Owning The Stage

Harmony University was awesome!  That's an event that brings together some six hundred ardent a cappella singers from around the world for a solid week of first-rate education and instruction in the a cappella arts.  This year of course they asked me to offer Owning The Stage as a 12-hour class, and I think it was a huge success.  Both the morning and afternoon classes had a great time, and covered some really interesting ground.  I believe they all walked away with a better understanding of what it takes to put a great performance on the stage.

Even better, I've been inspired - I've got more than 30 article ideas in the hopper now, which I'll be writing and posting over the next few months.

This past week in Anaheim I sang with about seventy of my fellow past barbershop quartet champs in a group called the “AIC” or “Association of International Champions.” We put on a great show every year featuring the champ quartets that are still active, and a chorus of past champs that learns a half-dozen songs in a couple of days, and then sings them on the show. It’s a blast!

As part of that AIC chorus I had the pleasure to be directed and coached by a half-dozen different high-level musicians in the hobby like principal director Jay Giallombardo, and assistant directors Clay Hine, Tony DeRosa and Royce Ferguson.

Chord Worshipping!  If you’re an initiated barbershopper, you know what it is – reveling in that lock and ring that is the trademark of the style, but more than that, chord worshipping is making the performance about the lock and ring instead of the song.  For a fanatic close-harmony fan, it’s like a siren call – just hold that beautiful, overtone-expanded chord for a few more seconds!  Make that ultimate note go 20 seconds, 25 seconds… aaaaah, yeah!  What could be wrong with that?

Some people seem to have more charisma than others.  You know the type – they walk into a room and everyone watches them.  The whole geometry of the room will adjust to make that charismatic person the focus of attention.  And those people, often, are the ones who have a gift for stage performance.  It’s easier for them to command attention, and they have a natural charm that gives them a big boost in developing rapport with an audience.

Since I started writing this blog, I’ve spent an awful lot of time thinking about authentic performance.  What is it?  How does it work?  Is it necessary, or can you get away without it?  My mind churns on these questions almost constantly.  So when I get a chance to watch a whole bunch of performers in a short period of time, I always learn something interesting.

Well Owning The Stage "the class" became a reality this past weekend in Columbus, Ohio.  Two groups of about 30 people attended the first-ever class, and handed in really flattering evaluation sheets afterwards.  Here were some of their comments:

"Just what I needed to take my chorus to the next level"
"I can't wait to use this with my quartet, to make our performances more engaging."
"Next year this should be expanded to a 3 or 4 hour class!"

I did get mixed reviews in the "handouts were used effectively" category, mostly because there were no

Tomorrow I leave for Columbus, Ohio to teach Owning The Stage as a class for the very first time!  Actually it's not quite the full class, which takes 12 hours, but more of a 90-minute sampler.  Even so, I'm flattered that it's far and away the most popular class being offered at the JAD "Apple Corps" district school.

I've designed a 90 minute experience that focuses on the importance of an authentic story.  We start by demonstrating that it's important, then we talk about how to create a great story for a performance (the "4-things" model that I am so fond of), then we get some victims up to the front of the class to show everyone how it works.

Wish me luck!

Tom