic director emeritus of Quire Cleveland. Ross has spent decades studying historical tuning and temperament, and he’s the author of How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care).

In this conversation, Ross and I dig into why equal temperament’s big compromise lands right on top of the triads our choirs sing every day — the major third is simply too wide, and we’ve all just gotten used to the “beating.” We talk about the three simple precepts that fix most tuning problems, the common mistakes choir directors make when they chase better intonation, and why teaching singers to match the piano is teaching them the wrong version of every note. Here is my conversation with Ross Duffin.

Whether you rehearse with a piano or without one, this is a conversation that will change the way you listen to your choir. Tune in, and let’s keep the dialogue going!

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook

Ross W. Duffin is Distinguished University Professor and Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he taught for four decades. He is the founding artistic director emeritus of Quire Cleveland, a professional early music choir, and the author of How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) and Shakespeare’s Songbook.

Links

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos

• Info about singing with me at Carnegie Hall next April  
• The album that I just put out with the University of Southern Maine
• Pattern in the Pandemonium
• My social media on Instagram and TikTok
• The new Phoenix Chorale album coming out soon that features my music (FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THIS BUT IT’S COOL! lol) (More info here)

If you think back to elementary school, or when your own kids were young, you probably remember them bringing home leveled reading books tailored to their specific vocabulary, phonics stage, and sight words. In a perfect world, our music students would have that exact same individualized path. But as ensemble educators, it’s easy to get caught up in the idea of the choir as a collective project and forget that our primary job is still to teach individual human beings how to read and understand music.

In this episode, I break down the exact diagnostic process I use with every single beginner to find a starting place that isn’t too hard, isn’t too easy, but is just right. We’ll also dig into why real literacy is about independence and error correction rather than robotic, first-time perfection, how customized pacing solves classroom management issues before they start, and how we can better align our teaching with the science of how brains actually learn to read. Stick around!

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos

One of the most common things you hear at music education conferences is the phrase: “I just do what works for me.”

It sounds harmless, even pragmatic. But whenever I hear it, a red flag goes up. Because “what works for me” usually means what gets me through the rehearsal, keeps the room orderly, and gets the concert ready in time. It’s an adult-centered answer to a student-centered question. The real question is: Is it working for the kids? And how do we actually know?

In music education, we have a unique blessing: we don’t have state politicians breathing down our necks with standardized testing mandates. That’s a good thing. But the flip side is that without external checks, we can easily confuse great concert performances with actual student learning. In math or science, nobody confuses watching a flashy lab demonstration with real scientific literacy.

Today, I want to challenge how we adopt new pedagogy, why our metric must shift from teacher comfort to student autonomy, and how a “Give Them Tools” philosophy provides the concrete, measurable evidence that our students are actually becoming independent musicians.

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos

…but all too often, artists fall into a familiar trap: the moment a piece captures the public imagination or goes viral on social media, we label it “overdone,” roll our eyes, and look for something more obscure. But, for students and amateur singers this could be a missed opportunity, or even create a disconnect.

Today on the show, I’m joined by composer and lyricist Jennifer Lucy Cook to unpack that instinct and explore what it really means to bridge the gap between tradition and modern culture. Jen’s choral music has swept across social media, reaching millions of young singers who discovered pieces like Time not through conference reading sessions, but through viral TikTok trends. At the same time, she works actively in musical theatre, film, and commercial music, bringing a refreshing, boundary-pushing perspective to the choral world.

In this conversation, Jen and I dig into why choir should be treated as a versatile medium rather than a rigid genre, the technical craft behind writing an earworm versus classical counterpoint, and why directors shouldn’t shy away from music that connects deeply with singers. We also talk about vocal versatility—from traditional choral tone to healthy pop belt—and get a preview of her upcoming concert at Carnegie Hall, where she’s bringing Broadway collaborators and unexpected styles directly to the classical stage. Here is my conversation with Jennifer Lucy Cook.

Whether you are a conductor striving for a unified ensemble sound or a singer trying to navigate choral spaces without sacrificing your vocal health, this conversation offers a grounded path through one of the most polarized debates in choral music. Tune in, and let’s keep the dialogue going.

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook

Jennifer Lucy Cook (she/her) is currently writing music and lyrics for a new comedy musical created alongside double-Tony nominee Tye Blue, the writer-director behind Titanique. In April she will headline as composer and conductor at Carnegie Hall on a program devoted to her music to be performed by a 250-person choir. Cook is developing a new pop musical with Grammy-winner Abigail Barlow and an animated musical with Riki Lindhome.

She worked with Alan Menken on his solo show, A Whole New World of Alan Menken which premiered at the London Palladium and has toured around the world. With Hollywood Bowl director/producer Richard Kraft, Jen co-wrote on an original two-person musical Out of Toon, and she contributed songs to the sold-out show Willy’s Candy Spectacular at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Cook’s music has found an audience on TikTok, where songs from her original musical Salem, her choral piece “Time”, and her musical recaps of The Bachelor have garnered millions of views. She is currently the composer-in-residence for the Phoenix Chorale, and is based in Los Angeles.

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos

• Info about singing with me at Carnegie Hall next April  
• The album that I just put out with the University of Southern Maine
• Pattern in the Pandemonium
• My social media on Instagram and TikTok
• The new Phoenix Chorale album coming out soon that features my music (FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THIS BUT IT’S COOL! lol) (More info here)

Why is it that two conductors can give the exact same technical pattern to the same choir, yet pull out two completely different sounds? We spend years studying method books, perfecting rehearsal pacing, and mastering vocal pedagogy—but what happens when our technique begins to eclipse our actual presence on the podium?

Today on the podcast, I’m thrilled to welcome back Dr. James Jordan for his second visit to the show, whose last episode was incredibly helpful and popular with audiences. We dive into his latest book from GIA, The Conductor’s Triangle: Embodied Conducting and Connection. Drawing on over four decades of teaching, the profound influence of his mentor Elaine Brown, and the science behind connection and audiation, James challenges us to move past mechanical conducting habits. We explore what it means to be truly grounded, how listening differs from fixing, and why the most vital instrument in the rehearsal room is simply who you are.

After all, James warns, if your gestures are just mechanical patterns, you’re putting up a shield between your core and your ensemble.

Tune in now on YouTube or your favorite podcast app!

Tune in and have your thinking stimulated and challenged. Then, weigh in yourself with your related ideas and experiences on Facebook in the Choralosophers group or over on choralosophy.substack.com Also, don’t forget to grab a reading rope for your classroom wall from the shop! Music Reading Rope

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and FB! YouTube version of this episode.

James Jordan is a Grammy -nominated conductor and seventh conductor of the renowned Westminster Choir. He is Conductor Emeritus at Westminster Choir College. His experience covers over 40 years of teaching, conducting and research. He is the author of more than sixty-five books on conducting and conducting pedagogy, and has over 20 recordings under the GIAChoralWorks , NAXOS and Reference Recordings labels. He is founding director of The Choral Academy of Evoking Sound,

www.thechoralacademy.com, a groundbreaking platform for continuing study for musicians. He is Co-Founder of The Choral Institute at Oxford. He is Co-Director and Tutor for The Addamus Italian Choral Program (Addamus.com) and in 2027 will lead Conducting Institutes in Oxford, Florence and New York.

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos

If you have spent any time around this show, you know I believe deeply in getting the piano out of the way and giving students the tools to decode music for themselves. But there is a massive difference between occasionally putting an exercise on a screen and building a systematic, daily routine that leads to true automaticity, AND serves the growth of the group and each individual. In this piece of the session, we dig into the nuts and bolts—from tailoring difficulty and using custom levels for changing adolescent voices, to structuring low-stress grading systems that build daily practice habits rather than test anxiety.

While this excerpt covers some immediately actionable strategies you can take straight into your next rehearsal, it is only a small slice of the full presentation. The complete, uninterrupted webinar replay—including the screen-share walkthrough of my exact backend settings, live whiteboard annotation techniques, and the full audience Q&A—is waiting for you on the paid subscriber feed.

To unlock the full recording and gain access to my complete library of music literacy resources, testing rubrics, and bonus content, head over to Patreon or Substack to upgrade your subscription.

Here on the main show, you are going to get some really good tips and suggestions for how to build progression, assessments and a class culture that thrives on growth. “How do we make reading music not stressful?” By getting good at it and not making it stressful. It’s all in the approach.

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos

Let’s just say, the algorithm anointed it with oil and now its cup runneth over with comments. It ignited a massive debate across our social media feeds. Hundreds of comments rolled in—ranging from voice teachers defending full vibrato to singers recalling the sting of being shushed by directors chasing a blend. In this follow-up episode, I dive into the comment threads to unpack the nuance lost in internet absolutism. Moving past rigid dogma, we explore how directors and singers can balance healthy, sustainable vocal technique with the acoustic realities of ensemble singing.

In this episode, we discuss:

Whether you are a conductor striving for a unified ensemble sound or a singer trying to navigate choral spaces without sacrificing your vocal health, this conversation offers a grounded path through one of the most polarized debates in choral music. Tune in, and let’s keep the dialogue going.

For future rehearsal clips, find me on TikTok, Insta and Facebook

Choralosophy Podcast (@choralosophy) • Instagram photos and videos