Comments

First of all, good luck playing today!

Second of all (insert big sigh here, followed by strong eye-rolling), just because your choir director is getting professional gigs doesn't mean she is acting professionally. It doesn't matter what you, or the other choir members, do for your paycheck: Her behavior is unacceptable.

So what to do?

You could start holding up little signs during rehearsal when she goes postal. Maybe the signs could say such things as: "What would Jesus do?" or "Can you yell at me a little louder? My soul is not crushed quite yet." or "The louder you yell, the more obvious your own sense of inadequacy is.".

Another plan of action is to have a meeting, or even write a letter, and explain how you feel. And if this behavior continues, quit.

Good luck!

I like Anne's advice. I like using humor to maintain your sanity and self respect. I don't know how comfortable you would feel discussing the issues with your music director, and I don't know how she would respond. However, if she erodes your self esteem too much, you need to go elsewhere, to a more nurturing environment.

I've attended several UU churches. UUs take music very seriously. All of the music directors I've worked with have been positive and uplifting. They get better results this way. You may want to check into the music programs at other churches. Music is an important criterion in choosing a church.

Or, Karen can come and sing in my church's choir. The choir director is really sweet, and a heck of a good pianist and conductor. Besides, she wouldn't dare run roughshod over her singers...they wouldn't stand for it (insert smiley face here).

However, the new priest tends to bellow into his microphone...

Oh, yuck! Sympathies. My choir director (I think we "talked" about this last year, that we were both singing in Christmas choirs?) will shout a lot when the sopranos (my group) come in early/late, with a wrong note, etc, so I don't begrudge your director that. (One woman, honestly, I'M the one grumbling about having her there because she's so consistently wrong on notes and beats.) But my director cares about the ppl just as much as the music and we all adore her, even when she yells (and sometimes she can be quite hilarious about demonstrating what we're doing that frustrates her). I'm so sorry you're in the situation you're in - it sounds just awful. I agree that a struggling amateur deserves the support a professional receives, if only in the form of compassion and some understanding.

Maybe Santa will bring you a new choir director for Christmas. : )

Terez, what does your director do to take the sting out of her yelling at the section when they make mistakes? That is, how does she let you know she cares?

Frankly, our choir is probably a lot more amateur than yours. And, for whatever reason, I seem to be able to suffer musical "fools" (that is, people who can't count or who sing/play out of tune) much more gladly than most people with musical training do--and much more easily than I suffer criticism of same. (Maybe it's sympathy with my tone-deaf father, or maybe it's that I'm always feeling that I'm really just like them--only lucky to have been blessed with a good violin teacher in my youth).

Anyway, the choir has a hard time recruiting people and retaining people, maybe for obvious reasons (heck, I'm not in it this year either). And the director isn't a bad person; she can be wickedly funny at times too. I can imagine that she aspires to have the same kind of relationship with the choir as you describe yours having, but she feels misunderstood and doesn't know how to fix it.

Karen, first of all, sympathies on the musically stressful situation. An idea occurred to me though---do you have a recording device? It sounds like sometimes you're having trouble hearing things---either notes you're not quite getting right, or what other people are playing---which is totally understandable with so much going on---so I'm thinking if you recorded some of your rehearsals, you could listen to it later when you're not under pressure and maybe hear things you hadn't heard before that would help you later. I record myself every once in a while. Never enjoy it, but it's helpful sometimes. Just a thought. I don't have a good recording device. I used to use my digital camera's movie feature sometimes, and that was good for intonation but not particularly for dynamics. Then I took the digital camera kayaking :(

I'm expecting a new camera, that also takes movies, today for my birthday. But the sound quality is not really satisfactory.

What would people recommend for, say, recording a lesson or a rehearsal?

I have a micro memo thing that attaches to my iPod, got it for about $60 (you have to have a video iPod, though). It records in mp3 format so I can download it to my computer, and the quality is decent. There are lots of options out there, though, some quite expensive, some less so. Make sure you can download what you record---it makes it easier to store and catalog, and there are even programs like Transcribe and Audacity that let you digitally modify them---pretty cool stuff.

I think recording music (your own and other people's) is an important part of being a musician---I know many musicians who don't, but it can definitely be helpful in terms of hearing your own playing more objectively and capturing music that you hear from other people. I take mine to my lessons and have my teacher play tunes and bits of tunes for me, and then I can listen to it as much as I want afterward---it's hard to catch everything the first time sometimes, so it's also a great help that way.