Coronavirus Diaries #2: Online Choir Meetings

Like many people, I’ve been living the Zoom life for a couple months now. I teach voice lessons and yoga via Zoom (and Facebook, and GoToMeeting). I take lessons via FaceTime. Then there are the meetings.


Zoom meetings are both a godsend and exhausting when done in excess. As president of Triad and as a church choir director, I’ve been holding meetings in lieu of rehearsals. Triad has been rather productive!


We produced this new work within a matter of weeks: https://youtu.be/9AQnTIJjLcA


I’ll talk in another diary about what technology I’ve been using, but here are my tips for staying-connected meetings:

1. Keep it short. An hour or even half an hour is all people can handle.

2. Make the agenda clear, especially if the agenda is connecting and chitchat. Someone may be waiting for the meeting to start, when really the chitchat is the whole point.


3. Be the meeting leader, especially if the purpose is chatting. Call on each person individually to ask how they are doing. It’s less organic than the same experience in person, but it moves things along.


4. Don’t be afraid to end the meeting decisively, either when the time is up or when the conversation has run its course. You don’t want things to drag on, leaving an impression of awkwardness at the end.


Here are a few tips on how I encouraged Triad to be productive during this distanced time:

1. Again, have an agenda—ie: We’re going to discuss ideas for creating new works, or We’re going to talk about distributing digital content.

2. Give people deadlines, then adjust them according to how people respond. For instance, we first had an aggressive timeline for members to turn in recordings for the new pieces, but the performers ended up needing more time for each one. So, we adjusted.


3. Be realistic and understand that some people are swamped, while others are bored. Some are keen to create, and others can’t engage that way right now. You won’t get full participation, but with electronic music, there are a lot more tools to flush and even things out.