Ep. 49: Jennifer Moorhatch and Kelsey Hendler on JW Pepper's Review Process (JW Pepper Week, Day Four)
Episode Description:
Jennifer Moorhatch and Kelsey Hendler are two of the choral and classroom editors for JW Pepper, responsible for evaluating new music from publishers and deciding how and where that music gets promoted.
We’ll talk about the pros and cons of self-publishing, ideas about how to incorporate sheet music sales into what you’re already doing as a musician, and my eight step plan for finding your niche.
Featured On This Episode:
Jennifer Moorhatch
Kelsey Hendler
Kelsey earned her Bachelor’s Degree of Music Education from Penn State University, and her Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Michigan State University. She is a classroom and choral music editor for J.W. Pepper & Son, Inc., and she is a member of the Essence of Joy Alumni Singers, an organization of Penn State Alumni.
Episode Transcript:
*Episode transcripts are automatically generated and have NOT been proofread.*
First of all, thank you for coming on the podcast.
It’s exciting to be in person.
We’re in the, this is the Sousa room, right?
That’s correct.
So John Philip Sousa has been in this room?
No.
Not this room.
This building is too new for that.
But we do have a Sousa phone.
yes, and I tried really hard for them to let me play it on the show, and they said no.
But I just want you to know that I tried.
Everybody listening at home.
I mean, I played trombone for like 15 years.
I felt I was qualified, but they said no.
All right.
Well, why don’t we have the two of you introduce yourselves and give us what you do for Pepper?
Sure.
So I’m Kelsey, and I am the classroom editor and a school choral editor here at Pepper.
Prior to Pepper, I was teaching in public schools, and I taught high school choir.
I co-taught middle school choir, and I also taught general music courses as well.
awesome.
I’m Jennifer, and similar to Kelsey, I’ve been here for a while and came from teaching.
Before that, let’s see, I’ve done church jobs, I’ve been a singer, a pianist, choral teacher, taught general music, instrumental music, handbells, acapella, and madrigals, and all kinds of other stuff.
So pretty much been around the block a couple of times, and happy to be here, bring that experience to our process of what we do here.
And you’re not editors in the traditional sense of a publisher, where you’re working with composers and suggesting revisions to pieces and that sort of thing.
You are taking a look at everything that’s coming in, and how would you describe it?
Categorizing it, figuring out the best way to market it?
How do you look at the job?
Yeah, so we get our submissions in for music, and we review it, sort through it, and yeah, categorize it, making sure that it’s in the right place for the right people to see it.
So whether that be by genre, by difficulty level, and then marketing the music too.
So we work with the marketing ends of things, making the emails and catalogs and other types of promotions to make sure that the music is visible.
I think that’s so cool.
I mean, you basically get paid to listen to everything published every year, right?
That’s…
yeah.
That’s a nice way to think about it.
I mean, as a music lover, that’s got to just be the coolest thing.
And you get to interact with all the composers, and you’re in the inner circle, you know, right?
That seems really cool.
Yeah, it is.
If you wanted to know why we’re called Editor, it’s because we’re sort of editing the catalog, which we would consider like the marketed list of things that we’re doing this year.
So that would associate with our print catalog, but also with the things that we’re promoting on the website and the things we choose to put in emails and that kind of thing.
So we’re kind of curating the list.
So not Editor in the traditional sense, but editing the list of pieces that are going to be promoted this year for School Choral.
And you’re focusing on choral and classroom, but how many editors are there?
How many areas total in Pepper?
A lot.
We have a lot of different instrumental and solo and ensemble.
We have church and a lot of us work together, actually.
sometimes we sit in a room together and review, and then we have nice discussions about the pieces.
And but really what we try to do is think about how useful the piece can be, and how many markets is this piece applicable?
What kinds of people do we think are going to buy this?
What kind of choirs can sing this successfully?
And then we try to basically, we call it coding or tagging in our system, try to like line it up with as many different markets as we think it will be applicable for.
What has surprised you the most about working for Pepper?
Because it’s a company that everybody knows, both of you were teachers and musicians first, so you would have encountered Pepper in those roles, and now that you’re behind the scenes, what do you wish people knew?
I think I wish people knew that we weren’t just trying to sell the music.
Yeah.
I mean, we are, but on the other hand, we’re trying to make your lives easier.
And that we are teachers going through the music, like you said, musicians, teachers, and that we have a background in it.
We’ve been in front of the students, so we have an idea what they can sing, what they want to sing.
And yeah, I guess that’s the main thing.
And I think there are some tricks, maybe, to using our website effectively, like doing your sorts and that kind of thing, which I probably didn’t understand all that well as a customer, but obviously understand a lot better now.
So…
Is that something that could be explained in an audio only format, if you want to give a short version of that?
It could be like using the left hand navigation effectively.
Okay, yeah.
So not just using the search bar, which a lot of people prefer to do.
Instead of maybe looking in our list that we carefully curate by genre, we have lists for middle school, we have lists for elementary school and that kind of thing.
And then you can filter down like through the categories there and through the voicings, through the difficulty levels, whatever you want to do there.
So I think there’s a lot of tricks to using the website a little bit more effectively.
And hopefully that would save a lot of time for teachers, you know, because they would learn how to do this rather than just, oh, I saw this title somewhere and now I put it in the search bar.
So what do you do to sort of keep the pulse of what’s going on in the classroom and how do you figure out what the needs are and what people are looking for?
So one way we would gauge that would be with sales.
We like to see what people are buying.
That always kind of tells us or gives us a good picture of what they want because obviously they’re putting their money there.
And another way we like to do that is we like to get out to some conventions or some conferences and actually talk to people.
And a lot of people will be very open saying, well, I wish there was this kind of thing for two part choir or that kind of thing.
And we actually do take that information back to the publishers.
And when they ask us, should I have more of this or less of this or what other things should we be publishing?
We have the opportunity to interface with them.
And I think that’s probably one of my favorite parts of the job is it does feel like we’re helping, like we’re helping publishers know what to publish, but we’re also helping make the music available that people are saying that they actually want.
And it feels like, you know, we’re making a difference there.
Yeah.
And I think, too, just staying plugged into the choral community in general.
Like I serve on the state board for ACDA, so I think that that’s helpful.
And, you know, having conversations with choir directors that you’re friends with and our colleagues with and staying active in your own choirs.
Like I sing for a church choir, have had involvement with community groups, and also just seeing what people are programming, too, and seeing what’s kind of circling around, like which pieces are popular and things like that, too.
So really just staying plugged in and staying on top of choral trends.
And that’s another thing I would say about our staff here in general, is we are still active.
A lot of us, you know, I work with a community choir, I teach private lessons, I sing myself, I play myself, you know.
And most people here you will find are doing that, gigging on the weekends, you know, still active as musicians, staying connected with the community.
So we still have the opportunity.
I get excited when I see a piece.
I’m like, oh, I’m just taking this freight with me right over to rehearsal tonight.
We’re going to think about this one, you know, for next season.
That’s always exciting.
But, you know, I guess I it’s a good thing.
I think if people know that there are people here who are doing that kind of thing.
Absolutely.
So for the composers listening, what are some of the trends or needs that you’re seeing right now?
Well, I think a big thing for us is the middle school market.
There always seems to need to be more things written that are at that accessibility level and the ranges, like really keying in to what the ranges are for people of that age.
Changing voices, smaller ranges, parts that don’t go too low, either like that alto or that baritone range not going too low.
It’s like it’s possible for some choirs some years, but we wouldn’t want to assume that people always have singers who could do that.
these are developing voices.
Really thinking about voices, the things that you’re teaching with it, how you’re training the voices through that, like what are the healthy ways to sing, what are the healthy ranges, that kind of thing.
And I mean, we do hear all the time that people are looking for more diversity of composers and genres at that level.
And I think that’s one thing I would wish is that more composers would consider that as, you know, you don’t always need to write this eight-part acapella wonderful thing that of course shows all the tricks in your composer’s toolkit.
But there are other ways that you can do that and do it really well, like write artfully, very well, consider the text, consider the interest level, and do it really well.
We always need more music like that.
Yeah, because we see too that people are wanting more mature works for middle school, I’d say, too.
Definitely not juvenile.
Yeah, oh, for sure.
So that’s also something that I think has changed a little bit, just an appetite for that.
Quality text, music that does something, I mean, they’re definitely very attracted to rhythmic settings, exciting music, like nice crunchy harmonies in places, just some things that what we would call like musically satisfying.
Yeah.
So I think there’s definitely a need for that.
Yeah, and also too, just in education in general, I think pieces that can connect to social emotional learning.
So texts that connect to self, connect to the community, I think is another appetite too.
So when you’re evaluating music, what is the process you go through?
Like what does that actually look like?
So yeah, we get all of the music submitted to us, and we listen to everything, look through all the scores, look through the different voicings.
So if a piece has multiple voicings, we’re not just looking at one, looking through all of them.
And really just looking through it from the teacher perspective, seeing is it vocally appropriate in terms of ranges, like you were just touching on.
If the text is appropriate, relevant, desirable.
If it’s musically satisfying, musically challenging.
And what can be learned from the piece, you know?
So yeah, we get the music, we listen to it, look through it, write up, you know, comments about it, write down how we think that it might be categorized.
So this might fall under this list of songs of peace or a Halloween song or we write down the difficulty level and then what markets we think that it might be applicable to.
And as Jen talked about earlier, then we also have conversations about if we think that it could go between multiple markets.
So this piece would be appropriate both for school and community choirs or both for community choirs and church choirs.
Collegiate, different levels, things like that.
Is there a formal rubric or are you just making a judgment call?
Or is there a piece of paper that has this kind of rhythms in it?
Like in the band world, it’s very specific.
Grade one, two, three, it’s certain rhythms, certain key signatures.
Is there a corresponding thing for choral music?
We have a rubric.
I mean, it is more generalizations because there’s not a standardization of how all those difficulty things or rhythms.
We sort of have made our own and I think that’s something we’re trying to pursue in the choral industry, maybe a little bit more standardization so that if we call it medium-easy, that means the same thing.
We should try to do that.
So a lot of times, if you look at a publisher’s website and they call it whatever, easy, and we call it medium, it’s because we’re comparing it to all the other pieces that we’ve seen.
But on their website, it very well may be easy.
So we are trying to do that as well in the process.
So there is a rubric, but it’s not the same kind of thing that you would see on the instrumental side.
So if a composer wanted to submit music for a review, how do they do that?
Well, first of all, they need to set up to be a vendor, which one of the best ways to do that is through MyScore, because anybody can do that on any given day, set up and become a vendor.
And then letting us know, like going through the submission process, and generally, somebody will send you like a letter, a way to start the process, and then it basically will come across our desks.
And generally, publishers will do this several times a year, some once, some two, maybe more if they’re releasing often.
And let us know about it, send us the scores and the recordings, as Kelsey was noting earlier, and then we can start the review process from there.
And we guide that towards two main releases a year, where we make Editors’ Choice selections, mid-year and then also for the fall and Christmas.
I think that’s a perfect segue into talking about those lists, because I think as the amount of music that’s available grows, things like the Editors’ Choice and the festival List and the State Recommended List, those kinds of things, seem to be becoming a lot more crucial for composers to be discovered, for composers to get their works out there.
I see it almost analogous to Spotify and those playlists, right?
It’s a similar thing there.
If you’re a new artist on Spotify, you want someone to hear it, like you got to get it on a playlist.
Do you agree with that assessment?
Do you think that’s the future of the industry, is more of these kind of curated things, or do you think it’s a trend that will eventually turn into something else?
As marketers, I like to think, yeah, it matters.
It matters where we put things, it matters how we position them, and that kind of thing.
Visibility is huge.
That’s really what we’re trying to do.
Exactly.
Visibility and curation, like you said, is really a big thing that we’re doing with the pieces.
So I don’t really see that going away, especially as you said, as the volume increases, and I think teachers’ time decreases to have to look through it as they’re tasked with more things.
So we’re just really trying to be as helpful as possible by sorting through all of it and curating these lists to make the pieces visible.
Yeah, we like to think that Editor’s Choice is a time saver for teachers and busy choral directors and musicians of all types.
But I think I want to point out too that Editor’s Choice doesn’t necessarily refer to the quality of the music.
And just because we don’t make something Editor’s Choice, and you think, oh my word, it’s the best piece in the world, why in the world?
We have to think about what trends we see amongst our shoppers and the people that use our website.
And then we kind of try to think from that mindset.
And if that piece is sort of not a direct hit for that market, then we may opt to not make it Editor’s Choice because we don’t know if it’s going to sell for us.
It may sell great, you know, in other places, but it might not sell for us.
So sometimes people are maybe confused about that, but we like to think that we’re hitting, you know, the middle of the market.
Like this is going to work for most people.
Well, I looked it up last night before I came here.
So as of June 25th, JW Pepper had 209,553 choral titles for sale.
And so, you know, even if you’re ambitious as a choral director and you’re going to program, you know, 20 pieces a year, it would still take you like 12,000 years to sing everything that was on the Pepper site.
And, you know, like, it’s just sort of a boggling amount of music, right?
I mean, if all the composers in the world stopped composing, like, we could still keep going on and everybody could still keep finding new music.
Absolutely.
Like for generations, right?
It’s insane.
For sure.
How do you, like, deal with that?
That’s probably why sometimes during what we call review season, which is when all the music is coming in, you know, very quickly, our eyes probably go, you know, and I always say it’s sort of like the Febreze commercials where they say, you’ve gone nose blind.
sometimes I’m afraid we go ear blind after hearing so many pieces in a row, but we really try to break it up and to make sure that we’re really giving every piece the fairest shake that we can give it.
We get multiple opinions.
That’s why we have a team.
It’s not just one person making these decisions.
And you know, we try to look at it from that perspective, make sure that making sure that everybody has their say and different opinions are accounted for and that kind of thing too.
So we actually score them and then it has to basically get up to a certain score for it to be editor’s choice or a marketer category.
Yeah, and I think also too, looking at the pieces from the positive perspective of like, we want to see the positivity in all the pieces.
I think we’re not looking for compositional defects or anything like that.
Like we’re just looking to for marketability for do we think people would really like this?
Like, would you buy this?
these are the questions that we sometimes ask ourselves in this process.
Well, we don’t have to get too in the weeds here, but just because it’s not Editor’s Choice doesn’t mean that Pepper doesn’t market it or include it.
There’s other levels of marketing.
So like you’re saying, it’s not an in or out kind of an equation.
It’s just…
Absolutely.
I mean, Editor’s Choice is really supposed to be what we think is like the best of the best and the best of the best for most people.
You know, recognizing that you know your choir better than we do.
We just are trying to know the most choirs that we can.
And that’s how we build our process.
Do pieces stay on that list forever?
yes.
Once something is Editor’s Choice, it is not ever removed.
So I know someone came to me and said, how could this be Editor’s Choice and out of print?
Well, yes, it was Editor’s Choice 29 years ago, and it is now out of print.
You know, it does live there in perpetuity.
Unlike some of our other branding like Basic Library, that does not live there.
If a piece is not still qualifying for the sales levels of Basic Library, it does not stay there.
We remove it.
But Editor’s Choice, once it’s there, it will always be there.
If you want to know which ones are this year’s Editor’s Choice, then you can sort by your left hand navigation by the year and find out which are the ones for this year.
So sometimes that helps.
So I think there is a big old paradox at the heart of music publishing.
And it’s this tension between the new and the familiar, right?
Everybody says the best way to get discovered as a composer is to be different, you know, to find your unique voice, to find an underserved niche, whatever.
But then you go to the publishers, right?
And they’re interested in things that have a track record, right?
They seem more risk-averse, I feel like, than that advice would suggest, right?
Because they don’t want to publish something unless they’re confident it will sell, right?
And so there’s this kind of tension where it’s like, okay, if I’m a composer and I want to get discovered, I have to write things that are accessible, you know?
I have to write things that sort of fit the target.
But at the same time, that makes me less unique because I’m doing what everyone else is doing.
Do you have any thoughts on how composers can kind of navigate this balance?
I think that there’s, yeah, it’s a fine line, right?
Because if you write a unique piece that only one choir can sing, that’s not helping you.
I mean, it might be fulfilling you on a musical sense.
And it might be a beautiful piece and the choir that sang it will love it.
That’s all wonderful.
But if your goal is to sell music, then you have to think about how many other choirs can sing this same thing.
So I think that would be maybe a way to navigate that.
You can be unique.
You can be different.
You can pick different kinds of texts.
You can use rhythms in a different way.
You can use asymmetrical meter.
You can do whatever you want to do to make the piece unique.
And it should be.
I mean, nobody wants the same boring stuff like over and over again.
People want unique.
But you have to do it within the context of, is this going to appeal to people who are buying for this segment, whether it’s middle school or high school or whatever it is?
Yeah.
And I think too that unfamiliar or new shouldn’t equate with inaccessible.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, you can still have creative new ideas, but still making sure that you’re keeping in, I don’t want to say the confines, but just like the realms of accessibility to schools too.
Well, I mean, you do have to limit yourself, right?
Like, if you’re trying to write something for middle school, like, there’s certain ranges where it won’t work anymore.
And so, like, you are kind of put in a box, even if it is.
But isn’t that the ultimate creativity to understand that there is a box and to make it interesting within the box, to do the very best thing that you can do that makes it stand up, like, come to the highest level of what’s in the box, and yet we understand that there are parameters for accessibility or age.
So maybe the question then is just picking the right box.
Or maybe understanding what the box really is.
Yeah.
Or which box you fit into, too, where you can still be, like, you, because you don’t want to, yeah, I don’t know, kind of run with your strengths, I guess, too.
Well, that kind of brings us back to the classifications, right?
It’s hard to do that because it’s not standardized.
You can look at this publisher or this publisher, and what they consider to be accessible could be, you know, not on the same page.
Yeah, and I think, too, like, you know, certain publishers are known for certain things within their brand, and maybe trying to figure out which publisher you should approach with your publication, because this kind of fits with the same types of things that they do.
I think that could be really helpful because all the publishers we work with, every single one of them has fantastic editorial staff, and they really do work with composers on all of these things, like, okay, here’s what you wrote, but here’s what we think you might need to do to make it sell.
You know, like, can you bring it down from 24 parts to eight or four?
You know, and I don’t say that in a joking way.
I say it in a, like, it’s one thing to envision something that’s a masterpiece, but I do feel like it can be very difficult to write in a really satisfying way for less voices.
Can you do that as a composer?
I mean, there’s no shame in writing for things that are smaller choirs or younger voices or, you know, all the things that we need for accessibility.
doesn’t make you less of a composer.
In fact, I would argue that it makes you more of a composer.
What’s the opposite of shame?
Because that’s what pride, I guess.
Well, I mean, that’s like in building your brand.
Like, yes, you should be proud of the things that you do.
Like, you know, what things have I written?
And look at all the people that I’ve been able to touch through this piece of music because so many people were able to do it.
That’s a wonderful thing.
Yeah.
And that may have something to do, I think, with just like…
And I think this is going away, but I think in the past there’s been sort of this hierarchy of like, you know, collegiate conductors are up here, and then high school, and then middle school, and then elementary school, right?
And it’s sort of like equating the skill level of the ensemble with the quality of the music, I think, unfortunately, has been the case for a while.
And I do see that kind of going away, and I think it should, right?
Well, look at it from the reverse.
If we don’t do a good job at the elementary school level, those people aren’t even going to be singing by the time they get to college.
So maybe we should take a little bit more pride in keeping people involved in our choral programs and presenting them with quality literature, teaching them how to appreciate a song.
We don’t just sing a song, we learn about what this is, and being able to have, you know, quality texts and things that there are to study, and rhythms and nice harmonies, you know, for that, that’s maybe the highest level of what you should be proud of.
Absolutely.
Do you think then that it’s important for a composer to put themself in the, here we go again with the boxes.
Like, do you think it’s important for them to brand themself as, you know, I’m a middle school composer and stick to that, or does it not matter as long as the music is good?
I mean, ideally, I wouldn’t want to put any composer into a box artistically.
But, you know, yes.
But there is kind of a marketing thing to it, right?
Like, it’s easier to sell music by Garrett Breeze if everyone knows this is what he writes.
As opposed to, you know, what is it today?
Yeah, yeah.
I think, just like you were saying, it’s good to not limit yourself artistically, but if you have a strength in a certain area, then again, just run with that strength, you know?
And if that’s your passion, if that’s like your area, like if you taught elementary choir and now you’re composing for elementary choir and that’s just like your heart’s passion, like I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with just wanting to stick with that.
But if, you know, if you want to try other things, absolutely.
But I don’t think that there’s, I don’t think there’s really harm either way.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I mean, I don’t think that you have to limit your brand.
If you want to, you could become, no, this is what I do, I only write middle school music.
But I don’t think that has to be that way.
I don’t think it hurts you to be popular at a certain level.
It doesn’t hurt you at another level.
People just need to hear the music and experience it.
And I think our customers are open to listening and just saying, okay, now they might give you 12 seconds, right?
That’s what we always say, like they might give you those first 12 seconds.
Are we up to 12 now?
Did you think it was shorter than that?
That seems like a lot.
I mean, I think you need to be able to do it and do it well, but I think that there is a lot more openness now to looking at composers with names you don’t recognize and brands of music that you don’t recognize either.
People are looking for different.
Putting on my cynical hat for a second.
Is it true that pieces with titles from the first half of the alphabet sell more than pieces from the back half?
I don’t know.
It depends maybe how we sort the list.
There are times we sort the list alphabetically.
Yeah, but largely top selling or newest is how our lists are sorted.
So it wouldn’t necessarily be that they’re…
That’s kind of one of the things you hear, right?
Like when you’re picking a name for your piece, it’s like if you can title it something, like with an A or a B, like it’s more likely to get seen.
Huh.
I mean, that’s maybe like 15% true.
Okay.
Okay.
I don’t think it’s more true than that.
Well, okay.
But what about the title of a piece?
How much does that play into the marketing?
Judge a book by a cover, judge a piece by a title.
There you go.
That’s the sound bite.
We know we do this.
I mean, avid readers will tell you that they judge a book by the cover.
So yes, what it’s called, what it looks like on the front.
I mean, sometimes it’s out of your control, because if you’re within a certain series, within a certain publisher, you don’t have control necessarily of how it looks.
But a title that’s engaging, that encompasses what the piece is, that should be a big consideration.
Shouldn’t be too long, maybe not too short, although a one word title can be provocative, I guess.
If you wonder what’s that all about.
Switching gears a little bit to the classroom side of things.
Yeah.
How do you define classroom versus an ensemble like choral or band or orchestra?
Yeah.
So classroom is just what we would call general music.
So you might have classroom singing resources where the music in those collections, or you know, individual octaves, but just, yeah.
Collections or standalone songs.
Yeah, standalone songs that you are just really singing for classroom use and not necessarily for performance.
And there are lots of facets to classrooms.
So not just singing, but we have instrumental methods.
We have like music history resources, music theory resources.
So that’s what I’m meaning when I say classroom materials that you would use for general music.
And there’s definitely crossover, you know.
Like maybe a sight reading book you would use in your general music classes as well as with your choral ensemble, maybe a music theory resource.
But that’s what I’m meaning when I say classroom, just everything that you might use for general music.
And all the other classes you might teach in addition to your performing ensembles.
Yeah.
Are there things other than the music itself that are really useful for classrooms?
I mean, rehearsal tracks is the obvious thing that comes to mind, but are there other materials that people are looking for?
Yeah.
I would say sight reading materials.
Absolutely.
And we have a lot of them.
Yeah.
Cross-curricular too.
Oh, that’s huge.
So anything that kind of ties into another subject.
So if you have music history and how that’s tying into whatever, like, that grade is learning in their history classes.
Could be anything.
You could be studying the environment or the moon or anything.
Or in your literature classes, if you’re studying a poet and then you do pieces by that poet, that’s a nice way to connect.
So yeah, cross-curricular, I think is huge.
Yeah, absolutely.
And would that be like a PDF that comes with the music or some other format?
sometimes there are supplemental resources with the music.
Like maybe in the Octavo, they have a page dedicated to that.
If you’re buying classroom materials, then a lot of times, yeah, you’re buying a digital resource or a book that has information, lessons, activities, things like that.
Teachers are always really grateful for any extra things you can provide for them, that they don’t have to go and then do that additional research.
And we love products like that.
Any publisher that makes things where it’s well documented, well informed, and right there at your fingertips, and they show you how to use it.
You just can take that stuff and dump it right into your lesson plans, and we hope that’s a huge time saver.
Yeah, background information on the composer, background information on the piece, is in another language, having a translation, pronunciation guide, things like that, are all very helpful.
I hadn’t even thought about tying it to other subject matter.
Yeah.
That’s a really interesting thought.
Especially at elementary and middle school, it could be the thing that’s making you make the decision about that piece, because you’re looking for something specific like, oh, all the second graders are studying the environment this year, so you’re actually going and looking for things that follow that theme.
Yeah.
And it’s a great way to work interdepartmentally, too, because I know that they really encourage that in a lot of schools.
Yeah.
Especially at the elementary and middle school level, working with the core subject teachers to reinforce what they’re learning.
Yeah.
themes.
Yeah.
I really want to thank both of you for letting me come and interrupt your workday and get to know both of you.
I want to end with two fun questions.
Okay.
So first one, if you had a theme song, who would record it and or compose it?
A theme song.
That’s hard.
It’s going to take a minute.
Like I’ll tell you mine, I would go John Williams, right?
I would get like a big old movie orchestral thing, and then I can like come in, you know, like with the trombones and stuff.
Okay.
I think mine would be some kind of operatic, you know, wonderful thing with high notes, and it would definitely have to be Renee Fleming singing it.
There you go.
But I don’t know who has to compose it, because it’s probably going to be fine as long as she’s singing it.
Yeah, I don’t know.
I don’t know if I could pick a specific artist.
I just love anything poppy.
I love anything with a good beat.
I love to dance.
I love to move.
So yeah, anything with a good beat.
I also was really big into like pop-rock bella.
So any, anything like that, I think.
So the Bellas.
Yeah, sure.
There you go.
Yeah.
All right.
We got John Williams, Renee Fleming and the Bellas.
That would be a fun show.
I would go to that.
Absolutely.
All right.
Last one.
Give our listeners some homework.
What’s a band or a composer or an album that you consider to be underappreciated and you want them to go listen to?
Okay.
The one I could not put down this last Christmas season.
It was the voches 8 one that had all the Taylor Scott Davis things on there, which is definitely a composer who has definitely been around for a while, but is just kind of coming into a lot of people knowing about him.
And I mean, I was just blown away by the entire album.
So many wonderful things.
The choral sound, the style of the music being composed.
I mean, that just that blew me away.
That’s a good one.
Is it too cliche if I say Hamilton?
I love the original Hamilton.
Oh, I love Hamilton.
yes.
That’s not nothing wrong with Hamilton.
Yeah.
Well, thank you to both of you.
This was really fun.
Is there anything you want to plug before we go?
Any, I don’t know, like website or project or something in particular, you want them to pay attention to?
You know, I’d like to plug our content.
And blogs, like we are really thoughtfully considering what kind of content we should make for teachers that we hope is really helpful.
And maybe highlighting some pieces or providing background information on a genre or connecting them with composers or that kind of thing.
So if people have the time, I’d love them to take a look at some of the content that we’re producing.
Yeah, especially the video content that we’re coming out with too.
That’s great.
Yeah.
And we’ll link to that in the show notes so people can just click on it when they’re done.
I’ll throw one more out there.
I’d love for the things that we put out there in email promotions to be looked at, maybe saved, because our email promotions are a little different than probably a lot of other retailers because we’re not really telling you about when to buy things.
But every time I know for me, every time I build an email promotion, I think what value am I giving to the customer?
So it’s either a list that maybe they would have trouble building themselves, or a group of products that I think you should look at together.
So I would love for people to say, oh, to not say, it’s just another email and I, whatever.
But I really feel like there’s value in the email promotions that we do, and hopefully other people think so too.
So how can people sign up for those?
Oh yeah, on our website, you can just hit the subscribe button and we want to make sure that people are getting them.
And how do we make sure we’re getting the Jennifer emails and not, you know, everybody else?
You want to get those school chorally nails.
I mean, do you just check a box like school choral?
You can, yes.
You can designate like, I want just school choral or, you know, I want school choral and I want church choral and I want community choral because maybe I do all of those things.
But I don’t want band, you know, or I do want band because I also teach that or, you know, those kind of things.
You can designate what types of things you want to get so that hopefully we’re not spamming you.
But we really do want to provide valuable information for you that we hope is helpful.
That’s perfect.
Well, thanks to both of you.
And looking forward to what’s coming in the next couple of months.
Yeah.
Thanks for having us on.
Yeah, thank you.