Walter Huff Critique

When I was a kid, I was a part of the little children’s choir at my church, Morningside Presbyterian. We mostly just played musical games to get us used to our voices, learn how to hold a note, or just have a bit of fun. One of the games we played was one where our choir director played notes on the piano that sounded like an animal. He would twiddle away on the keys making melodies that went ba-hump, ba-hump, and we would all yell out “frog!” or “bunny!” Perhaps they would go duh-dumph, duuh dumph, and we would guess a shark. I didn’t think much of it at the time. To me, he was just one of the family friends we saw around a lot. As it turns out, this family friend of mine was a bit of a bigger deal than I had thought. The man who played these little games with us, grinning the whole time, was actually the chorus master of the Atlanta Opera. Walter Huff is one of the most renowned chorus masters worldwide. He toured Europe and America, directing choral groups in hundreds upon hundreds of performances along the way. When he wasn’t doing that, he

It is picking out a single voice amongst a sea of many and showing it ways to be better. It is having these people respect and admire you enough to follow where you lead. It is showing a group how to create such unity from dissonance that it sounds as the gods are reigning down upon you. This is the culmination of Walter’s work, and once you experience it, it is something you never forget. It happens when the chorus reaches the pinnacle of a song and all members are in perfect harmony. A wall of thunder rolls across the audience, reaching every nook and cranny of the vicinity. The room itself resonates, vibrates, as the perfect ensemble rises to the peak of a crescendo and holds. Then- silence. The air is shockingly still; the eye of the storm. This is what Walter does. He takes a miscellany of individual voices and turns them into thousands of goosebumps running across your