What the best directors do
I just spent the last week in Texas working as a clinician with almost 30 different orchestras, rehearsing over 50 musical works, and collaborating with 13 orchestra directors on 8 campuses. My dear thanks to those incredible directors for all you taught me and all you do to cultivate your own students every day.
On top of a more standard rhythm of clinic visits near home, I’ve been doing these weeklong out-of--town clinic marathons since 2018. As usual, the level of musicianship displayed in these programs was outstanding. The repertoire is all but unmatched in all but the most mature school ensembles around the country. And yet, they bring in guests like myself to offer a fresh set of ears and eyes to the music making process.
Many in the music education world will be quite familiar with the regular practice of annually inviting in a few guest clinicians to work with their high school bands, orchestras, and choirs. However, this is not a universal across the US and certainly across the globe.
With that in mind, this essay is an overview of the clinic process, which I tackle with two lenses:
My personal experience: as a clinician this past week in Texas working with high school orchestras, as a regular guest clinician across the country, and as a former public school teacher who would bring in guest clinicians.
Some observations about what these directors are doing well when it comes to preparing the way for a great musical experience for all involved.
The discussion will follow the life cycle of a clinician experience from the point of view of a large ensemble director, from preparation to reflection. But first, what is a clinician?
What is a clinician?
A clinician functions like an outside consultant, coming in to bring a different perspective and try a few new approaches to musical problem solving. This person might be another local director, a professional conductor, and/or a university professor, and these different roles might overlap. This person might bring a variety of different complimentary skills to those of the directors they work with: phrasing, balance, effect, and precision might be musical areas of focus, or they might bring some instrument-specific skills.
A band, choir, or orchestra director might invite around three conductors each year to visit their program and rehearse with their students. University of Kansas Director of Orchestral Activities Creston Herron advises directors to sequence three clinicians who as a group compliment one another. He gives each of these roles a name: “the technician, the musician, and the magician.”
Planning
Repertoire
Many directors make sure to list out the repertoire so that clinicians can effectively prepare for the clinic. The best directors make a point to organize the repertoire by class period, and then list them in order of priority / chronological order for that class. They also make sure to list each title in a consistent format for easy reference later.
Many send a shared folder with all of the scores in PDF form. This one-time consultant role is generally considered to be fair use as I am merely here to work with the group for a single sitting as a substitute, and not a performance. It is usually marked up and not a replacement for any physical score, which I often own myself, and extra copies of which they also own.
Preparation
Music Prep
The best directors schedule their clinics at propitious times in their preparation cycle for upcoming performances. Too close to a concert and you limit the range of motion for the clinician. Perhaps there are bowing, pacing, or phrasing issues that would require a week or two to reinforce. If the clinic is at the last minute, a clinician is going to be limited to “quick fixes” when the real value might be in a few “big ideas” that might potentially rejuvenate the work.
On the other hand, if a clinician visits too early in the process, the students may not know the music well enough to make the effort as meaningful as it could be. Put another way, you want to know the music well enough to appreciate when you are receiving a fresh approach to revivify your efforts.
In between those two points are the times where music preparation is high, but time to reinforce clinic learning is also adequate before the performance.
Event Prep
The best directors build up the clinic day in advance. When I go to some campuses, they are already aware of a few bulleted aspects of my biography. Now, this is not important to me or for me. But it is invaluable for students to have an understanding of the musicians they are getting an opportunity to collaborate with.
So it’s with that in mind that sharing information about the clinician can set students up to be able to fully participate in that interaction by understanding the perspective of the person offering advice. It helps them to want to engage and make the most of the opportunity when they understand what it is and what it can do for them.
This past week, the A+ directors introduced their students in advance and prepared them for the visit. They knew about my background, and after rehearsal, many students would choose to approach me to discuss topics of interest to them, based on my background.
Some do this on prior days, and others provide introduction right as I am about to begin.
Final Prep
Prior to the joint rehearsal with the clinician, the finest school band and orchestra directors have developed a concrete plan to make good use of the class period. They expect students seated and warning up vigorously by the time or shortly after the bell rings. They begin on time, and carefully curate daily announcements, covering only the essentials that day. They perform a group warm up as appropriate, but likely in a truncated format. The goal is to get to the “meat” of the clinic as soon as possible. This gives clinicians the opportunity to work with the students as much as possible.
The one thing they do not skimp on is tuning. Excellent directors make a point to take all of the time necessary to go ahead and get their ensembles as in-tune as possible so that they sound their very best.
Performance
The best directors are prepared to perform a work or movement straight down, top to bottom, or to perform a deliberately targeted excerpt of the piece from top to bottom. Once instruments and minds are in tune with one another, they conduct a performance for the clinician, allowing the clinician stand back, listen, make notes about what they are hearing, and attempt to assemble a strategy to use the time effectively and musically.
In the case of a piece that begins with tentative entrances (for instance, the Elgar string serenade, second movement), many directors who want to start here will first play a more energetic, tutti movement or passage to help build ensemble coherence and energy before turning to places where exposed individual sections are still acclimating to the clinic situation.
After the “performance” (run through of a movement, say), they tend to refrain from apologizing or criticizing the performance. In doing so, they model the types of behaviors we want to see in our students: the combination of a relentless quest for growth, combined with a desire to create meaningful, enjoyable performance experience that exhibits many qualities, including self-forgiveness. This gives the clinician the opportunity to voice their impressions in an unfiltered way. If the clinician has a different viewpoint on what they’ve heard, that may or may not be objectively accurate, but it is the useful information that a director wants to have access to! If the director goes first, it may affect the clinician’s ability to offer a contrasting view.
Instead of criticizing, self-secure directors turn it over to the clinician with a blank slate for the clinician to work with.
Clinic
The best directors are actively engaged during the clinic. This could take many forms. But one form it typically does not take is working on a computer or leave the room, except for something brief, urgent, and required. Directors typically try to notify directors if they will have any interruptions from participation in the clinic. They see themselves as a critical part of the learning process. In my ensembles, I always let them know that I am trying to be the “learner in chief.” When students see directors trying to learn, the emulate that learning. When students see their directors writing things down, this normalizes writing things down.
Below are some of the ways excellent public school music teachers use clinic time:
Thinking on Paper
Some directors sit directly behind the clinician, note-pad in hand, score on the stand. For one thing, they are taking notes on what the clinician worked on to remind themselves of what was discussed, create a checklist of ideas to work with and reinforce, or noticing specific rehearsal techniques or verbiage that might be generative for them later.
For another, they are making additional observations about what they are hearing, taking the opportunity to listen from a different position and collect observations that may have been harder to notice when conducting.
Other directors might be walking the room, or watching the conductor from the perspective of the musicians. They might be picking up on interactions between musicians. They may also be noticing conducting gestures, patterns, and styles used to convey challenging transitions.
In some cases, they may play or sing to fill in for a student soloist who is absent or taking a private lesson in a nearby practice room.
Still other directors may simply switch places with the clinician, listening, marking their scores, and then asking questions. They use the clinic as an opportunity to collaborate musically. These collaborations are some of my favorite experiences!
Directing Traffic
The best school directors ensure a meaningful experience for their students by ensuring a minimum of disruptions.
They also make sure to direct the clinician to move on or keep going. Clinicians want to be put to work in the place that is most useful for students and their director. The director is the only person with the perspective to know where that might be.
For instance, a director that would prefer to move on to another piece or another section could signal that they’d like to do so after another minute or two. If a clinician asks for something that doesn’t seem compatible with some outside constraints, it’s perfectly OK to suggest that the clinic move on to something else. Personally, I welcome it! I’m not here to service my personal interests, I’m here to serve the artistic needs of your ensemble.
As an example: this past week, I thought I would wait patiently for a harpist who had stood up touch up her tuning one clinic. It was an important passage from Mahler’s First Symphony and the most important element was the harp triplets. Waiting had a musical purpose, but also a social one: you want to show respect for the musicians who are taking ownership of their playing and be patient when you can to allow them to make an adjustment.
However, in this case the director gently spoke up: “Mr. Smith, I’m sorry but we won’t have time for that today,” meaning that I shouldn’t wait on the harpist. I went ahead and politely asked if she would mind playing despite being slightly out of tune so we could briefly rehearse the passage and she agreed. We rehearsed effectively for another three or four minutes before it turned out that this was the end of our time together. The director had saved valuable minutes of rehearsal time by intervening and contradicting my request. Firm boundary setting helped me understand their needs in a way that I couldn’t have possibly known to do on my own in that moment.
Attitude of Openness
The best directors have the confidence to accept a range of approaches on the part of a clinician. It is the job of the clinician to be sensitive to and appreciative of the vulnerability required to bring in a guest who may implicitly offer thoughts that are at variance with your own advice.
This advice may be squarely pointed at the students. But there are even higher peaks of value in the clinic.
Some directors who want to wring every possible benefit from a clinic will allow themselves to be coached on their conducting. All of us have some aspects of our conducting, or even of our core musicianship, that could be improved. Itzhak Perlman still receives performance advice regularly from his chief coach, who happens to be his wife, herself a fine violinist, and (implicitly) among the greatest violin coaches in the world! If Perlman could use some advice, so can I, and so can most conductors at every level.
These elite conductors are comfortable with themselves as successful imperfectionists. They recognize nonverbal communication as a critical part of the conducting process. And as they seek musical excellence, they recognize their own important role in that as the silent musician at the front of their ensemble. Lastly, they recognize that by allowing themselves to be coached on their conducting, they have an opportunity to model the difficult character skills necessary to become a better musician, making it that much easier for their students to mirror those skills back at them as they provide daily guidance.
Afterword
As I reflect back on my week, I am attempting to digest the warmth of sound I heard in a performance of Mahler’s Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony. I am processing the rhythmic vitality of hearing Valerie Coleman’s “Tracing Visions” and Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro. I am considering the teaching approaches of the middle school directors I saw who took great pains to provide first class leadership to their students.
I am no longer with them, but I know that those directors are likewise working with what they received last week and integrating a few of the ideas we tried into their plans. The best directors have clearly marked their scores and made their lists. Some even created audio recordings to refer back to.
Good directors make good use of their time with the groups they work with, doing all they can with their own knowledge and skills to share with their students.
The best directors make a habit of seeking out feedback from other musicians, feedback that extends beyond their own backgrounds and harnesses the shared experiences of outside guests. This knowledge sharing is what Annie Murphy Paul calls “looping” and it is central to the generative process that the school orchestra clinic is all about.