Morning KVU brothers!
In my day job for the Barbershop Harmony Society, I oversee the educational offerings for our membership AND barbershop curious...especially music educators! In my KVU life, Aaron has asked me to be our director of education. I am thrilled and (shocker alert) have ideas to share!
:-)
For clarity, Aaron remains our director and visionary arranger, but a bunch of us are stepping up to help KVU have a stronger, larger team of leaders. Some of our BHS judges will be coaching. Some of our KVU tried and true leaders will continue to deliver coaching in performance, choreography, voice, and musical concepts. You may have seen a glimpse of this on our January 13th guest night...it's a good team, and we are adding even more leaders! Heck, I even will chime in now and then!
My job as director of education is to make sure you are seeing the right faces at the right time, using best practices as teachers and leaders. Hopefully you will notice:
-more focus on concepts (rather than finding the next problem)
-demanding (yet positive)
-significantly less talk time
-deeper variety of rehearsal strategies
-more clarity for rehearsal strategies AWAY from chorus
I'm excited for this coming Saturday's retreat and KVU bootcamp. Our goal for this Saturday is for each of us to laugh and have a blast all day, learn a few concepts from our talented leaders in voice, in music, and performance, and even share an offsite meal together! For our new KVU guys, we want to have you come into our brotherhood, sound, and energy. We are not the typical chorus. Returning KVU guys, we need to keep 90% of the awesome of the past and clean up 10% of the....growth opportunities.
The biggest indication of culture is attendance. In the BHS, people freak out about the indicator of PAID MEMBERSHIP, yet we know many paid members are not involved in barbershop on a weekly basis, and thousands are NOT paid and sing barbershop every week. I am always stunned when chapter leaders say "we have 50 guys on the books and 19 guys on the risers"....what?
Real talk from the new guy....
This Saturday, January 28th, 3 days from today, we start at 9 am. Because I live in a different time zone here in Nashville, I gotta plan to be on site with some time to spare. I do this not because I am a saint, or a BHS employee, or a nut job... I do this because I committed to KVU, and my word is good. If it is your culture to always be late and you no show or are late to our rehearsals, we will be talking to you about this. It's wrong guys...we all know this. If you have a commitment part or all of the day next Saturday, we ask that you email attendance@kyvocalunion.org to let us know. If we don't hear anything from you, we assume you are going to be with us this Saturday...right?
Our goal is to be a much larger chorus in Vegas. We have a variety of reasons for this, but the biggest reason is we are much more stable. If 10 guys are missing from a chorus of 60, we notice it a little bit. If 10 guys are missing from a chorus of 25, it is depressing for the 15 remaining, and teaches these 15 guys to not attend rehearsals next time. We must stop this cycle.
We have hundreds of things that are great about KVU, but this is the elephant that is in the room...our attendance patterns. Let's simply move on and admit this has been a challenge, and we are ready to change as a group.
See you Saturday morning at 8:50 am, EST.
Most sincerely,
--
Donny Rose, Director of Harmony University
Barbershop Harmony Society
In my day job for the Barbershop Harmony Society, I oversee the educational offerings for our membership AND barbershop curious...especially music educators! In my KVU life, Aaron has asked me to be our director of education. I am thrilled and (shocker alert) have ideas to share!
:-)
For clarity, Aaron remains our director and visionary arranger, but a bunch of us are stepping up to help KVU have a stronger, larger team of leaders. Some of our BHS judges will be coaching. Some of our KVU tried and true leaders will continue to deliver coaching in performance, choreography, voice, and musical concepts. You may have seen a glimpse of this on our January 13th guest night...it's a good team, and we are adding even more leaders! Heck, I even will chime in now and then!
My job as director of education is to make sure you are seeing the right faces at the right time, using best practices as teachers and leaders. Hopefully you will notice:
-more focus on concepts (rather than finding the next problem)
-demanding (yet positive)
-significantly less talk time
-deeper variety of rehearsal strategies
-more clarity for rehearsal strategies AWAY from chorus
I'm excited for this coming Saturday's retreat and KVU bootcamp. Our goal for this Saturday is for each of us to laugh and have a blast all day, learn a few concepts from our talented leaders in voice, in music, and performance, and even share an offsite meal together! For our new KVU guys, we want to have you come into our brotherhood, sound, and energy. We are not the typical chorus. Returning KVU guys, we need to keep 90% of the awesome of the past and clean up 10% of the....growth opportunities.
The biggest indication of culture is attendance. In the BHS, people freak out about the indicator of PAID MEMBERSHIP, yet we know many paid members are not involved in barbershop on a weekly basis, and thousands are NOT paid and sing barbershop every week. I am always stunned when chapter leaders say "we have 50 guys on the books and 19 guys on the risers"....what?
Real talk from the new guy....
This Saturday, January 28th, 3 days from today, we start at 9 am. Because I live in a different time zone here in Nashville, I gotta plan to be on site with some time to spare. I do this not because I am a saint, or a BHS employee, or a nut job... I do this because I committed to KVU, and my word is good. If it is your culture to always be late and you no show or are late to our rehearsals, we will be talking to you about this. It's wrong guys...we all know this. If you have a commitment part or all of the day next Saturday, we ask that you email attendance@kyvocalunion.org to let us know. If we don't hear anything from you, we assume you are going to be with us this Saturday...right?
Our goal is to be a much larger chorus in Vegas. We have a variety of reasons for this, but the biggest reason is we are much more stable. If 10 guys are missing from a chorus of 60, we notice it a little bit. If 10 guys are missing from a chorus of 25, it is depressing for the 15 remaining, and teaches these 15 guys to not attend rehearsals next time. We must stop this cycle.
We have hundreds of things that are great about KVU, but this is the elephant that is in the room...our attendance patterns. Let's simply move on and admit this has been a challenge, and we are ready to change as a group.
See you Saturday morning at 8:50 am, EST.
Most sincerely,
--
Donny Rose, Director of Harmony University
Barbershop Harmony Society