Camerata: The Ultimate Guide to Organizing and Directing Small Choruses | Tips for Church Choirs, School Ensembles & Community Singing Groups

The first two chapters are filled with powerful, hard hitting advice that will go a long way towards the sucess of any group. I have been in a few acapella groups, and all of the best practices I had seen before in previous directors (but couldn't enumerate myself) were all laid out out right there in the beginning. The author doesn't go into too much detail, but he shares some anecdotes alongside many of his recommendations that will certainty help me get started as an effective chorus leader.That said, I think this book was somewhat overpriced (I paid over $30) for a book whose value mostly came from telling me stuff I already know. If you have sung in an effective and sucessful acapella ensemble, you may recognize much of the advice as well.Also, this contains a lot of filler. While it doesn't detract from the beginning sections, it was unexpected to digitally flip through over a hundred pages of concert listings, theme descriptors, actual choral sheet music, and promunciation guides. It would have been more helpful to talk about an ideal director's thought process in constructing a concert theme rather than a data dump of all of them.Nevertheless, as an aspiring college choir director, this book has been very helpful in that is spells out the things that I think I know, but explains the efforts required to act on such details.I would positively reccomend this book to anyone wanting to manage a group of singers of their own who lacks experienced mentors or written guidance from previous leaders. If you have such written or personal guidance, most advice will be familiar, but the value of such additional pointers comes down to your own ability and energy to act on them.