How to be prepared for any combination of voices

I’m leading a singing workshop tomorrow. I know I will have 35 singers, seven of whom are men. Five of those are tenors. That means that I can choose song arrangements accordingly. But what happens when you’ve no idea in advance which voice parts you’ll have? Usually I would expect most of the men at my workshops to be baritones, with a few basses. I rarely get many tenors. So it’s great to be forewarned about tomorrow. When I lead a workshop open to the general public, I will only know how many male and female singers will be coming, not which voice parts they prefer. Sometimes I have loads of sopranos, and other times loads of female tenors. And occasionally just one man. So I need to be prepared and to be sure that my arrangements will work for all sorts of voice combinations. Here are a few things you can do to be prepared. limit the vocal range I make sure that none of the song arrangements I teach will be too high or too low for the average untrained singer. The highest I’ll go…