Teaching Choral Music
by Joan Baum, Ph.D

The heavens may be “telling the glory of God,” as Haydn declares in “The Creation,” but an inspired delivery of that message depends upon voices on earth. If James (“Jim”) Johns, Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Queens College has his way, that message will be memorably delivered by the Queens College Choral Society (QCCS) on Saturday night, May 10. For the youthful conductor, who assumed his post just this academic year, bringing with him not only his bride, Emily, a harpist and also a soprano in the Choral Society, the experience will be a fabulous first. The 120 -member group will be augmented by voices from a smaller ensemble at the college and by the choir at the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. Daunting, exhilarating and, to judge from this energetic pair, eminently do-able.

The two musicians sit chatting with a visitor, addressing envelopes, fielding questions from students who keep dropping in, commiserating with a colleague in minor moan mode who is leaning in the doorway. The phone is ringing, the computer is blipping away, and Emily is playing lost and found with a lunch (or dinner) snack. No problem, the dynamic duo doesn’t miss a beat. Life is allegro and they love it.

The position of Choral Director is a first for Queens College, with its well known Aaron Copland School of Music. Before that, the college’s four different vocal groups had been led by separate adjuncts—not the best way to advance musicianship or music. üt was the faculty itself that advocated for a full-time professorship. In Johns, the college found not only a fine musicianЖand tenor––but a music educator dedicated to choral singing and to providing amateurs with professional opportunity to become as musically literate as possible, to engage little known as well as familiar works in the repertoire, and to appreciate the joy of ensemble music. Not untypical of choral groups that are open to the community as well as to undergraduates, QCCS attracts those who can sight read and those who have finally decided to step outside the shower. The mix of levels and voices (typically, a plethora of altos and dearth of tenors) creates challenge, but Jim and Emily Johns (who met in a choir) make it clear by their own example that harmony can be enhanced by difference.

For Jim, conducting is a natural way to link his love of study (history, musicology) and teaching. “A conductor must always be concerned about others.” Emily, who loves working one on one, sees the good teacher as perforce a good performer. At rehearsals the Maestro puts his good-humored and modest manner to the service of hard-driving perfectionism. Sections proceed meticulously until rhythm, pitch and diction are exactly where he wants them. For Emily, who has inaugurated an informal series of musicianship classes prior to rehearsals, the name of the game is fun (at a recent session older members of the QCCS competed for right-answer “stickies” and went away chanting, “rhythm is our friend.” Between them, what Jim and Emily Johns have secured is the original sense of the word “amateur,” lover, in this case, of choral singing.

Indeed, a phenomenon in the country is the extraordinary growth in choral societies, as any weekend concert listings in newspapers will attest. As school music programs are cut or flounder for lack of funds, Emily points out, savvy parents seek out alternative solutions, with the result that children’s choirs are flourishing because parents are concerned that the arts remain an integral and essential part of education. But, to judge from the increasing numbers of adults nation wide who are joining choral ensembles, the attraction to belong to has wider prompt. What choral societies offer non-academics is a sense of belonging at a time, as Yeats might say, when the center does not hold. Music is, like mathematics, the world’s only universal language. Above history, across cultures, in spite of war, music endures, and when it engages voices in community it demonstrates, particularly in a hard time, faith in humanity.#

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