Introduction

This is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast – Episode 94. In this episode of the Crescendo Music Education Podcast I talk to Mark O’Leary. It’s been a long time since I’ve caught up with Mark. So it’s pretty fabulous. We have a great chat. We’re going to hear a little bit about what he’s done. He’s done amazing things. You will love just hearing about his history. We’re going to hear about his Churchill Fellowship journey, about Gondwana Voices and Young Voices of Melbourne. Enjoy Mark O’Leary having a chat with me about all things choral music.

This podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Turrbal people. I acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to elder’s past, present and emerging. They were the first music makers on this land.

About ‘Read the Episode’: Sometimes, we would rather skim visually than listen to a podcast! That’s a great way to learn too!
The transcript of episode 094 of The Crescendo Music Education Podcast is below.

Mark’s Journey In Choral Music

Debbie
On today’s episode of the Crescendo Music Education Podcast, I’m joined by Mark O’Leary from the other side of the country. Hello, Mark.

Mark O’Leary
G’day Deb. Lovely to be here.

Debbie
It’s been a long time since we’ve spoken, hasn’t it?

Mark O’Leary
It has been quite a long time. Nice to chat now.

Debbie
Yes, and we’ll connect again in September I believe.

Mark O’Leary
Will we? What’s happening in September? Oh national conference. Is that the one?

Debbie
That’s the one, the national conference down in your city? Yeah.

Mark O’Leary
Oh yes, yes. We are very much looking forward to that. I’m on the organising committee for my sins. So I should have really known what you were going to say shouldn’t I?

Debbie
Well you never know, we move in very busy circles don’t we?

Mark O’Leary
We do and September seems like such a long way away from now.

Debbie
It does. Unless you’ve had to book your airfares and accommodation and everything, so it probably seems closer in some ways for us then for you.

Mark O’Leary
That’s true, actually. Yeah, yep. Anyway, it’ll be a great conference, we’re looking forward to it a lot.

Debbie
Oh, it will be really good. And Deb and I have the privilege of doing a couple of sessions there. So I’m very much looking forward to the Kodály National Conference. So anyone who’s listening to this should get in there and come to Melbourne.

Mark O’Leary
Yeah. It’ll be a lot of the traditional Kodály conferences, but with some new voices in there. We’re trying to explore the diversity that’s available in all of our lives now, different types of people and different points of view. So we’re looking forward to having a conference that reflects that a little bit, which is, what we should be doing anyway?

Mark’s Bio

Debbie
Yes, I am looking forward to that. That will be lovely. Now, for those of you who have not met Mark, I’m going to read a bit of a bio. And then we’ll have a chat about some of the things that you’ve done and you’ve done a lot of very interesting things in your life. And we’re going to focus of course on music making and voice and choir and singing, the power of singing together, which most music educators who are listening will agree they’ll be nodding and going Yes.

So this is Mark. So Mark O’Leary OAM Bachelor of Music Education and a Master of Music is one of Australia’s most active choral conductors, widely respected for his work with Young Voices of Melbourne, commonly known as just YVM, which he founded in 1990 following a Churchill Fellowship study tour of outstanding children’s choirs around the world. With Young Voices Mark has produced 12 CD recordings, Wow. Toured all States and Territories of Australia and made 10 international tours, gee you’re busy, to Europe, South Africa, North America, Asia, Samoa and New Zealand. Young Voices has been successful in competition in Europe and Asia, and are often heard on Australian radio and television.

Exaudi Youth Choir became part of the YVM organisation in 2013. Mark is also Principal Guest Conductor of Gondwana Voices, Australia’s National Children’s Choir. He has worked regularly with Gondwana Voices since its first season in 1997, attending 17 National choral schools, as well as making three CDs and five international tours. His YouTube recordings with Gondwana voices have received many hundreds of thousands of views. And I’ll just stop before I read the rest of that. If the listeners have not gone and checked out the Gondwana recordings on YouTube. They absolutely must. They’re just a delight, so we’ll get back to Gondwana.

Mark has special interests in Kodály teaching techniques, hence our conversation about the National Conference, Kodály conference, the development of excellence in children’s choirs and Australian choral music. He presents many workshops each year on choral music education throughout Australia and is an honorary life member of the Kodály Music Education Institute of Australia, which provides courses workshops and events for Australian music teachers.

Mark publishes Australian choral music for young choirs, in the Young Voices of Melbourne choral series, which as an aside is a main staple for many of us working in the classroom, and his arrangements are performed all around the world. He is the creator of the Sight Singing School Books and website, which won the President’s Award at the 2014 Australian eLearning Industry Association awards, and has users from more than 50 countries.

Mark is a regular guest conductor at choral festivals around Australia, and is in demand as a presenter on choral music education at workshops and conferences, both in Australia and abroad. In 2018, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia or OAM, for those people living overseas who might not know, for services to education and choral music, big breath. But we did need to say all of that Mark because you’ve done so much.

Mark O’Leary
I get tired listening to all that.

Debbie
Are you thinking did I really do all that?

Mark O’Leary
Well, it’s sort of also, since all of that I’ve moved out of the city and now I run a little guesthouse in the Yarra Valley outside Melbourne, which is rather fun, too. So, yeah, I have fun chopping up trees for firewood and making beds and doing all that stuff, too. Variety is this spice of life?

Debbie
It is isn’t it? It is. Well, I was actually just going to ask if you wanted to add anything to that summary of work. And obviously you have already, a guest house. Goodness a guest house. Anything else you want to add?

Mark O’Leary
No, definitely not. I think that’s way, way, way enough about me.

Debbie
But it’s good, we need to know. And if any of my listeners are from overseas, there’s things mentioned there that they might not know about. So I think it’s important we mention them, I’d like to start going right back because I didn’t realise till I read your bio, that you started out the YVM after doing your Churchill Fellowship tour. So I’d love to hear a little bit about even the application process and then the tour and your findings and how you set about doing YVM, tell us.

The Churchill Fellowship Tour

Mark O’Leary
I was a little bit lucky I think because I first got interested in the idea of doing the tour very early in my career, I’d recently decided that choral music, children’s choral music was my thing through work that I was doing at St. Margaret’s School out in Berwick, which was headed by one of the Kodály pioneers in Victoria, a lady called Jean Heriot and I really just fell in love with the sound of the choirs. And I’d started doing a little bit of work also with the Australian Boys Choir, which has a fabulous program in Melbourne and still does.

The Application Process

But I knew that boys choir wasn’t really the thing that I wanted to do. So I thought, well, I need to find out about this. And Jean at St. Margaret’s had been a Churchill Fellow. So she said, you really should apply for this. So I did and got some good advice as to how to apply. It’s a fabulous program and it still exists the Churchill program. You don’t need any qualifications in the area that you’re interested in. You just need an interest, you need an idea of something to learn. And I guess they’re looking for a potential for you to be able to share that with the Australian community when you get back. So my brief was to study outstanding children’s choirs and sort of what made them tick.

I went on a tour which included choirs in Britain and Hungary, Finland, Canada and North America. So it was quite a busy whirlwind of a trip for three months, where I attended rehearsals, talked to conductors, went to a lot of concerts, and all the while took notes. I guess in my mind, I knew that I would be starting up my own children’s choir. So it was sort of looking at what was working for people and what was not working so well. And of course there were a lot of themes that came through, the things that all the good choirs were doing. And yeah, that was very, very helpful for me when I came to then setting up Young Voices of Melbourne when I got back from that trip.

Debbie
How did you work out which were the outstanding choirs you wanted to see?

Mark O’Leary
Well, interestingly, this is a long time ago, this was in 1988/89. So there were no computers to Google choirs and all that sort of stuff. So it was really a matter of finding some choirs that I admired and following trails. I mean, I knew at that stage of the Kodály world that I wanted to go to Hungary and see what they did there. In fact recently, I was in Europe last year with the Exaudi Young Adult Choir and one of the choirs I visited was a wonderful choir from Nyíregyháza in Hungary, conducted by Denish Sabo, and he turned up with his choir at a festival we were singing at, and I didn’t think he would remember me because it is literally 35 years ago since I saw him and he has very little English.

So I grabbed one of my singers who has very good Hungarian and went and had a chat with him. He did remember so that was rather lovely. But yeah, anyway, we had once you start asking, I guess, choirs know each other and a bit of a trail was made to create the basic outline. And then once you’re in an area, you can look at other choirs within that area that are also good choirs.

So yeah, every day was just super fascinating. All sorts of different choirs and different approaches to choirs, everything from the very structured in British choral tradition, where they’re singing every day to ordinary community choirs where they’re meeting for two hours a week. So yeah, it was very, very interesting to see how they all made themselves work.

Debbie
So you may not be able to draw these threads out. And it was a while ago, like you said that. But do you think you could identify some common themes with the successful choirs?

Common Themes Among Successful Choirs

Mark O’Leary
Yeah, actually, I know it seems a little bit odd. But one of the key things is the successful choirs put a real focus on singing. Now, you might say duh, don’t all choirs? But actually in the English tradition we don’t, many choirs in the British tradition are conducted by organists traditionally without vocal training. It’s not so much the same now. But the tradition is not that choirs were led by singing teachers so much as music teachers who are often organists in that setting or pianists. So, yeah, that was something, a very strong focus on vocal technique was one of the themes obviously.

All of the successful choirs also had some way to work with their singers in small groups, as well as large groups. And that was something that I took on with YVM from the start. A focus on literacy as well, that music reading is important in choirs, which I mean, again, that’s fairly obvious. But it does mean you have to teach it to choirs. Not everyone teaches it in a particularly sequential way, although I got very interested in that later.

I remember asking the British Cathedral Choirs how they taught sight singing to their kids. And they all said, “Oh, good question. I don’t really know. We sing new music every day, we perform six times a week, we put the big boys next to the little boys and they work it out”. And I guess the kids also all have learnt an instrument too. So yes, they do end up being fabulous readers, but not really because of any great teaching that they get. But they do get to work within a great environment.

And then of course, in Hungary, it’s a very structured program. And a lot of the choirs had something in between. That was certainly a really important thing. I guess the other thing is singing new music was something and being curious about singing new music and commissioning was something that a lot of choirs, successful choirs were interested in. Singing a variety of repertoire was something that all these choirs were interested in.

So yeah, there were actually very clear threads and doing things, choirs were always doing things, often touring. But interesting concerts, projects, good things for their singers to be involved in, give them a reason to get excited about coming along to choir. I still remember all of that, because really, they’re still guiding principles that I think about when I’m thinking about Young Voices of Melbourne and what we want to do.

Debbie
That makes so much sense too as a fellow Kodály inspired educator, that thread of sequence and teaching. And in fact, if you’re in a school and you’re working in the classroom, and you’re providing that structure and then the choir is on top of that it is almost like it’s the smaller groups, and then the bigger groups, almost.

Mark O’Leary
Yes, that’s exactly right. Exactly right. I mean, yeah, if you’ve got a school choir, you’ve got the classroom to deliver the teaching in those areas that you really want. And of course, in any school now and in any choir, it’s a very, very tricky thing to have a sequential structured program, because you have children who’ve been in your program for six years sitting next to someone who’s been there for six weeks. And it’s hard to have a very strict sequential program under those circumstances. So you have to sort of find ways to make that work. And for everybody to get better at what they’re doing.

Debbie
Yes, yeah, that is tricky. Well, Young Voices of Melbourne is obviously hugely successful and still thriving. So you’ve taken those threads. And that was so good to hear that summary and think about it in our own context. I would love to hear a little about Gondwana.

Gondwana Voices Program

Mark O’Leary
Everyone should know about Gondwana Voices. Because Gondwana Voices was founded by Lynn Williams in 1997 and she invited me to be the co-conductor of that for that first season. She came and checked me out in Melbourne and gave me a bit of an audition I think by coming to one of our concerts. But the way it works of course, is you’ve got all the all your best kids in each choir come together and make great music with good conductors.

It’s grown from when we first started with one choir, sort of a secondary school age-ish choir. And now there are lots of different choirs, there is Chorale which is a young adult group. And there’s junior groups and there’s a mixed SATB school age group and it can change depending on who wants to come and sing and why that’s the setup. Happens in Sydney for two weeks in January at the National Choral School, but it’s just a fabulous opportunity for those kids who are good at it to get that extension, meet people who think the same way, who also love singing and who are good at it. And to tackle music that’s perhaps more difficult than what they can in their home environment.

So I’ve been doing that since 1997 with Lyn. I don’t do it absolutely every year but I do it a lot. And I love working with Lyn, she’s amazing and the other conductors that we have there, too, it’s just always wonderful. It’s so great actually to because we all come together and everyone parks their egos at the door if they have any. And we just share ideas, share resources and it’s just a very welcoming and warm, collegial environment, which is great.

Debbie
Oh, that’s so good. And if someone did have an ego that really gets in the way, you probably wouldn’t invite them to be a guest conductor.

Mark O’Leary
They might not get asked back. But I do think that people sort of also pick up on the vibe of what’s going on. And I think the kids are also like that, actually. I mean initially when people go, everyone has impostor syndrome and thinks Oh I’m not really good enough to be here, but then you realise that you’re sitting in front of 50 teenagers all thinking the same thing. And you have to think actually yeah, you’re all good enough to be here. That’s why you’re here. Get over it and let’s just make some music.

Debbie
How do kids get to go?

Mark O’Leary
They have to audition. Generally the auditions start around August, September, usually now that’s done by video audition, they have to do some sight singing which is the least favourite part for everybody, sing a song, do some ear tests. Yeah, that’s how they get offered at a spot.

Debbie
It sounds really great. I mean, I obviously I see it every year, I see something on social media and I know, privileged to know most of the people who get to work as conductors there. And I think that would be so fabulous.

Mark O’Leary
It really is. And it’s also like in one of the frustrations we have with our regular choirs is each week somebody’s away on school camp and somebody’s somewhere else and all of that. So to have everyone there for two weeks and you just know you’ve got that’s always really good too.

Debbie
Do the choristers get the music, any music ahead of time or you go from scratch?

Mark O’Leary
Generally we go from scratch. Sometimes Gondwana also has projects during the year. And often for those it’s necessary to send music out in advance because it’s just not really enough time per se in school holidays to spend that much time rehearsing and then go off on a tour for example or do a recording. So yeah, we ask the kids at times to prepare some music at home as well, which they do to greater or lesser extent but some have always learnt it really well, which helps a lot in the process.

Highlights of Mark’s Musical Journey

Debbie
Wonderful. Young Voices of Melbourne is obviously a very big part of what you do, and a huge legacy then from you to others already. What other things in your career would you say, have been a highlight or highlights in your journey as a musician, a conductor, a music educator,

Mark O’Leary
Look so much of it really is focused around Young Voices of Melbourne, I feel Young Voices of Melbourne is in a way a little more satisfying in many ways than the work I’ve done with Gondwana in that if we want to have good singers, we have to make good singers. Gondwana, we have all the good singers come to us and someone else has taught them to sight read, and someone else has taught them to sing and how to concentrate in rehearsal, which is fabulous and it’s great to do. But it’s much harder if you have to create that for yourself.

So it’s very satisfying when the process that you’ve set up, we’ve got six choirs within the organisation now, but we’ve always had training choirs, three primary level choirs. But you have to have them because you want by the time that kids get to secondary age for them to be able to do all the things that are a good choir needs to be able to do. To listen to each other, use their voice properly, read, sing in tune, be able to learn repertoire, all of those sorts of things. But for them to be have the structure to come up and be able to do that, that’s very satisfying.

And I have to say, too, that we took on a young adult choir in 2013 when Claire Preston and Bob Stewart, who started Exaudi in Melbourne in 2008, which we were delighted about because my daughters were singing in Exaudi with Claire and Bob. But when they left Melbourne, they needed somewhere for the choir. So Young Voices of Melbourne took it over at that point.

I have had so much fun and joy with Exaudi. And I have to say I pretty reluctantly took it over. I thought I’ve got enough to do I don’t want another choir. I don’t want to work, do SATB stuff particularly. But having said that it’s just been a wonderful journey with those people, I guess partially because a lot of them have been in Young Voices of Melbourne. So singers who are now in their late 20s have been singing with me for more than 20 years. It’s a lovely community so that’s very satisfying.

Debbie
That is special, and you happen to have mentioned my next podcast guest who is after yours, we will be hearing from Claire.

Mark O’Leary
Yeah, what they did setting up Exaudi really filled a niche because people finish school singing, often in really good choirs at school and community choirs. But there’s often in communities a gap between there and adult choirs, which can be old and that’s just the way it is. The kids don’t necessarily want to go and sing with old people. But they also think often like the concert choir style of stuff which you do with children’s choirs, where you learn things from memory, you might perform them on a tour a few times, which is again, not what a lot of adult choirs do.

So setting that up with that model, I think was really, really good and that’s continued to be the way we work with Exaudi. I mean, we do major works too where they read stuff and all of that sort of thing, because teaching them a range of music is an important part of their education for young singers as well. But yeah, that’s been a model that’s been really successful. We can’t get rid of them, we have 90 something in the choir and a growing age limit, because no one wants to leave.

Debbie
But when you’re onto a good thing stick to it.

Mark O’Leary
Well, they do. But it has its advantages too, because it does mean if we say want to go off to Europe for a tour, we’ve got a big pool to choose from, if you get two thirds of them, you’ve still got to really be choir to take away on tour. Because of course not everyone can go on every tour for obvious reasons. Yeah, I think the other things that I’m pleased about over the years, I guess is to help a lot of teachers through the workshops that I’ve done, through the choral music that we’ve published.

Sharing Resources

It’s really been just a good formal way of sharing resources and things that I’ve found useful in my teaching and then making them available for others to be able to use as well. And I also with the sight singing school staff. That was really just the program that we’ve used with YVM over the years and I can’t remember why we decided to actually formalise it. But I think it was largely that we were wanting to have an online version so that the kids, particularly from Gondwana, who lived in regional and remote areas, had a way to improve their sight singing without having access to a teacher.

So it at least gives them a pathway if they’re diligent that they can improve. I mean, all these things are better with the teacher, of course. But there’s obviously been a need for that, because there are plenty of people using it, ranging from school groups, to retirees who’ve sung in choirs for their whole lives, and they say to me, I’m sick of faking it. I think I really should learn how to read a little bit. Which is great.

Debbie
That’s wonderful. Yeah, you get sick of split singing, singing one second behind them. So the sight reading one, tell us a little about that. So you were just mentioning that individuals can do it? Can teachers access it as well and use it with their students?

Mark O’Leary
Yeah, there’s two versions. There’s a printed version, which is 4 books. And some people just like to use books, look it’s not a complicated structure. It’s a series of graded exercises, from very easy and very, very easy at the start just two note melodies, then three note melodies. It’s Kodály inspired but the basic approach is not pentatonic, which is a little bit wild in the Kodály world.

But you can actually do a pentatonic approach if you want by moving the chapters around a little bit. And then the online version is the same materials, but you get a little bit more help. So you can push a button and hear what the exercise sounds like, which is helpful if you don’t have a teacher and you’re first approaching this, you sort of have to know in your head, otherwise Do Re Mi could sound like all sorts of things.

Debbie
It could, it could.

Mark O’Leary
So people can log on, they can get a subscription for $30 a year, an individual subscription. And we have group rates which is about a third of that for students. So yeah, people work in different ways. But lots of people sign up their choirs, and sometimes they leave their choirs and just say Go and do it.

That generally doesn’t work that well, as much as I love sight singing, I get it, but not everybody does. And most of us need to be badgered into it a little bit. And you’ve got to set up goals and things for students so that they they do it. But some of them love it too actually, those nice, nerdy, quiet children that we like.

Debbie
That’s great. Look, I will make sure that I put all of the links in the show notes. So we’ll put in the Gondwana YouTube channel, we’ll put in Young Voices of Melbourne, because I’m going to get you back for another episode and we might talk about choral music that you produce and arrange, because it makes music so accessible. And so we’ll put in a link to Young Voices of Melbourne and the choral music, and we’ll put in a link to the sight reading program as well. Anything else?

Mark O’Leary
No.

For What Are You Most Grateful?

Debbie
So we’ll put that in the show notes. I think we’ll finish off this episode with gratitude, I like having gratitude, then I’ll get you back for another episode, where I want to just delve a little bit into the power of singing in a choir. So before we finish this episode Mark, gratitude. I like asking my guests for what are you most grateful?

Mark O’Leary
Ah, I’m, well, I’m getting on now at 62.

Debbie
Snap, 62. Yes. Okay.

Mark O’Leary
I guest I’m very, very grateful that I’ve been able to have a career where I’ve been able to indulge in my passion and my hobby. And I’ve been able to work with so many wonderful people, the teachers that I work with and continue to work with, the singers that I’ve worked with over the years, many of whom I’m still in touch with.

I’m really grateful that I’ve been able to do that, because I know many people don’t have that privilege. And I think that’s a very special thing, particularly at this stage I guess of my career to look back and go Yeah, I got away with it. That was good.

Debbie
Got away with it (laughs). No, we were so grateful that you did get away with it Mark.

Mark O’Leary
Well, you know, it’s tricky, isn’t it? You know, we all deal with young people who want to be musicians, but I don’t think it’s getting easier to be a musician. A lots sort of changed in the musical world. You look at income streams that have dried up like CD sales for a lot of artists, bands, performers of all sorts, has just disappeared. That’s changed things a lot, I think. And so I think if you are able to sustain a career in music, then you are very fortunate.

Debbie
Yeah. And I think in Australia particularly, I think it’s much harder to make a living as, say, a composer, just some of our copyright and those sorts of laws are a little disadvantageous.

Mark O’Leary
Yes. I agree. I agree. We could have a long chat about that.

Debbie
But I am with you. The fact that you could, like me really, get to work in an area of love and passion is pretty special. Yeah. All right. Well, I’m going to say farewell for now. And I will have you back next episode, Mark. Bye.

Mark O’Leary
Thanks for having me Deb, bye.

Sign-Off

I appreciate you and all of my colleagues, and hope this episode has been enjoyable and useful. Don’t forget, you’ll find the show notes on crescendo.com.au. I’d love a share, rate or review to help other music educators find this podcast. All I can be as the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. Until next time, bye.

Just for Laughs

As we know laughter relieves stress don’t lose sight of the funny side of life.

Two antennas got married last Saturday,

the reception was fantastic.

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

Gondwana

Young Voices of Melbourne (YVM)

Sight Singing School

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