Musical Director

And just exactly what does the Musical Director do anyway....

This is the first in a series of news items focusing in on our musical director, some of our singers and a member of our audience.  So we can get a perspective on what The Incognito Singers do and how we are received.

Normally the musical directors role is quite simple, he / she just turn up and conduct the choir at rehearsals and concerts. It can't be that hard, it's only waving your arms about!  If only, that was all it was!!!!

In a choir like ours, our MD also chooses the music, orders the music, creates the backing/rehearsal tracks and stores all the music. So he's a librarian too.

The distribution of our music is fairly straight forward as it is all available via our website, so he is the web administrator too.

And when new members join and we need to record all their personal details, send emails and keep everyone generally informed, then he acts as secretary as well.

Generally he manages to keep out of physical contact with stage-wear and just offers suggestions on what he thinks the choir should look like, but a recent trip to Cartagena with Linda our stage manager, saw the MD helping to chose material for the ladies new scarves.  Plus he ended up paying for it and he did all the driving!

Surely he doesn't get involved in the finances too? Oh yes he does, up to last year he was treasurer, but thankfully this year he has managed to delegate that role to Natalie (Sop2) to keep the records and Ann (Front of House) to take weekly subscription.

So what about publicity, well thankfully he has Peter (Baritone) who has kindly taken on the role of advertising and concert manager, so that is some burden off his shoulders.  Peter knows just how interesting and taxing that aspect of the choir can be.

All in all, most amateur choirs have an MD like ours and if they are lucky have a few good volunteers to help our run things too.  It's all about team work and the love of doing it, after all there is no remuneration.