Introduction

This is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast – Episode 92. In today’s episode, I get to talk to Sandra Milliken. You know, I’m so lucky doing this podcast, I get to talk to amazing people. You can hear how amazing she is in this episode, listen to her bio and some of the things that she has done. She’s very interesting and it’s so lovely to support women composers as well. We’re going to hear about gratitude and she’s going to talk to us about her Churchill fellowship and some conducting and rehearsing choirs advice. This is gold. Listen to this episode.

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 092 of The Crescendo Music Education Podcast is below.

Sandra Milliken’s Biography

Debbie
Welcome to the Crescendo Music Education podcast Sandra Milliken. Hello, Sandra.

Sandra Milliken
Good morning. How are you?

Debbie
I’m pretty fabulous. And you’re looking pretty fabulous. Here we are, the pink? Oh, yes. Red hair sisters. Look, I’m going to start this podcast by reading your brief bio. I will do my best, just correct me if I say anything wrong. Okay. All right. Here we go.

Education and Achievements

Debbie
Sandra Milliken is an internationally recognised composer, conductor, clinician, teacher, and adjudicator, a music graduate of the University of New England. She also has a Masters Degree in Choral Conducting from the University of Queensland. Sandra has had a long involvement with choral music. She currently directs the Bayside Divas, a women’s choir based in Sandgate, and the Cannon Hill Anglican College senior choir.

From 1995 to 2008 Sandra worked with the Queensland Youth Choir conducting several of their ensembles, and acting as their Artistic Director. In 2007, she moved to the Blackstone Ipswich Cambrian Choir where she remained until 2016 when she went on to direct the Sunshine Coast Oriana Choir.

During 2001 Sandra travelled overseas on a Churchill fellowship, now that’s a big thing. We’re going to have a chat about that Sandra. Yep, studying choral conducting and vocal choral areas pedagogy she visited 56 choirs in England, Sweden, Finland, the United States and Canada, working with and observing many international choral experts. 56 choirs!

Sandra Milliken
I know it was an epic trip.

Debbie
Wow. How long were you away for?

Sandra Milliken
Three months. It was fantastic.

Debbie
Oh my goodness. Everyone who’s listening now is going, She travelled for three months and went around and saw all these choirs in all these places. Yeah, I know. Everyone’s going I want to be her. I want to be her. Okay. All right. I just think that’s a dream. Okay, back to the bio.

Sandra has achieved international recognition as an Australian composer specialising in choral music. Her works have been performed and recorded by choirs across the world. She has her own choral music series Choral Vivace, published by Edition Peters, London and has works published in Finland with Sulasol and in Sweden with Gehrmans. Sandra is also a prolific arranger with many folk contemporary and popular arrangements available with Sheet Music Plus in the United States and online.

Sandra has an avid interest in and commitment to promoting Australian choral music through her workshops and international invitations. As an adjudicator, and music educator Sandra has travelled extensively within Australia and internationally to Singapore, China, Canada, the United States, England, Belgium, Italy and Finland.

As a conductor she has produced a number of highly acclaimed choral recordings including the premier Australian Recording of Ramirez Misa Criolla and Navidad Nuestra a collection of new Australian music, apologies to composers for my mispronunciation, and a collection of new Australian music titled New Leaves; a Cambrian collection, a eclectic collection of repertoire from around the world. And Haydn Sunrise featuring selected works by Michael Haydn, and the Sunrise Mass by Ola Gjeilo. Oh, good heavens again. But we’ve got there. Oh my goodness. That’s huge. All right, but listening to that brief bio, Sandra, what would you add to this summary of your work?

Sandra’s Experiences Overseas

Sandra Milliken
Well, I guess as many musicians who are freelance I wear many hats, what I do is I try to take the opportunities and learning experiences that present themselves whenever they are. And you know, it’s really important for everybody to keep learning, attend symposiums and conferences, and really try to recharge your batteries. Because you know, musicians and music teachers work very hard, long hours. And in actual fact when you’re a teacher, you’re always a teacher. And I’m always in my spare time thinking of new things, new ideas. So it’s really great to go and recharge yourself, when you have that opportunity to hear other people’s experiences and what they have to offer.

You can’t possibly know everything, there is so much that you can learn. And you know, it keeps you young I think if you keep learning. The other thing is sometimes doors close and others open. Take those opportunities when you can, you know, I’ve had some quite unexpected experiences in my life as well. For instance, I was asked to come to Thailand, to Bangkok, a few years back to judge the ASEAN anthem competition.

Now ASEAN of course is an Asian collection of countries, that have an anthem. And when I went there, it was like a mini Olympics, I was sitting at a desk, and we all had our nation’s flag in front of us. It was like this huge boardroom with all these little flags in front, we each had a microphone, and we listened to some compositions, and we judged which one should be the anthem. And because I was Australian, I was actually one of three judges who wasn’t actually in an Asian country. So we were the extras, anyway it was really interesting.

And I’ve also been to San Francisco to mentor young composers in River of Words competition, and those sorts of things. It’s quite interesting. I went to China, and conducted a whole stack of students from American international schools throughout Asia, who all came to China to do this mass choir. Actually, I feel very blessed about that. Because sometimes when you’re busy you don’t have time to reflect on what you’ve done in the past. And I don’t really like talking about myself because what’s done is done. And I just, I’m looking for new ideas and to move ahead.

Often people say, “Oh, you’ve done so many things”, I think, well, I guess so. But I don’t sit there and think about them all the time. Because life goes on. And I’m always looking for something fresh, new ideas. I listen to everybody. I have fantastic colleagues and I guess that takes me into, the fact that I was invited to start this Choral Vivace. And I was at a symposium in Kyoto when the publisher came and approached me and said, we’ve noticed that you’ve been talking to customers at another booth and helping people choose music, they weren’t my own compositions. They said, “Is this something that you would like to do?” And I said, “I’d love to have my own series”. And that’s how Choral Vivace started.

Debbie
See that’s reward for you being just a nice generous person.

Sandra Milliken
Yeah but they saw me talking to other clients from other booths. And they said, Oh, would you have anything to recommend from here? I said, Oh, sure. As you do.

Debbie
It’s so good. But this is good. I’m glad that you’re on the podcast, because it’s giving you a chance and an excuse, a reason to sit and reflect and share with others on your experiences.

Sandra Milliken
That is true, yes.

Debbie
They are amazing. My goodness. And I did not know most of these things about you and we live in the same city. And in fact, I met you. Okay, correct me if I’m wrong, because we may have crossed paths, but it was really the Divas wasn’t it that connected us?

Sandra Milliken
Yes. On a more personal level, but I’ve been to some of the Kodály, when they used to have the summer schools over at Clayfield and you were there. So I’d been to a couple of those. So I’d met you then. But yeah, so I’d got you in to do a workshop with the Divas. Yeah. Which was great fun. You came back a couple of times.

Debbie
Yeah, I did and it was so fun. I love those ladies.

Sandra Milliken
Oh they are fantastic. Yes.

For What Are You Most Grateful?

Debbie
They really are lovely. So hello Divas if you’re listening, and if you’re not you should Divas. Oh goodness. Okay. Can we talk about gratitude because I like to have all of my guests talk about gratitude. So professionally, personally, and people, all of that stuff.

Teachers and Colleagues

Sandra Milliken
I think the gratitude, first of all probably starts with studying in the Masters of Music Course at UQ and my lecturer Dr Ed Bolkovac just introduced me to so many different aspects of conducting, learning music, being a musician. You know, musicianship, he also introduced me to IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. So that has really resonated with me, and it’s something I will never forget and I use in my singing teaching and I use it in my choral conducting. I teach my choirs IPA as in the basic vowels and what it looks like with the IPA symbol. That’s all you need. And it just helps you become more aware because that’s vowel shaped. And that’s how you get a better sound from your choir. So I have lots to thank Ed for in regards to that.

And then I’ve met so many other colleagues around the world like Roy Wales, who used to be here, Dr. Roy Wales with the Conservatorium of Music. I’ve met him several times back in England, he’s helped organise choir tours for my choirs and has been really supportive in the repertoire choice. He always says, “Oh, hey, Sandra, have you tried this piece?” So it’s really great when you have colleagues like that. And I have a lot of colleagues in Finland, as well, where some of my music is published, like Marjukka Riihimäki, and she runs a women’s choir. She always thinks outside the box and she’s a fantastically talented woman. And it just makes me feel so awesome to have her as a friend.

Loved Ones

I’ve had lots of colleagues who’ve supported me over the years, in ways of encouraging me to achieve even more, “Have you thought of?…” And as I’m composing, I think of some of these colleagues, because that helps me keep on a roots level, grassroots level, to write things that are useful in the community. And I have to thank my husband, of course, because he has supported me with my website, he does all my proofreading for me, checks all the syllabilisation of words that go into the music that’s composed. He does rehearsal tracks out of Sibelius, it’s team Milliken here. So he’s been really great for all that.

Churchill Fellowship

And then, of course, finally, the Churchill fellowship, and I was encouraged to go to that by one of my fellow students at UQ when I was doing my masters. And she said, Sandra, you should go and try out for that. I said, “What for? I don’t think I’d be good enough”. I thought, Oh, well, I might as well give it a go because I heard the Tapiola Children’s Choir sing in Sydney, when I went to the International Federation of Choral Music 1996 Symposium, and I was just blown away by how young children could sing so beautifully with such a blend. It was amazing. And they played instruments as well, of course.

So I thought, I’d love to go and see this choir and see what their programs are all about. But of course, I had a women’s choir, I was involved in the Bayside Divas, a bit later. And I thought, Oh, well, I’d like to go and do that in regards to women’s choir and choral vocal pedagogy.

So I made a list of choirs to go and visit. And then that list eventually tripled in size when I arrived on the land, because I met conductors who sang and other conductors clients who said “Oh, would you like to come and visit my choir?” Well, I took every opportunity. I even went to Opera Chorus rehearsals, and I was not looking at opera, but I had all those experiences. So you know, Finnish operas.

So I just took every opportunity I could to learn and it was a fantastic learning experience. And I guess that all sort of started to, I had creative juices flowing by then because it introduced me to new music, new styles of music, new languages, and that’s where I could put that IPA into practice because silly me, I bought some Finnish music and sent it back because I bought about 15 kilos of it. And when I got home, I went oh, how am I going to teach this to my choir? I don’t know anything about Finland, about Finnish.

So I had to go and get Finnish lessons at UQ at the modern languages unit, it was hilarious. Look you know I can’t believe the things that eventuated from that because the lady who was my Finnish teacher was from Finland and she used to be a photographer with the Helsingin Sanomat, which is the newspaper in Helsinki. And she wrote poems, and she wrote poems about Australia in Finnish. It’s funny because I sang her, after she taught me a little bit about the pronunciation etc, I sang her a folk tune, and she burst into tears, because it just reminded her of her homeland. Anyway, so we became quite firm friends, and I eventually composed some of her poems in Finnish. So they got published in Finland.

When you look back at those things, it’s just some amazing things that came out of that Churchill fellowship, I made so many new friends, and it made me realise how insular we are in Australia. On the other hand, people in other countries they want to know about Australian music. So I’ve been back and given lectures on Australian music and choral music. So it’s been a great sort of roller coaster ride. I know it was like 22 years ago, but it feels like it was yesterday, because I know so many things have happened since then with in regard to that.

I think part of the outcomes of the Churchill fellowship is that when you come back, there’s an expectation that you disseminate the knowledge within the Australian community. And I believe that my adjudication is a way of doing that, which is why I go out and adjudicate in some of the regional areas. And also I do some workshops.

So in that way, I can disseminate some of the knowledge and the pedagogy that I’ve learnt. And you know what’s the point of going to the grave with everything you’ve learnt, keeping it to yourself? I think it’s really important that you inspire others to find their passion, teach them so that they can carry on and keep growing. So I guess I’m really, really thankful for that experience. That was the best thing. Life began at 40 for me.

Music Pedagogy and Conducting Choirs

Debbie
How amazing. Okay, I’ve got a couple of questions come out of that. All right, well, first a comment. Ed, when I did my Masters Degree with Ed, and I’m still a little in touch. In fact, I must contact him say hello, and hello Ed, if you’re listening, I call him one of my mentors. But he was also one of my tormentors. Because his standards are so high, and his musicianship is so extraordinary. But it was inspirational. And I still recall to this day, in that class, and I was in the first group that went through the Masters Degree when it started at UQ.

I remember we had to do sight singing for assessment and they popped this Berta Lottie in alto clef in front of me, okay, and like, bear in mind, I am really struggling for air in this musicianship situation, right. But I’m sort of coping, sort of, okay. So I’m thinking I can do this, I can do this. And then he said, “Oh, and you can’t use solfa”. Sight read it in letter names. And I went umm, umm, umm alto clef, like, you know, zero experience? In solfa I might have coped you know, yes, I’ll work out where the do is or the la or whatever the tonal centre, I will have a go, look at the key signature, I can have a go in solfa but in letter names. So he knows how to extend your musicianship.

Sandra Milliken
I had the same experience. But he knew I was capable of more, and that’s the thing. So he knew you’re capable of more.

Debbie
I’m not sure about that but he certainly thought he’d try it out. Yeah.

Sandra Milliken
Well, I was definitely extended in that class and I think that made me realise what I can do.

Debbie
Yes. And what you can do if you actually just apply yourself, even if you’ve got to work as a bit, you know, it’s about being put out outside your comfort zone and growing.

Sandra Milliken
Play and sings, you know, play and sings.

Debbie
Yes. Yeah, they’re hard but I didn’t find them as hard because I’d done a lot of Kodály training. One part in one hand, one part in the other hand, sing the third party, ostinato in your foot. You know, I might be exaggerating. But yes. And I think that’s one of the things that that musicianship that we do within that Kodály pedagogy. That’s it really is grateful being able to extend from where you are.

So I just wanted to mention Ed and say hi to Ed if he’s listening, Hi Ed. And the other thing I was going to ask when you were touring and watching all these amazing choirs and meeting these people and because you know, I can so understand it’s that connection that inspires. And so were you, in your own time of which there probably wasn’t a lot, were you madly composing, scribbling ideas, or was it all just getting stored on the back burner?

Sandra Milliken
I was not composing during that time. It was all getting stored in the backburner. Yes, to a point in time where it all just came out.

Debbie
Oh, wow. That’s fabulous.

Sandra Milliken
Yes. Yeah, I was, on the other hand, writing down all the warm ups they did with all the choirs. I have screeds of notes from that, handwritten because that was being the days before a laptop.

Debbie
Well, that’s a valuable thing.

Sandra Milliken
Yes, definitely.

Debbie
Wow, the Bible of warm ups from Sandra Milliken.

Sandra Milliken
I think I should publish that.

Debbie
I think you should.

Sandra Milliken
And as with warm ups, you pick up things from different people. And some of the warm ups there’s a relationship or a connection with the language, because some of them have different vowels shapes to what we have. But we’re all after the same thing. You know, a good blend.

Debbie
Yeah, interesting. Oh, yeah. Oh I’ll have to find out more about these warm ups, which will lead us actually, if we can talk before we finish this episode, I want to get into conducting and rehearsing choirs. And any sort of advice you would give if you were giving advice to another choral conductor? Would it be different advice if they’re teaching, like conducting a grade 1/2 choir? Or if they’re conducting the Bayside Divas? What sort of advice do you have for people across the board?

Choir Repertoire and Conducting Techniques

Sandra Milliken
There are some basic things. I think the first thing is choose your repertoire well, choose repertoire that are going to be musical gems. Now, that’s actually something that Jason Barry-Smith speaks about. I’ve had him come and work with the Bayside Divas and he said, it’s really important to choose repertoire that are musical gems, there is so much music out there, some of it’s not worth singing, you know, we only have a short life, we can’t sing everything.

So make sure you choose something that everybody’s going to just love it, or there’s some reason that they will eventually love it. Because sometimes we don’t like things first off, do we? And it’s important to choose it so that it suits the choirs experience level. And that’s on an age and a personal connection to the music, and of course, their vocal technique. Whereas, you know, at that point, try not to do pop songs for lower level at primary school because you asking them to belt out in their chest voice and that’s actually not their real voice that we’re using the head voice. That chest voice only takes you so far. So you can’t sing you know, lots of songs that have got an extended range.

Know Your Music and Plan Your Rehersal

And the other thing is, know your music, make sure that you know the inside and out of that music, the right rhythms. Because you know what, if somebody asks you a question in an older choir and you don’t know the answer to it, that’s a little bit tricky. It’s like you’re not prepared. So you need to know your music really well. And the other thing is, plan your rehearsal. Now, even if it’s a grade one rehearsal, have a couple of notes down, what focus activity you’re going to do with them.

What happens if they get restless throughout? What are you going to do with them? We have some things like posture police and everybody’s quiet. Yeah, because it’s really important to keep the momentum of your rehearsal. Don’t rehearse one piece for half an hour, that is deadly boring. Do bits of it, work on the architecture of it. So if it has an A,B,A, just learn the A section one week, learn the B section next week, join those together, and just learn the ending or something, work around those sorts of things and make it interesting to learn and always have a goal or achievement in mind for each rehearsal.

Now, things go wrong in rehearsals, be flexible. So if your little plan doesn’t work out, that is okay. But it’s just music teachers are so busy at school and a lot of them are conducting a few choirs. So if you have those little plans written down and you just tick or cross if it worked out, at least when you go for next week’s rehearsal. You can go Okay, that didn’t work, but I can go on and do something like that. So yeah, be flexible.

And you’ve mentioned the Bayside Divas, well they’re 20 years old this year, we’re celebrating 20 years. I’ve been conducting them for 18 years, I think I’m getting a lot old in the tooth or something, long in the tooth. But 18 years is a long time to be conducting a choir. And remember that the choir doesn’t change as much as a school choir changes. And trying new ideas, or coming up with new threads for concerts. I do a lot of research for our concerts to connect all our repertoire.

Like last year, we did a concert about connection, it was called connections. And I researched all the repertoire that would have emotional connections to people in the choir, or women and what the current situation is politically, socially. So yeah, as a conductor, if you’re conducting a community choir, you need to do a fair bit of background work in that idea. And you know, my Divas their age range from early 20s to 80s. That’s a huge age range. And we memorise everything.

Debbie
Oh, wow.

Community In Choirs

Sandra Milliken
So we do a one and a half hour concert all by memory. And that’s really great. Because when you’re singing as a group, if you forget a word, somebody beside you will probably sing the word so nobody will know. Right? So it’s no big deal. But you know, learning by memory, kids do it so easily. So yeah, like, I guess that takes me to my CHAC choirs. Cannon Hill Anglican College, I have a college choir there, non auditioned, and we sing a wide range of music. But something that came out of that choir, I had a group of boys who were really keen to sing, oh my goodness, a group of boys that were really keen to sing.

So I said to them, “Hey, guys, would you like to do something together, a boys group?” And they call themselves the CHAC Lads. So they come at seven o’clock on a Friday morning, to sing just for 15 minutes before the other choir starts, just to sing together and CHAC Lads has grown from five or six to twelve now, so it’s getting bigger. And the camaraderie amongst them, it just makes my heart burst with pride that these boys value singing so much and enjoy it.

Debbie
That’s magic. That is really magic.

Sandra Milliken
It is just magic. And you have those moments as a music teacher, or a conductor or a musician. So yeah, I’m just so thrilled about some of the choirs and choir things that are happening in my life.

Tips for Sourcing Good Repertoire

Debbie
I do find sometimes it can be a bit tricky sourcing good repertoire, what are your little tricks? Now you’ve got lots of connections, I imagine that the people connections would provide you and the choral connections, you’d hear something sung by another choir, and go, I love that, I will have that. I love going to concerts in order to pick repertoire. Ooh, I like that one, I will do that one next. Is there any other little tips and tricks for choosing the repertoire maybe? Of where to look?

Sandra Milliken
I usually start off with Sheet Music Plus or JW Pepper. In relation to Australian repertoire, I will actually research the Australian composers names myself, you can go to the Australian Music Centre and some of the some of the things that the Australian Music Centre has there are rather challenging, but you can go to the composer’s website then and they will have other things listed there.

So it’s really important to know how to research and I’ve become quite familiar with being able to do those things. And of course, on Sheet Music Plus sometimes they have choir singing the music, just a part of it, so you can hear it. So and it depends on what style of music you’re after, as well. There are also some other like Kodály based groups that put up music. There are also some composers who put up free music for you to use, like Robert Burrell, he’s put up a lot of canons, he’s got some fantastic stuff. So you know, if you’re friends with him on Facebook, you’ll find some new pieces. He’s very generous. So thank you, Robert.

Resources

Debbie
He’s also on my website, on Crescendo, there is a book of his canons that is a free download, so I’ll put that link in the show notes so people can go in and just download that and they are beautiful and so singable and although they are canons they can be turned into a performance, especially, you know, you’ve got a school choir and minimal time turn a canon into a performance start with a little solo, sing it in unison, do it in canon, add an instrument, suddenly you’ve got this fabulous piece. Like I love his Time to Swing. You know, like it’s hard to beat that one. So yes, that’s great and Kath Ruhle also has quite a few freebies on her site.

Sandra Milliken
Yes and Kim Kirkman has also produced a book of canons or book, most of them are canons I’m pretty sure, or songs. So that’s something else to search out, they’re not free but still some really great stuff in there. And, you know, it’s trying to keep up with all the new things that are being published, and some are free, some aren’t. But that’s fine. You know. For teachers, you can buy a copy for your library then, at least if you know it exists. So yeah, it’s kind of keeping your thumb on the pulse of a few things. And I think it is hard for music teachers, because I mean, when they get home, they probably just want to, you know, flake out. It’s hard work, because you give so much of your personality.

Debbie
Extra tricky when you are working in the school because your classroom stuff has to take precedence. It’s lovely that you get to do this like a full job.

Sandra Milliken
It is, yes, definitely.

Debbie
Look on that note, we might leave this episode. And I would like you to come back. And we’ll have a chat about the composition process and some of your pieces, because I’d love you to tell our listeners about some of the works of yours that they can access and how they can connect with you. We’ll pop how to connect with you in the show notes of this episode as well. But I would like you to come back, Sandra, if that’s okay.

Sandra Milliken
Thank you, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks, Debbie.

Debbie
Okay, bye.

Sandra Milliken
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.

Why does Peter Pan fly all the time?

Because he never lands.

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