Choral vs. Barbershop and the coaching culture

Over the holidays, I had a great chat with Tom Carter, author of Choral Charisma. (Tom is also a recent addition to the Coach Directory.) Basically I've often wondered why coaching is so rare in the choral world, when it's so prevalent in barbershop circles.  The gap seems to be huge - almost every barbershop chorus and quartet gets coaching at least sometimes, and some of them, mostly the best ones, get coaching very frequently, but in all my exposure to choral groups here in Vancouver I have never heard of one of them getting "coached" by anyone besides their own conductor.  I asked Tom for his opinions, because I know he's a sought-after coach in the choral world.

Keep in mind that Mr. Carter is essentially bringing the concepts of method acting to choral singing, so when he thinks of coaching, he's thinking of performance oriented coaching and not technical instruction.  So here are Tom's points, many of which are particularly valuable to those inside the "barbershop bubble" since they represent an objective assessment from an educated and insightful musician that isn't also inside the bubble!

Barbershoppers place a relatively equal value on technical elements and entertaining. Many of the songs are humorous or over-the-top sentimental (involving humor along with the poignancy). Therefore, a quartet singing funny or sentimental songs with minimal expression would fall flat on their, well, faces!

Choral Folks place a much greater emphasis on technical elements, "singing beautifully" being perhaps the major goal. So, because that is the emphasis, a choir can "get away with" singing with NO expression for two hours ... as long as the singing is at a certain technical level.

Along with/because of all the above, the audience expectations are very different for the two genres, allowing inexpressive choirs to flourish, but demanding that Barbershop groups entertain and engage. As far as I'm concerned, a chorus shouldn't bore us ... though too many of them do, and far too often!

Barbershop quartets sing without a conductor, thereby making the relationship with the audience more immediate and compelling. (And as far as Barbershop choruses are concerned, their focus on expression is a by-product of the overall Barbershop culture's focus.)

Choral Folks are conditioned and educated to be conductor-centric. Most training in most grad schools reinforces the notion that "it's all about the conductor." What is learned (among other things)? Body language, facial expressions, movement, posture ... but I'm talking about the conductor's, not the singers'!! Bottom line becomes the notion that it's the conductor's role to engage the singers, rather than it being the singers' role to engage the audience.

Some excellent points, I think you will agree!

One thing I would add is that inside the barbershop cult bubble there are many different kinds of coaches, and while some of them do focus on performance, I would say even more focus on technical elements of singing and presentation.

Also I think it's important to note that most barbershop chorus directors, unless I'm very much mistaken, are paid just like their choral counterparts.  And yet the better the chorus, the more coaching they tend to get!  Or maybe it's the other way around - the ones who are willing to go beyond the talents of their own musical director and pay for outside expertise are the ones that get better faster.

The barbershop community has, over the past few decades, incorporated much from other performance art forms, bettering the barbershop art form with an awful lot of vocal production expertise, choreography expertise, and whole new musical genres.  The next big thing, I believe, is a real understanding of what it takes to be authentic, and ways of getting there.  This happens to be the confluence of acting and singing, and it's also exactly what Mr. Carter is doing, and what he has in his book.

But whatever is out there to make barbershop better, in my humble opinion it's going to happen ten times faster than it would in the choral world because of the barbershop culture of coaching.  Next to the contest system, nothing has a bigger impact on the barbershop craft than the willingness to get the best advice they can, anywhere they can get it.