Choir Baton Podcast Episode 31. "Because choir is greater than the sum of its parts" an interview with Joan Riddle Steinmann

On March 18, Joan made a blog post in response to the emotions she felt surrounding the choir community's various responses to having to "do choir" online amidst Covid-19. That post would quickly go viral and be shared time again by the choir community. Joan's words seemed to stir within our hearts what many of us could not find the words to express. After being so moved by her text and seeing others so moved by it, I felt like there was more to the story and wanted to know more about the woman behind the post. The following interview is a moving addendum. Joan shares her heart for music and how the days leading up to her post were filled with another powerful journey. This post was her first one, made on her newly created webpage to share about her work on a musical written in tribute to her students and inspired by the role education plays in our students lives today. In a unique twist Joan also shares how her composition has garned praise from Malcolm Gladwell. You will be moved and inspired no longer just from the powerful words Joan shared with the world, but by gaining a glimpse into the creative, engaging, and wise woman behind that text. To find out more about Joan, including her blog post and upcoming musical "Solve for X" please click here

Beth Philemon: Welcome, Choir Baton listeners to another episode of The Choir Baton Podcast. I'm going to start by reading something for you all that has made its way into our community within the last five days. It says:

“Here's the deal, my friends. Unless you are singing in a room with people. It isn't choir. Period. Choir is about connection, Choir is about 30 or 210 or six singers all shaping a vowel so perfectly that the overtones extend up to the heaven and make the angels weep. 

“Choir is your college roommate. She won first place in your hometown MET auditions and your Great Aunt Ruth. She turned 89 last month and wants everyone to know she still has her high notes. They sing together every Sunday and the paint doesn't peel off the walls. Why choir, that's why. Choir is magical. Alone, I am a soprano, but in choir, I'm a tenor and an alto and the bass. When you sing in a choir,  the sound of the whole choir comes out of your mouth. Boom! Magic! Choir isn't something you can do alone with a webcam on your computer. It just isn't period. 

“So, be kind to your choral friends. We are suffering. We feel this disconnect keenly. Yes, we know about Eric Whitacre and his virtual choir, and we love Eric. He is our token rock star and makes our whole sport sexier. And in these days of deadly airborne pathogens, Choir is as much a contact sport as football. 

“We will retreat to the sidelines. We will learn to use Zoom and Google Hangouts. We will record our voices and send them into the unknown. We retreat willingly because at the end of the day, we love Great Aunt Ruth and her questionable high notes. Her life is on the line and choir just isn't worth the risk. But these days won't last forever, my friends, and we will make it through this. And when we sing together again, it will be amazing.”

Those words are by Joan Riddle Steinmann and I am so honored to have you as a guest on the Choir Baton today. Welcome, Joan.

Joan Steinmann: Oh, Beth I'm so excited to be here. It’s such an honor to be a part of the Choir Baton and I've been listening to it. And this is thrilling to be on this show.

Beth Philemon: Well, I read your, your words, I think, like, the day that it had come out. I saw it begin popping up and then it just continued to spread throughout our choir conductor community and I thought I identified so much with this. Others are clearly identifying behind it.  You could just feel the emotion and I had to speak to you. I had to know who you were, and what your story was and what prompted you to write this and all the things. So let's just kind of start in from there. Where did all of this kind of come from?

Joan Steinmann: Yeah, Beth, good question. I first of all, I'm so honored that people were touched by the words that I wrote and it was a very emotional process for me writing it, and then to see so many shares and so many things you know it's happening all over, like, you know, shared in Australia and New Zealand and England and I thought, “Wow, this is really amazing.”

 I'm really grateful and by far everyone was very kind. They wrote back thanks for saying these things and I think I basically just said what we're all feeling during the beginning of this Corona quarantine social distancing and that our sport-- our choir sport-- is so about connection and that is hard to do over the computer. But also, we're choir people. We’re educators. We’re teachers. We're so used to just like, “Oh, do you need me to do this, I will do this.” “I'll move those risers”. “Do you need me to transpose this into a different key,” “I'll do that link,” and we are eager to make accommodations and do things and change. And so everybody's like, “Yeah, we can get our life, our classes online in two days,” and I'm like-- it was a rough week for me. 

Last week I guess I'll-- let me just start with a few of the personal things so I kind of did a calendar page to take some notes in prep for this interview.  So, February was really fun for my choir. We went to New York and it was really great. And then I came home and, like so many people, I went to an ACDA conference. We had our regional conference, and so the first week of March was our regional conference and it was in Salt Lake City, which is where I live. And so that was really exciting and I was on the planning committee, so I got to help with the organization of that, which was so fun and wonderful and I heard some amazing choirs. Concerts I'll never forget. Touching. Just really beautiful moments, and Eric Whitacre himself was at our conference. And so I saw him and stood next to him. I didn't really meet him, but...

Beth Philemon: Did you touch him? Like pet him?

Joan Steinmann: Like, what are you doing lady? I didn't do that. So we had our choral convention and then the next week is when everything in the world shut down and so that was emotional. So I came back from ACDA where I heard these amazing concerts and I'm like, “Okay. We're excited. I have all these ideas. I'm so excited to implement them.”  All these choral rehearsal techniques and all these ideas for great rep and concert themes.

And then the next day-- the next week we came back to school as a lot of people did. In my top ensemble on that Tuesday-- I'm a mom and I teach part time-- so I teach Tuesdays and Thursdays and then every other Friday. So on my top ensemble on Tuesday-- and they'd asked that we use that class period for my chamber choir to have the Graduation Ceremony of a senior, who is graduating. His mother had cancer and she was about to pass away. And they said, her greatest wish is that she sees her son graduate from high school. And she can't wait until May when everyone graduates, like we need to do this now. 

So my school --which is wonderful-- planned this graduation ceremony in my choir room and my choir sang and they invited all the family and we just did it over a period, you know, and it was magical. Because, you know, here's my singer. The boys in my classes and then his whole family's there and his mom is there. So that was on Tuesday. And then she passed away a few days later, and that was right in the midst of all of the closures, and Disneyland shut down and the NBA got cancelled. I mean, it was a big deal. We're all gonna remember this. We're all gonna remember “Yeah, we got that March of 2020 that was... that was something.” 

Anyway, I was very emotional already. Um, and then the next week on the first day that we were supposed to do online classes, Salt Lake City had this earthquake that, I mean as a 5.7 earthquake, which I give you from California, that's probably nothing for you, but I have never been in an earthquake and we were like, “What's going on?” and all the schools are shut down, you know, COVID-19. We're all quarantining ourselves and the social distancing and then suddenly, there's this earthquake and it's like, “What next universe?” Like we gotta figure this out. You know, so I was very emotional. 

And I was kind of walking around my house occasionally looking at Facebook, trying to think how I can teach choir online. How can I teach, and everyone's like, “Okay, what do I do?” They're making lesson plans and I'm looking around. I just can't do it. I'm just too emotional to think about teaching choir online so I just started writing. 

I started writing this blog post. And I had just set up. It was timing I just set up a website for-- I'm writing a musical, which is a different thing, but I set up my first website and I bought my first domain name, which I was super excited about and I know, these little things. And I thought, “Oh, well, okay, I can put this blog post on my new website,” which, you know, the day it was born. So anyhow, I started writing. And I came up with those words that you so eloquently (read), and I was really grateful to hear someone read them. Yeah. And I mean I can talk a little bit about and kind of analyze like why did this go viral. I never had anything go viral. Before you know I could kind of talk about that a little bit.

Beth Philemon: I'd love that. 

Joan Steinmann: Okay. So I think one of the things that made it so so compelling-- it was pretty short, right? It's four paragraphs, and it's a definite target audience. I read it to my husband. He's a non musician and he's like “You’re calling choir a sport?” I'm like, “Oh, honey. I love you, but yes, yes I am.” And there were some universal references, right? So it's short. And also we can all relate to and the singing in a church choir with the old lady. And also being the young soprano who's pretty good. 

And the great thing is, at some point in your life, you're going to be both of those people, you know, hopefully, because I hope-- singing is something you should do your whole life, obviously. You know that we listeners know that. So, you'll be one of those people at one point. And so it was like, it's in the zeitgeist, right? And then it had another couple of other fun references like, everyone knows who Eric Whitacre is and everyone has been getting emails like “Start a virtual choir!” You know? And I just have to say I'm really grateful for everyone who sent me an email to start a virtual choir. I really am. Because that means they care about my program and what I do and they are thinking of me and I'm so, so grateful for that.

 And I'll just say that I'm really grateful, but also I know how much time that takes and I have spent my whole life, as we all have been, refining my rehearsal techniques so that I do rehearsal really well, you know? We don't waste a minute.  I know how to gauge the group, like how are they doing, is this too fast pacing, too slower pacing? And then when I think about doing that online… It is just so depressing, you know? And I'm not saying that I can't. We are innovative, right? We can come up with content to do online. That is not a problem. We can give a vote. We can do voice lessons. We can give listening examples. There's things we can do, but it isn't choir. Right?  And I was mourning the loss of choir. 

Let's see... Another reason I think it went viral, it’s that just some of the imagery. I'm really grateful that I felt really inspired to write things like “The overtones extend up to heaven” I've been reading...Let's see. Let's see. Why am I forgetting his name… Don Brinegar’s book about “Can Pitches Be Perfect?” and he's a genius. And I met him at ACDA last week or two weeks ago, whenever that was two years ago. And I've been reading all of his books about overtones and trying to learn. And so I was in my mind… 

And so, those things in as the football reference, like calling choirs “sports” and then at the end of the day, we have to realize, too, that even though, what we do is so important and we love it, if people are dying of this, we are willing to sacrifice and not go out and do what we love. And I think the whole community is willing to do that. And it's been really-- we're all really grateful. So those are kind of some ideas of why it went viral and why it appealed to so many people. 

But I just-- We need to take a moment- and I did-, I needed to take a moment and like acknowledge the loss. And this may be months that we can't meet with our ensembles and just to acknowledge that that is painful. That we will miss them. That they will miss us. That we will miss that connection that a choir gives you. And that's the reason that we all love it so much. So I just wanted to acknowledge that for a few moments. And I think everyone did. And it was a great distraction, as I wrote it and then I posted a few different places because I kept getting-- like there were so many people saying, “How do we start a virtual choir?” I mean, they're still are and-- by the way, I think it's great if you want to start a virtual choir. That is really, really great, like whatever we can do to make it through this is great, but I just wanted to take back and say “Hey choir directors, like, we need a pat on the back like we can't use our skills right now that we've worked so hard to refine and we just, we can acknowledge the loss. We can acknowledge the loss.”

Beth Philemon: I think that is-- that's huge. And you even still have so eloquently said that, of which we struggle to say, and that of which we sometimes have even struggled to realize because we are those innovators. We are those people that say, “Yes, I can move those risers.” “Yes, I can transpose that key.” “Yes, I can teach choir online” and because we've made such an effort to pivot and to stay connected to our community, we've not necessarily realized that we do have this to grieve and allowing ourselves time to grieve and how interesting, how timely that you were engaged in such a grief for your student and for his loss too, and how you knew how to not necessarily manage grief. But you were experiencing that as well and perhaps enabled you to be more susceptible and open to what we were so many of us were experiencing but unable to verbalize at the time, too.

Joan Steinmann: Yes, absolutely.

Beth Philemon: Yeah, the thing that also struck me so much about what you were saying that I sometimes struggle to articulate as a conductor is when you said, “Choir is magical. Alone, I am a soprano, but in a choir I'm a tenor, an Alto, and a bass, and when you sing and in a choir, the whole choir comes out of your mouth.”

Joan Steinmann: Thank you. I wish I could take credit for that. I am sure I heard that from someone else. There's parts of this article that are not my own words and that was it. I know I got that from some workshop.

Beth Philemon: But we all say that, right? I'll say that and you're so kind to

try to say that, but the way in which you penned it, though, is from your heart and what is so, so important-- and I loved what you said, too-- when we were talking a little bit before this where you were like, “I hope, Eric knows I'm not calling them out or poo poo in his virtual Choir”, but I also love how eloquently you've said that, too, you're not hating on the virtual choir experience and I hope that you have not received backlash from people for talking about that.

Joan Steinmann: No, most people have been really, really kind and if I have it all, then I wrote back and I said, “No, no.” I'm like, “Do virtual choir. Like, do whatever it takes to stay connected to your ensemble.” But also just don't feel pressure to reinvent the wheel. This is a time to grieve and to sit back and realize this is important. Social distancing is important. We don't even know the magnitude of it yet. We don't even know. How important it will be. And yeah,  I was watching all these numbers of, like, you know, 500, well, like 300 shares through all this. And I thought, “Oh my goodness, like I wrote about Eric Whitacre.” What if some forwards it to and what if he bans me from doing this for life? I'm planning on doing one of his songs next year. I already have it, you know, purchased. And I thought “Oh okay,” And I was complaining to one of my friends, I was just talking to her about it and she's like, “You know, you did also call him a sexy rock star. I think that's going to mitigate any, you know, any, like, ‘pooh-poohing’ you did on virtual choir” Okay, good. Well at least we are even now, so...

Beth Philemon: So Eric, because I know that you were an avid listener to the Choir Baton podcasts, reach out to Joan and mend that fence here! You know, unite together about a passion for a virtual choir. No, but I'm just curious to also know a little bit more about you. It's so--I really don't know a ton about your journey but just in hearing you talk in your passion for learning and passion for what you do, how did you come to choir?

Joan Steinmann: Oh, you know, I've always loved singing. And I think that's the only prerequisite for being, like wanting to be in choirs, just to love singing. You don't have to be good. You don't have to be anything, and I try to tell my students that all the time.  I love singing and I always have. 

My dad was a singer and my mom played the piano. So I grew up kind of in a musical family, and we would just sing all the time and that was very fun. And then my parents took me to my first opera when I was eight and I was living in Omaha, Nebraska, at the time. And-- oh, by the way, I was in the Omaha Children's Choir, and I think I saw on Facebook that they had posted it online, and I was like, “Oh my goodness! I was in that, like, 30 years ago!” It's been a while. But it was kind of fun to see about my Omaha days. Anyway, so I just, I've always loved to sing and my parents took me to my first opera and I decided I wanted to be an opera singer. And so all through high school, I took voice lessons and got into college and I majored in vocal performance and I loved singing, but I didn't love performing as a soloist.  I liked it and I liked practicing and I liked all the technique. And I was fascinated by that but whenever I had to do an Aria, it was way less exciting than when I got to do a duet or something, you know? And I realized I liked the collaborative process so much. 

But I was about to graduate with a Bachelor's degree from the University of Utah in vocal performance by the time I figured out that I really liked choir so much. And I was like, “What do I do? I think I really want to teach choir.” So I graduated and I got a job just as a grant writer for a nonprofit in the Salt Lake area, and I really missed choir. I was sitting in a community choir and I had some connections to choir, still, but I missed it. And I thought, I've got to go back to school and get my teacher's certificate so I can get to teach choir. And my coworker came in and she was talking to me and she's like, “Oh, I have to go to my son's junior high choir concert. Can you believe that?” and “Who wants to go to a junior high choir concert?” And I was like, “I want to go to a junior high-- I would love to go to that!” And I thought, “Who says that?” I really need to be in this choir world. 

So I was applying to go back to the University of Utah and get my teacher’s certificate, when I saw online this little charter school was looking for a choir teacher and I applied and they said “Okay. Yeah. We have a job. You could teach choir, but it's only a part time position” And I speak German. I lived in Germany for five years. And so I was like “Can I teach choir and German because I really want a full time job.” And so I taught Choir and German there for eight years and then now that I have three kids, I quit teaching German and I just teach choir. So, um, so that's kind of my journey and I love my school. 

It's a great tiny little charter school in Salt Lake City, in Salt Lake Valley and it's called Paradigm. And there's only 430 kids. We don't have sports, so like the music classes are the cool thing to do, which never happened. So it's very exciting. So anyway, I've been feeling really blessed to be there. And I dreamed of going and getting a master's degree, but right now I just try to stay connected and do lots of workshops and conducting lessons and things like that so...

Beth Philemon: I love that. Well, that also explains this kinship that I feel to you because my best, best friend, we met when we were both teaching at a charter school, but I was the choir teacher and she was the German teacher. So there's that synergy. Yeah, absolutely. I love that you're at a charter school, too. I think it'd be really interesting for people that don't know a ton about the charter world. I know charter schools can venture-- and this is not an educational podcast, necessarily,--but are there any misconceptions that people might have about what it is like to teach at a charter school?

Joan Steinmann: Yeah! Yes, I'm sure there are lots of misconceptions because people always ask, like, “Well, do they have to pay tuition for all these kinds of things?” So charter schools, they're very controversial, even in our field. Educators across the border, or even a pro-church school or an anti-church school-- and I have my students, my own children go to the local public school, so I'm not anti public school by any means. But my charter school was just the first one to give me a job and they've been so kind to me that I've stayed. I built up the program, which has been a really wonderful part of my life. And charter schools or public schools-- and you can go to them free, like any school-- there's definitely some pluses and minuses. 

So we have small classes, very small classes, like a lot of them do. My choir classes are the biggest in the school. They're like 60 and 40 and most classes are like 10 and 15 and 20. Every charter school has a focus; ours has a liberal arts focus. So the advantages: you have smaller classes. But then we don't have lots of the options that other high schools have, like no one can take shop at our school because we don't have a shop because we're just a small school. So there's pluses and minuses. If you have a really athletic student that wants to do lots of sports, you’d have to consider if you want to send them to a school like mine where there aren't any sports to go to the high school where they can do sports. And some high schools will be willing to work with you to go to my school, Paradigm, and go to the local school and do your sports there, which some of my students do. 

The thing about my school that is a little different is the students are just really nice to each other. It’s a really nice environment and they're very nerdy. I love that they know they're nerdy, and it's just a great place to teach at a nerdy school for students, so...

Beth Philemon: Absolutely. Well, you mentioned that you've just really grown the program there. And I think that resonates with a lot of choir teachers that are in smaller schools or they are at larger schools but have smaller choral programs. And yes, you might be a unique place where kids are very nerdy and they want to be there. And they've made sacrifices to be there, probably, but what are some ways in which you have grown your program to such a successful, you know, places, things you're doing, and then also from a numbers standpoint as well?

Joan Steinmann: Yeah. So I've spent a lot of years of my life thinking about how to grow choir and when I first started, I think I didn't know very much. So I came out of college and I had my first choir job. And I was like, “Oh, we're gonna do this piece,” and I think like for example, since we talked about Eric Whitacre, like “Okay, we'll do the Leonardo. Leonardo with my beginning choir.” I hadn't even met the students yet, and this was a great piece. And then I had like two men and like five girls that could sing, and then I thought “Okay, scale back. Where are those rounds and like one part pieces?”  And anyway, I didn't have the advantage of having done student teaching where you know I knew I could run a rehearsal because I've been in rehearsals and I knew it would work well, you know?

Beth Philemon: Right.

Joan Steinmann: But there was a lot I didn't know and I reached out to fellow educators around me. Like, “What do I do for parents? Can you send me a disclosure and a syllabus?” And so this is those kinds of things. So...

Beth Philemon: That's huge. Sometimes I think that's a plus, right? Because people think that because they've student-taught, they know everything. Like that's huge!

Joan Steinmann: I knew nothing, and especially when I first got my singers. I was like, “Okay, we're going to do this guys, we're going to survive,” but I love teaching choir so much. I've gotten so much better at it, though. I'm so grateful to be in a craft where you can always improve your skills and it demands every ounce of your talent at all times. And that's a real blessing.

I convinced my boss to let us have music recruitment week at the school and I gave cookies to everyone who came into the choir room after school. And we did an assembly just for choir and I made buttons for all of the teachers at my school to wear if they had ever participated in a music ensemble.

Beth Philemon: I love that.

Joan Steinmann: Other things... I got the--our principles, a singer and he's so great. I made him do a solo for the student body and I just got everyone really involved. This Choir is important, guys. We need to do this and you know they're my colleagues who have since then come in and built up the band and orchestra program in our school, too, which is great. So the arts are very strong and really wonderful. Right.

Beth Philemon: That's awesome. I love the button idea, even. You know that visual and buy in from teachers is huge.

Joan Steinmann: Yeah, well...

Beth Philemon: Then another unique thing that you're doing is you literally took a staff assignment, but your principal wanted you to do over the summer and said “Okay, now I'm going to apply this to me.” And it's turned into this whole thing, which also served as the platform for you to share, which is why we're speaking, too. Talk to us a little bit about the musical.

Joan Steinmann: Okay, I talked a little bit about that. We got an assignment as educators. So, like I said, our school, Paradigm, is a very Liberal Arts focus and they want our students to be reading and writing. They call the teachers “mentors” and they call the students “scholars.” So we're doing some different things. They wanted to make sure that the students are really doing a lot of reading and writing so they gave the mentors the assignment to read two books over the summer to shift. Like “Sing People” by Kimberly Wyatt, I really liked it and then Plato's “Meadow,” which is the Socratic dialogue about how can virtue be taught. I really liked both of those, so they gave us those assignments to read over the summer as mentors and they said “When you come back, we want you to have, you know, a 2500 word essay and that's what we want you to have.” And I thought, “Okay, well, you know, I went to college. I've done essays in my life. I can do that” But then they said, “We're going to spend the next year in peer review groups like reviewing our essays and making sure that they're ready for publication.” 

And I was like,”What?” Okay. Well, then, I don't want to barf up an essay that I just come up with. I want this to be really meaningful. If I have to spend a year with my colleagues-- if I get to spend a year with my colleagues-- reviewing something, I should say. And so I thought about what I've always wanted to do and write it. Write a musical… and run a marathon in China. I mean, there's a lot of things you want to do. But then you get a little nudge, and you're like, “Okay, I guess I'm really going to do this.” So I thought if I have to do this essay. I'd rather just write a musical and I asked my boss. I said, “Can I write a musical instead?”  And he said, “Yeah, if you want to spend 10,000 extra hours.” And I said, “It's better than just writing an essay.” Yes. 

So I started writing this musical Solve for X. And I'm really excited about it. So I'll tell you a little bit about it. It is about Weston Zeitgeist, is my main character, and he's an autistic boy. He is starting his first year of high school, and he's very nervous. And he's obsessed with treasure maps. So his sister, Lottie, she's a junior in high school, she makes him a treasure map of high school to help him navigate it. So she gives him this map and the cafeteria’s School Rock and the locker hallways are the Eastern Channel and the Math Room is the Rocky Ridge and the library is the Rainbow Lagoon. 

So everything on the treasure map corresponds with the high school and she kind of walks them through, “Hey, this territory can be familiar to you now, right? And so I sketched out the plot. So by the end of Act One, Weston is going to be trying to navigate but ruining Lottie’s life, his sister. it's not going well, and things are hard, but then in Act Two, Weston is very good at math. And the musical is called Solve for X. I should do a little plug solveforxmusical.com. Sorry, Google owns solve for x. And I was like,”I don't want to go against Google.” So it's  solveforxmusical.com.

So Weston, the autistic boy, gets in trouble in math class. He's being a smart aleck,  but he doesn't know it, he's struggling to interact with his peers, and his math teacher says “Okay you are going to, in order to pass this class, you have to do 20 hours of peer tutoring,” and he says, “I don't, I don't want to,”  And you know his peers don't want to do it with them either. But he has to, and as he does this, he develops relationships with his peers and they learn to appreciate him for who he is and how he is and then Solve for X. 

It's called solve for x, because when his sister gives him the treasure map, she doesn't have an “X marks the spot” on it. And he says, “Where's the treasure? If this is a treasure map of the High School, where is it?” and she says “You have to find it. You have to look for it.”

So then he's teaching all of his peers Algebra and teaching them how to solve for x and he realizes that the X that they're all finding right there that's the X that marks the treasure. That the interaction that he has with his peers is the treasure.

Beth Philemon: Who are you? I-- like That is amazing. Like the intricacies and the beauty of the story and the interaction. I mean, I have chills.

Joan Steinmann: Thank you. I'm really excited about it. You know, it's, um, a lot of my students, a fair handful are on the spectrum, and I've been teaching for my fourteenth year. So I've seen a lot of them come through and I've seen a lot of them fail. And I've seen a lot of them really thrive and I'm trying to see the difference. Also, I have family members that are on the spectrum that I love. And I've been doing a lot of research lately into Autism and spectrum disorders or spectrum…. I don't want to say disorder because I think it can be a real asset, you know? 

I think that our view of Autism is changing. And that's a really wonderful thing, and I hope that this musical pays tribute to our autistic community and the services they do for our society, but I've done a lot of research on it and it's been fascinating. First of all, autistic people like to be called-- most of them, like to be called autistic people. They don't like to be called someone with autism, because that's like “someone with gayness” or something. It's, like, not a bad part of your life. It's like just a part of who you are, that you identify with. Right, so like I am autistic, right? So that I didn't know that. That was fascinating. And I've read lots of accounts of people who are actually autistic and it's been really fascinating and I want to make sure that my musical  fits with the dialogue that they want to have out there. 

So it's been very interesting but also I think that we underestimate the wonderful skills that autistic people can have, the attention to detail and the focus that they can have. The honestness, the earnestness, the candidness, a lot of those things kind of get lost in our society where it's so much as based on our interpersonal relationships. And I think we as neurotypicals need to be aware of the differences and how to navigate with autistic community.

Beth Philemon: Absolutely, absolutely. Wow. So what stage are you in right now with the musical? I know there's some tracks online. Yeah, I've been listening.

Joan Steinmann: Um, you know, I just gotta hire a babysitter and get it done. Actually, that's not even possible. I've been doing a lot of writing now that life is shut down and

I put my kids to bed early and run to the piano and try to get some stuff done. So I have one song completed and my students sing it. And that was exciting and this song is called “A scanTron a Day Keeps All Learning at Bay,” and that's the only one that's really on YouTube. 

But it's about standardized testing and the students in the musical, it happens in Act Two and they're all stressed out about taking the ACT. I was writing the song and I was listening to the podcast-- Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast “Revisionist History” and he, you know, I'm a big fan of his work and I've read his books and things. And in season 4, he talks about how he takes the alphabet and challenges his assistant to take the LSAT out with them and who could do better. And then he goes into this whole-- The LSAT is the entrance exam for law school-- and he goes and he takes it and he talks about the timing of it. It's very time sensitive and is that what it takes to have a good lawyer? Do you want a lawyer who can think fast or do you want to leave your house to process and who gets into law school? What kind of skills do they have? So,it was just really fascinating. But I was listening to this podcast as I was composing this song. And I thought, you know, it's just very inspirational. 

So the song has all kinds of like ACT, LSAT, GRE, stuff, it has all kinds of standardized tests that are in it. But then the funny thing is I finished and I wrote it and my students performed, which is really fun. We had a mentor showcase and they're like, “You should sing, Mrs. Steinmann,” I was like, “No, I don't know. You guys can sing my song. Then it’s my talent show. So yeah, you can see my song.” So they did it, it was fun. But then we were going to New York in February and I was listening to another Malcolm Gladwell podcast where he was like “Sometimes I ride my bike around Manhattan.” And I thought,”I'm going to be in Manhattan.” I was like, “I should reach out to him and see if we can come sing this song for him.” And I told my sister. This and she's like, “You are such an extrovert. I cannot believe that you reached out to this world famous author” and we're like, “Can we come sing for you?” So I wrote I reached out to these people and I said “Hey, I'll be in New York this week” I was kind of nervous to do it. So I procrastinated it till the day we left “I'll be in New York this week, and there's 24 singers and I wrote this song that was very inspired by Malcolm Gladwell. And I'm just wondering if we could come sing it to you at a coffee shop or something, it's only three minutes long. So, you know, we won't, won't take too long.”

Anyway, he has his people write back and were like, “Thank you. The timing doesn't work, but send us a recording” and I was like “Okay well that's, you know, that's a thanks but no thanks.” So then I got home, back to Utah and on the first day of choir, after school I checked my email, and there was another email from Malcolm Gladwell’s people: And they were like, “Hey, Malcolm's really excited about this song. Can you send a recording?” and I was like, “What? Like, stop the world, like stop everything. Are you kidding me? Malcolm Gladwell knows my name.” Like what? And I have sent a PDF. I sent a PDF of the sheet music, you know, so I didn't have it recorded yet, but I sent the words and stuff. And so I was like “Okay, we have got to do this. I'll make a recording” and I wanted my students to be on the recording. But this was a Thursday after school, and the next Tuesday when we could have recorded in class, they had canceled school for the ACT. So it was. Yeah, I know, it was just so...

Beth Philemon: The irony!

Joan Steinmann: The irony. Right. Yeah, we have to cancel our rehearsals for that anyway. So I was like, all right, I guess I'll just sing all of the tracks. But that night after I got the email from Malcolm Gladwell, I was just walking around the house looking at things like, look, this is, I can't believe this is so exciting. I was kind of starstruck and I don't think my kids ate dinner or brushed their teeth, and I think we all kind of collapsed like 9:30 p.m. Mom was like on super excited cloud. 

Yeah, so the next day, I had forgotten to take my daughter to piano lessons. So the next day that piano teacher calls me and I was like, “Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot, but…” : And then I realized, she's a soprano, and it was like, “Wait a minute, I can sing the alto part, she can do the soprano part. We can do this, we can record this over the weekend and get it out to Malcolm Gladwell!”  So I called all my friends that are singers and we made a recording of the song and we sent it out to him the next week. One of my former students put the words to it on YouTube and we had a sound engineer come in and my uncle sang the bass part.

Anyway, I got a quartet together and we recorded it. And we sent it off to Malcolm Gladwell. This is right before COVID-19, so this March has been exciting for us all, and it really has been exciting for me in a lot of ways. Anyway, so I sent it out to Malcolm Gladwell and nervously waited and then he wrote me back and he said “Your song is genius and hilarious, let's talk later on.” And I said, “Okay, let's talk.”  I said, “I'll be ACDA next week. Call me the week after.” Anyway, now, the world has changed a lot since that point. But it was really fun that Malcolm Gladwell liked my song so much. I was really excited. So that's, you know, that's the only song I have written completed so far, but it is on YouTube. They can listen to it.

Beth Philemon: I will link it in the show notes so people can go and listen to it right now or at the very end, too. Absolutely, you're right, it has been a very big last couple months for you, but in listening to you talk and like, just hearing where you're at, like this kind of thing also just does not happen to people. While it might feel like it's just happening to you, Joan, like I can tell.

Joan Steinmann: It feels like that. It feels like it's just happening. Yes.

Beth Philemon: But it's the product of the person that you've been becoming, right? Like you mentioned you lived in Germany for five years, right, you’ve traveled and you're a hiker and you’re a singer and you work with these people and you become a parent and all these kinds of things. I feel like all of these little experiences have been really molding you into now you are having all of these cool connections. Would you agree?

Joan Steinmann: Oh, thank you. You know, yes, and  I just want to tell you, I turned 40 last year and I love being 40 like no one told me that being 40 is so great. Like I had a party. I invited 100 people like I am so excited to be 40. In my opinion, it really beats being 20 and 30.  I just know so much more. And I've learned so much more. And I have so much more self compassion and gratitude for my own journey. So yeah, I'm really grateful to be 40 and a little plug for everyone's always afraid to tell how old they are, but I'm 41 now and I love, I love my 40s. So great.

Beth Philemon: I believe it. So I'm 33 and I can just say even entering my 30s was amazing. And every year it just keeps getting better, because I'm leaning into that, I love that you said you've really grown into the self compassion and I know as women especially we struggle with that. Especially as musicians.

Joan Steinmann: We do, we do. And that's when we need to reach out to each other. That's why we need to have a network. That's why we need to, you know, be reflective of our own thoughts and monitor our self dialogue and our internal monologue. I mean, yeah.

Beth Philemon: Yeah, that's amazing. Well, thank you so much for being on here today for sharing just your entire journey with us. I’m really excited to keep in touch with you. Yeah, continue to be friends with you and hopefully see you next year at a national ACDA If we're both there. And thank you for writing these words and I'm actually going to ask, would you not--I know I opened the episode by reading them, but would you mind closing the episode and reading them so we hear this from your voice?

Joan Steinmann: Oh, I'm so happy to do that. Yes. And I once again I just, I really am touched that what I wrote resonated with so many people I really just think I said what we were all thinking and instead of working-- like everyone else just started like planning to be a virtual online teacher and I just instead of doing that, like, be more productive. I just wrote this, which felt productive and It is! But I was like everyone else has already got their lesson plans up and I'm like, finishing this blog, but that's okay. That's okay. Any

Beth Philemon: It’s testament, though, too. We all have our own journeys and we're all productive in our own ways, and following our own path and it looks different.

Joan Steinmann: It does, it does. We can't compare you right. Yes. Thank you, Beth. All right, I'm happy to read this. 

“Because Choir is Greater Than the Sum of its Parts” by Joan Riddle Steinmann. 

“Here's the deal, my friends, unless you are singing in a room with people, it isn't choir. Period. Choir is about connection. Choir is about 30 or 210 or six singers all shaping about so beautifully that the overtones extend up to heaven and make the angels weep.

“Choir is your college roommate. She won first place in your hometown MET audition and your Great Aunt Ruth. She turned 89 last month and wants everyone to know she still has her high note. They sing together every Sunday and the paint doesn't peel off the walls. Why? Choir, that's why. Choir is magical. Alone, I am a soprano, but in choir, I'm a tenor and an alto and a bass. When you sing in a choir, the sound of the whole choir comes out of your mouth. Boom. Magic. Choir isn't something you can do alone with a webcam on your computer. It just isn't. Period. 

“So, be kind to your choral friends. We are suffering. We feel this disconnect keenly. Yes, we know about Eric Whitacre and his choir. His virtual choir. We love Eric. He's our token rock star and makes our whole sport sexier. And in these days of deadly airborne pathogens, choir is as much a contact sport is football. 

“We will retreat to the sidelines. We will learn to use Zoom and Google Hangouts. We will record our voices and send them into the unknown. We retreat willingly because at the end of the day, we love Great Aunt Ruth and her questionable high notes. Her life is on the line and choir just isn't worth the risk. But these days won’t last forever, my friends. We will make it through this and when we sing together again it will be amazing.”

Beth Philemon: Thank you, Joan, for sharing that with us and being with us today.

Joan Steinmann: Thanks, Beth. Can I say one more thing?

Beth Philemon: Absolutely. 

Joan Steinmann: Anything that we do so often can become mundane right?  And I think sometimes we forget how magical choir is. A few years ago, my school had an assembly and we had a professional storyteller come in and she had us all on the edges of our seats and we were just amazed. We were just so fascinated by her story and her journey. 

And then she did a little workshop in my choir room afterwards, and I asked her if we could sing to her, and we did. By the end of it, she was in tears. And I thought, “I'm so glad my students saw this.” We touched her, and she had definitely touched us and we forget sometimes it's magic because we're all in the measures, like “Oh, that was a little flat there, you know, that rhythm check that and measure 16,” and we sometimes need to sit back. 

And that's why it's so wonderful to collaborate and have an occasional audience and people can remind us that what we do as choir directors is magic. Like, this is pure magic. Fairy Dust. Neverland. Choir is magic. So thank you so much for letting me be on the Choir Baton podcast, Beth. It's been wonderful to talk to you.

Beth Philemon: Absolutely. Thank you.

Joan Steinmann earned a Bachelor of Music degree from The University of Utah in Vocal Performance. As a student she performed in numerous operas and ensembles including the University of Utah Singers; under the direction of Dr. Brady Allred. Joan Steinmann has directed the Choir Program at Paradigm High School, a small charter school in the Salt Lake Valley since 2006. Under her direction the Paradigm Choir program has performed extensively through Utah, including as guests of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Salt Lake Vocal Artists, and the Cash Valley Children’s Choir. In 2018 the Paradigm Choirs toured the Washington D.C. area with Organist Andrew Unsworth, Principal Accompanist for the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. Joan Steinmann has served as Treasurer for ACDA Utah since 2015, and is an active member of UMEA. In the Summer she teaches Opera Workshops with the University of Utah Youth Program. From 2006 to 2014 Joan Steinmann also taught German at Paradigm High School. At age 7 little Joan attended her first Opera, The Marriage of Figaro, at Omaha Opera. She decided right then and there, that she wanted to be an opera singer. She told her Mother she was going to “quit piano and be a singer.” Fierce battles over piano lessons continued for the next decade. Luckily by 8th grade, Joan’s parents allowed her to switch from piano to voice. Singing became her main love, up until as a senior in college Joan was asked to direct a community choir. She fell head over heels in love with conducting, a romance that continues today and rivals her passion for singing. In the summer of 2019 Joan started writing an original musical “Solve for X” to get out of writing a 2,500 word essay. Joan has done extensive research in autism, ADHD, and other spectrum disorders. “Solve for X Musical” is the story of an autistic boy, Weston Zeitgeist, navigating his first year of high school with a treasure map as a comforting stimulant. It is her greatest wish that “Solve for X” be an authentic voice for the autistic community, and help everyone celebrate neurodiversity. Mrs. Steinmann's hobbies outside of music include; spending time with her husband, two daughters, and son, reading, cycling, hiking, and looking at maps of all sorts.

Choir Baton Host: Beth Philemon | Choir Baton Podcast Producer: Maggie Hemedinger

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