Why I rarely teach the same songs twice

I know you can’t please everyone, but when I plan a singing workshop I try to make sure I won’t be teaching anything that any of the singers already know. An impossible task, but I have a low boredom threshold and feel I need to keep singers interested. I have so many new songs I’m dying to teach that I’m always introducing brand new repertoire. But singers often want something familiar. They want to feel comfortable and not be learning all the time. Sometimes they just want to have a good sing. The secret is to balance the new with the familiar. If you lead a regular choir, make sure you revisit a few old favourites at the end of each rehearsal. Constantly introducing new repertoire can be tiring and unrewarding. It’s a little harder with one-off workshops. I like to us this analogy. Imagine that you invite some friends over for a meal. They live a long way away, so the last time they visited may have been two or three years ago. Because they don’t come often, they’ll probably…