January 4, 2003
Interview with Steve Armstrong - Musical Director of the Toronto "Northern Lights" Chorus
By Darrell Clement - Musical Director of the Abbotsford "Voices of Harmony" Chorus

Darrell- You have a successful chorus from the viewpoint of many barbershoppers throughout the world. We had a wonderful opportunity in the Evergreen District to see the Northern Lights compete in Portland. What are your thoughts on Portland and what things did you take away from that contest?

Steve- We learned a lot of things from Portland, actually.
We always, after a big event like that, have our musical leadership group gather together for a post mortem discussion. This group consists of myself, associate director Chris Arnold, our choreographer David McEachern, and vocal coach Scott McCarthy.
There were a lot of things there (Portland) that we realized we could have done better. We made the best decisions we could at the time, but as we look back on it we realized a bunch of things that we did differently. I'll give you some examples. You were there, so you know that one of the things we did to get the guys to connect with the ballad "Polka Dots & Moonbeams", which is a song about love at first sight, and falling in love…that sort of thing, was to have each of guys in the chorus write a love letter. A letter to his wife or girlfriend, whether she was there in Portland or not, that she would open just before we were about to sing. Those women that were there in Portland would open it when the previous chorus had finished.
Those women that were home were told that at "this time" on Saturday, they should open their letters and read it. The guys didn't realize we had asked the wives to do the same thing for them. So earlier in the week, at any one of the rehearsals, the wives were going to give these letters to the guys. It was going to be a different emotional perspective from which they could sing the song. The schedule we had was that it would happen on the Wednesday rehearsal, but not all the wives realized this, and some had not written letters. So we had to reshuffle the different things we wanted to have done.
One other thing we wanted to have done was a woman who is a wonderful actress, wanted to talk about a personal event in her life, where, when her mother was battling cancer, she had walked in and saw her dad combing & brushing her hair and telling her mother how beautiful she was. The kind of strength exhibited from a long lasting love affair.
We were going to do that one-day. So we ended up having to re-shuffle things again as a result. The day she was going to speak to us actually became the day of the contest. It was a very strong emotional event…too strong for that time, too strong for a dark emotional side.
I think her mother died from the cancer, I'm not sure…we didn't know the whole story. That was a mistake we made. And then the chorus just couldn't sing. We typically anchor an event like this with the chorus just before we perform. I would say to the guys… " Think about the fact that your wives are just now reading the letter you've written to her." That would make this a really fresh emotional event for them.

A little frightened by the earlier event in the day, we didn't take the risk and we didn't anchor. I don't think we had as strong an emotional performance as we could have had.
Great performances come with an element of risk. We shied away from the risk there. We didn't shy away from the risk in Nashville when we did "Brother can you spare a dime?" So that was one of the things we learned. We also had people that would typically start off the week by giving lots of left-brained reminders, technical reminders, of things that they're forgetting. As we get closer to the performance there would be less left-brain and more right-brain reminders, more emotional and connected to the song and performance…that sort of thing. Now, looking back on it, I realize we were still giving left-brain instructions too late in the week.
I think being seduced by the idea that we could win the contest sidetracked us a little bit. We wanted it to be perfect, we wanted to be technically perfect, whereas in previous years we had the courage to say "this is as good as we are & lets make sure that we're totally connected emotionally. " We didn't trust to do that in Portland.

Darrell - What is it about the communications of the NL that you feel puts you apart from other choruses?

Steve - The commitment level is very high…and incidentally, we've never had a written policy on attendance. We keep track of attendance each week and if somebody misses a bunch and we don't know that they've missed, I'll contact them and find out what's going on. We've created a culture where the guys will let me know if they're going to be away because it will affect my planning for the night. If I have five tenors and two of them are going to be away, and I planned on doing something with the tenors, it's not going to be the best night to do that. The guys understand it's not 'Big Brother' checking up on them. It's just a courtesy to allow me to plan the most effective rehearsal. That's a level of commitment.
We've got two guys that come down from North Bay, which is a four-hour drive each way. So they don't come every week. They come every second week, and we've got a guy that comes from Buffalo, New York.
In Nashville, we had a member of our chorus living in Japan. He went there to teach English and we sent him recordings of every rehearsal. The first time he stood on the risers and sang with us, was in Nashville.
There was never a moment in which he 'stood out' as not being 'with it' visually or vocally. That was a tremendous commitment from him. We are able to do that because we make use of things like e-mail.
Everyone in the NL has e-mail.

Darrell - Is that required?

Steve - It wasn't, originally. But it is now. We got to a point where everyone was on it and we said, " hey, this is so useful, lets make it a requirement." Anyone that comes to the NL now, needs to have e-mail.
Everyone is required to have a small recording devise or handheld tape recorder. We use the recordings to monitor, teach and improve. A neat example of what we are able to do with the communications is last year the East York Chapter were putting on a combination show/auction and we were going to go and sing a couple of tunes to help them out. You're smiling Darrell…do you know this story?

Darrell - No…it just sounds good.

Steve - Ok. So this show was going to be on the Saturday. On the Thursday, I was working in Detroit for a client and I got a phone call from East York saying " Guess what? Gordon Lightfoot is coming to sing on the show…does the chorus know any Gordon Lightfoot songs?" I said "No…that's too bad." I hung up the phone and thought, isn't it unfortunate that we didn't know soon enough that we had a chance to sing with Gordon Lightfoot. Then I thought… "Well who knows? Maybe we can make this fly." This is two days before the show. So, I made some phone calls. I phoned George Shields and said, " George, do you think you can convince Gordon Lightfoot to do this" because George knows Gordon, and he thought that probably he could. So then I phone up Chris Arnold and said " hey Chris, if I can get an arrangement done tonight, would you be able to make learning tapes tomorrow morning." And Chris said, "yes…I will". Then I phoned up our webmaster and said, 'Alex, if we get all this stuff done, would you be able to put a PDF of the music and MP3's of the learning tapes out on our website by noon tomorrow?" He said 'Yeah, I can do that!" So on the plane ride home from Detroit I started writing an arrangement of "If you could read my mind. " I finish it at about two in the morning and faxed it to Chris. Chris made the learning tapes that morning. By noon, all that information was on our website. The guys downloaded and printed it off, got the learning tapes and worked with it for a day. We came early to rehearsal, still not knowing if Gord would even sing with us. We did this all on 'spec.' We rehearsed it a little bit, Gord showed up. We ran through it twice with him. He left with a big smile on his face, and later we performed with him. So, it was one of those things. I still can't believe, actually, that we managed to pull that off. Without the ability to do that sort of 'mass' communication, it would have been impossible. The guys in the chorus don't read music particularly well, but we were able to get the tools to them very quickly. We were able to take advantage of
an opportunity, which would have very likely been missed. It was a great experience for all.
One of the things we're working on now is very exciting. We have guys that miss rehearsals, just like every chorus does. We are working on a way, a pilot project, that we can record the rehearsal and put it "streaming" on our website. The guys in our chorus that miss rehearsal, will be expected, at some point in the week, to sign-in on the website and listen to the rehearsal through live streaming. That way, they don't come to the next rehearsal a week behind. We're going to start it on just the contest songs as we start to learn them, which will be twenty to forty minutes of rehearsal time and increase, as we get closer to Montreal, eventually taking up the entire rehearsal. So if someone has to miss a rehearsal, you'll be expected to do this, so that when he gets to the next rehearsal he's not a week behind. So we are very excited about this even though we don't have all the kinks worked out yet. Again, this is how we are using the commitment of the members with the technology that is available now.

Darrell - You mentioned earlier that your rehearsal consists of twenty to forty minutes of work on the contest songs. What happens during the rest of a NL rehearsal night?

Steve - I don't want that to sound misleading. We would do that as we are starting to work on the contest tunes. We have our annual show coming up in March and the contest songs won't be on the show. But after the show almost the full rehearsal night will be used in preparation of the contest songs leading up to Montreal. Our rehearsal nights, when we're not approaching contest or a big show, are two hours. We rehearse from 7:30 to 9:30 with no break and we do our business meeting afterward.
When preparing for contest or shows we'll go 7 till 10 with a short 5-minute break and then do the business meeting afterward. Prior to this year we've never done any extra rehearsals, except for when we have a coach up on a Saturday, or something like that. Although we have talked about the fact that this year we're going up against the best chorus ever in the societies history, so we may end up putting a few extra rehearsals in there just to kind of, 'step it up' a little bit. We had a meeting to talk about what we can do to be at the level we want to be at and that's one of the ideas that the guys in the chorus suggested. It's important to us as leaders that it is an idea that they want as opposed to an idea that we impose upon them.
The reason why we can function on just three hours or even two hours a week with no extra rehearsals is that we don't do a lot of note teaching at rehearsal. If we're going to start working on a new song we'll give out learning tapes and the music a couple of weeks in advance and ask the guys to come to rehearsal in two weeks time, able to sing it. Then we start rehearsing and learning music, not teaching the notes. There's a lot of learning going on but it's not learning of notes. That really picks up the pace and puts guys more on an even level. There are those that learn notes very quickly and those that require more time. They both need to do whatever preparation they need to do, to be at that level. So we provide the tools.

Darrell - What is the difference between an A level performance and an A plus level performance?

Steve - Well, first of all, technically, an A level score would be something in the 87 to 93 range. So, while we have had a few individual judges give us scores in the A plus range, we certainly don't reside in that area. The only chorus in the society that does is the Dallas Vocal Majority…at least up until this year.
I say that in a great deal of jest. We have a tremendous amount of respect for them, but we want to make it a real contest in Montreal. Maybe it would be more appropriate to ask the difference between an A minus chorus, which would score in the 81 to 87 range and then the very few that score above that. I've already talked about the left-brained, right-brained aspects. We can look at this from the same approach. Obviously the 'left' is the nuts and bolts of singing in tune with unity and great precision, and all that sort of thing.
An A level group as opposed to an A minus level group, will just have a greater consistency of doing that.
The chorus will have a greater level of "in-tune ness" and a greater level of precision, less mud, and greater clarity. More important than that is the other side… the right-brained-more-emotional side. What separates these groups I think, is the connection to the actual music. In our experience, it was when we did "Brother can you spare a dime?" There was a Harmonizer article that really describes in great detail the sort of things we did in preparation for that performance. That connection to the song took the whole performance to another level. The emotion made the singing better. I don't know why that is, but I just know that it is. As I previously mentioned, one of the traps we fell into in Portland is we didn't trust the technical side of things. We wanted to just keep making it better and better. I think too many of our groups are trying to make it better in the warm-up room, and it's too late. They need to stop trying to make it better from a technical point of view and just make it more real…more connected to the song. We need to make the emotions more vibrant and the performance more of an emotional journey.

Darrell - What are you doing this year in preparation for Montreal?

Steve - Well… in previous years we've always focused on the music and an element of the music. For example in "Brother can you spare a dime?" we needed to feel what it would have been like to be somebody that couldn't put food on the table and have to beg for money. With "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" we needed to feel what it was like to fall in love and rekindle that feeling with his wife or girlfriend. This year, the songs that we're doing are fun songs. They talk about the impossibility of little guys beating big guys, an obvious parallel between the little Toronto Northern Lights Chorus going up against the big and awesome Vocal Majority Chorus.
So that whole theme is in the songs and is going to be in our whole approach. We're having a lot of fun thinking about this almost like it was a military operation…the Green Beret unit, the expert marksman sort of thing going up against this massive, large army… an impossible mission force, sort of thing. So we're playing that up by focusing on a single competitor which we've never done before. We won't do this every year. It's just that this year it will be fun and a catalyst to help us get to a higher level than we've ever been at before which obviously we will need to be if it's going to be a contest at all.

Darrell - Is it safe to say that most barbershoppers out there aren't giving you much of a chance at winning in Montreal?

Steve - Yes, and with very good reason. The Vocal Majority is a chorus that hasn't lost a contest in 25 years. They clearly will be as good as they need to be to beat whoever comes along. The fact that we are a chorus that's on the rise that hasn't faced them, and we've been really good, is likely all the motivation they need to be at a higher level than they've ever been before. We know that the Vocal Majority are going to be absolutely incredible. In fact, I made the mistake when we came back from Portland of suggesting to our chorus that we couldn't win this contest. That in fact, what our goal should be is to make this the closest second to them than anyone has ever been before. That didn't really turn the guys on very much. So I said "alright, here's what we're going to do, we're actually going to take a crack at this. We know how difficult this is. In reality, it's next to impossible. But someday, someone's going to beat them. Maybe it could be us and maybe it could be in Montreal." The guys really liked that idea. So we go into Montreal knowing that they're the odds-on favorite, and they should be. But we also want them to have to be the best they've ever been to win the contest. If they're not the best they've ever been, then we want to have a chance to win the contest. So we're approaching that way.

Darrell - You may be a small chorus in size, but you're a big chorus in reputation.
Speaking on behalf of a lot of Canadian Barbershoppers, even out here on the west coast, we relish the opportunity of seeing our best up against their best. Not that there is any "home court" advantage but I certainly feel there's going to be a lot of Ontario Barbershoppers in that audience hoping for a win for the Northern Lights Chorus.

Steve - We're counting on that. We think there is a tiny element of home court advantage. I'll tell you, in Portland, the Master of Harmony were wonderful. They are great champions. We sang before them so I got to see their performance. Of course, we were on the west coast and so a lot of people from their district were there. As they performed I recall the little cameo of Nightlife and Royce Ferguson juggling balls and that sort of thing. Each of those actions was met by applause from the audience. I sat there thinking to myself, "this isn't good for us". Not to suggest in any way that they didn't deserve to win, because I certainly believe that they did. If the audience in Montreal responds to us with that same sort of enthusiasm, then that can't help but raise the level of our performance and raise the excitement level of the entire audience. Perhaps, that will affect the perception of the judges. I think it could be very beneficial for us having this contest in Montreal.

Darrell - It sounds like we shouldn't miss Montreal.

Steve - Yeah...please don't. We want every Canadian that can be there to be in that audience to cheer for us.

Darrell - What is the best advise you can give to a chorus like the Abbotsford "Voices of Harmony" who are just starting out?

Steve - This is kind of ironic because, when some of us were just starting to talk about creating a new chorus in Toronto, the Louisville Times came up to Toronto to sing on a show. Mark Hale stayed at my home. Mark and I are good friends. So what's particularly ironic is that we competed against each other in Portland when he directed the Master of Harmony, who won and we came in second. At that time he was directing Louisville Times, who were a real inspiration to us, and still are. So Mark said to me, " one piece of advice I'd like to give you"…and now I'll pass this on to you… "is when you first start getting together planning this, and meeting and rehearsing. Don't let anyone talk about contest. Because, if you start focusing on contest you will be tempted to try and grow the size of the chorus too fast."

Traditionally, larger choruses have had greater success in contest. When we started the NL, the Ontario District wasn't a particularly strong district, so we thought we'd get to International. We didn't think we'd accomplish anything historic at International. We thought that maybe someday, in a weaker year, we might sneak into a medal spot. In our second International we came in fifth, which threw our whole long-term plan out of whack. We didn't know what to do next. Then coming second in Nashville exceeded our expectations again.
We just try to create great music and we enjoy doing that. We haven't chased after points. If we chase after points we probably would have accepted a lot of different people into our membership than we have. We've probably had as many guys not make it into the group as have made it. At one time I though, "Gee if all those guys made it we would have had a chorus of over 100 guys". But we wouldn't. If all those guys had been in, our very best singers would have got frustrated and wouldn't be here now. So I would have essentially traded my very best singers for much weaker singers and we wouldn't be as good a chorus now. So, I don't want you to think that it's all about where you put the bar. I mean, it is an important thing, and I think we probably put the bar as high as anybody does. We've had three or four district quartet champions not pass our audition. Some of them have come back and re-auditioned and made it & some of them didn't. Some people who have never even sung in a quartet have passed. So it's not like it's just an elitist quartet group. Everybody has come in with an attitude of wanting to make great music in this group.

The leadership has taken an attitude of the old Chinese parable of "give a man a fish, feed him for a day…teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." David McEachern and I, especially, will often say to each other, "we've taught these guys how to fish," when we realize something significant has happened.
We've tried to raise their level of awareness. We've never focused on trying to make these "two songs" better without them understanding what's making them better. We've always looked at making them understand. Getting them to a level of "conscious incompetence" so that they realize the things they need to improve, as opposed to where most of us are at which, is "unconsciously incompetent," where we just don't know and just do our thing. So we've always tried to teach. We've tried to help them develop greater awareness. That, more than anything has been what has allowed this group to improve at the rate it has.
It has forced me and the other members of the leadership team to work really hard to keep up. This group learns very quickly so we need to work hard to continue to be competent leaders for this group. It's certainly a thrill and an honor. They've made me a lot better director than I was when we started because of that drive and the way they've responded and forced me to keep working to get better.