Choir Fam Podcast
The Choir Fam Podcast is a venue for conversations about the current state of choral music. Hosts Dean Luethi and Matthew Myers seek to bring the worldwide choral community closer together through their discussions with a variety of guests who work with choir in its various forms. The goal of the podcast is to provide listeners with interesting tidbits of knowledge they could use in day-to-day choral rehearsals and to bring light to the ways that issues in the choral field are being observed and addressed.
- Update frequency
- every 9 days
- Average duration
- 46 minutes
- Episodes
- 142
- Years Active
- 2022 - 2025
Ep. 55 - Empowering Student Leaders in the Choral Ensemble - Monika Tabor
"The first year is the worst. The kids will want everything that’s not you, and that’s OK. They don’t want to know what you know until they know that you care about them, so you just wear them down w…
Ep. 54 - Affirming Identity Through Choral Music - Xiaosha Lin
"Every time on stage when we connect with the choral music and I see the students moved or touched by choral music, that's the moment I fall in love with choral music. The love of choral music is aff…
Ep. 53 - All in the Family: A Choral & Wind Conducting Duo - Shelby and Micah Laird
"In this small community, they’re going to hear Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in their backyard. The festival has the intention to broaden the horizons of this community through music. That’s why we do wh…
Ep. 52 - Immersing Yourself in the Music of a New Culture - John W Mathre
"The choir totally operates in Estonian. Luckily I think my musicianship is good enough that I can fall back on those skills even when I don't understand most of what the conductor says in rehearsals…
Ep. 51 - Sibling Choral Conductors: A Literal Choir Fam - John Parezo & Stephanie Schumacher
"I had already taught about a third of the students that we had at the opening of the school. We were able to hit the ground running. We spent a lot of time getting to know each other and team buildi…
Minisode Intro Part 2 - Share Your Story with the Choir Fam
We want to hear from you! We'd love all our listeners to answer our Season 2 lightning-round questions for us to share with our audience. We are looking forward to getting to know you better.
Email ch…
Season 2 Wrap-Up
Thank you for listening to our show this season!!
Here are the favorite choral pieces from our guests in the second season:
Even When He Is Silent, Kim André Arnesen
St. Matthew Passion, Johann Sebastia…
Minisode 2 - Dan Walls, Christina Fangman
Choir Fam Minisode 2 includes Lightning Round answers from two of our Choir Fam listeners:
Dan Walls
Rockford, Illinois
Choir teacher at Boylan Catholic High School in Rockford, Illinois
Christina Fangma…
Ep. 50 - Bridging Cultural Gaps and Fostering Empathy - Reena Esmail
"In choir we have a chance to learn to embody a different culture through its language. When you're singing pieces in another language, there's a moment where you have to feel that you speak that lan…
Ep. 49 - Redefining the Confines of Genre: Representation in Vocal Music - Adrian Dunn
"My goal as an artist, conductor, and thought leader is to make sure that we always start with 'why are we singing? Are we picking these pieces because people are telling us that we should, because t…
Ep. 48 - Fostering Connection Through Choral Music - Reginal Wright
"The middle school was a three-story building. At the bottom were all of the 'rough' kids. There was a second floor that was moderate. All the kids who had resources had their classes on the third fl…
Ep. 47 - Exploring Multiple Avenues to Musical Fulfillment - Anthony Maglione
"I try to be flexible with the way I write for people. For me it's a service when I get commissions, so I want to be able to serve the community that I'm working with in the same way that I would tai…
Ep. 46 - Building a Support System in the Choral Community - Matthew Gardner & Taylor Stricklin
"I first spend time building trust between me and then ensemble and then having them build trust within the ensemble. If they don't trust me, we won't be able to do a particular level or type of musi…
Ep. 45 - Delivering Hope Through Choral Outreach - Amanda Weber
"That was the beginning of me working with a homeless women's choir. As someone who grew up doing music my whole life, it was just part of my DNA. This broke open everything I had ever thought or exp…
Ep. 44 - Utilizing Social Media to Get More People Singing - Beth Philemon
"If people are taking pictures with their phones and having them in their hands all the time, why are we not leveraging these to talk about choral music? I am so tired of us being afraid of what peop…
Ep. 43 - Finding Your Window to Seize Opportunity - John Dickson
"It gave me some amazing opportunities, just that one phone call, that one chance. For my grad students, that's one of the things that I really try to model and mentor and teach them: you can be a fa…
Ep. 42 - A Quick Start Guide to Choral Singing - Matt Bumbach and Dean Luethi
"I call it 'choral confession.' They come up to you and tell you their history with choir: 'I don't read sheet music.' 'I'm not a soloist.' These are wonderful capable singers, musically creative ind…
Ep. 41 - Creating Spaces of Safety and Belonging - Erin Guinup
"It is important for our members to be seen in spaces that they've traditionally not been welcome to. When you feel that you belong in a space, it changes something inside of you... You learn to use …
Ep. 40 - Deep Listening in the Choral Rehearsal - Jo-Michael Scheibe
"It's not about only 'what do you hear,' it's about how you hear. What is the color of the sound you hear? What do you hear in the vocal mechanism? What are some of the things that they are doing tha…
Ep. 39 - Brain Breaks and Focus Games for Middle-Level Students - Alana Scott
"The feeling that I got from being part of a good, and solid and warm choir culture was a big one for me. The feeling of being the person that has a hand in creating that space for somebody else and …