Dan Baker: Heart of America's Executive Producer

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the very first episode of Show choir Sessions.

I’m Garrett Breeze, a Show choir arranger and clinician based out of Nashville.

This podcast series is going to take you behind the scenes with professionals in the Show choir community.

We’ll be dropping episodes monthly, so make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple or Spotify, as well as on my YouTube channel at Breeze Tunes to make sure you don’t miss episodes when they come out.

To kick things off today, you’re going to hear my interview with Dan Baker, the executive producer of Heart of America, which many of you know as one of the premier competition hosts and travel providers within the world of Show choir.

Before joining Heart of America, Dan had a distinguished career as a choral director in Indiana.

So you’ll get to hear his perspective as somebody who’s been on both sides of these big productions.

My thanks to Dan for coming on the show, as well as Heart of America for their support in producing this podcast.

At Heart of America, we host choir competitions and invite your students to take the stage and shine in the spotlight.

The leader in professionally produced educational experiences, HOA consistently provides one of the most competitive and exciting lineups of show choir and concert choir programs in the US.

As an educator, you want every student to be valued and given every opportunity to succeed.

That is precisely what we commit to you.

Heart of America event energizes your group, enhances your students’ performance skills, and encourages growth in your program for years to come.

Make plans to join us at one of our incredible events.

Find us online at hoacchoir.com.

Dan, welcome to the show.

Before we start, why don’t you give us just an introduction to HOA as an organization?

Where did it come from?

Who is currently running it?

All that behind the scenes stuff.

Well, thanks for having me.

I really appreciate being on and being able to describe what we do.

And we get those questions a lot about what we do, who we are.

And even from the folks that come to our events, they sometimes aren’t aware of our backstory, which is pretty awesome.

We actually are a child of Show choir, essentially.

Our company is founded by a Show choir kid and was someone that worked for another national competition and decided he wanted to take the temperature and surveyed a bunch of directors.

And what we do started blossoming from the results of those surveys and what Chad Alexander was able to build nine years ago, starting in Kansas City.

And it’s called Heart of America because Kansas City’s nickname is the Heart of America.

And so it is something that we take pride in, but it also celebrates not just the diversity of America, but the diversity of show choir and the diversity of choral music.

And all of the different types and styles of shows from the 20-minute musical to the Jukebox musical to put your hand in the hat and draw out a song and what comes out of the hat is what they perform.

Those, I mean, are all what we see at HOAs.

And we try to celebrate all different sizes, all different voicings from treble to mixed to tenor bass to concert choir, middle school, and hopefully soon we’ll get some vocal jazz and a cappella groups.

So that’s something that is still new and growing for our company.

And it’s all about trying to make the experience affordable for students.

And also giving directors the power and the opportunity to make choices on, well, for instance, our Nashville site.

I mean, if you’re close by, you pop in, you do your contest, you pop out.

One of our middle schools last year was local to, I think they were a half hour away, local to Nashville.

So and we’re working on, we have limited regional packages that we can offer, but we love being able to host those groups in the hotel.

That’s really what we enjoy the most.

And from the time the kids get off the bus, to the time they get back on the bus to go home, we want them to know that we want them to have the experience of a lifetime, that they end up when their parents going, oh, this was the greatest experience of my high school career.

My high school performing career was performing at HOA back in name the year.

So that’s kind of what we’re about.

We’re about ready to celebrate our 10th year, and we’re pretty excited about what’s in store for us.

And the premise basically is you pick a really, really, really cool hotel and everything happens in the hotel, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

If it’s not in the hotel, it is within spitting distance.

And it is all right there, so that way you don’t have to go back to…

As a director myself, I think about all those homeroom experiences and having to have chaperones and myself supervise those students and all of the things that could happen.

And we try to take that away, and so we don’t have those kind of issues.

And everybody can get ready in their rooms and go down, and we…

I mean, if they want space to go meet as an ensemble, I mean, it’s a big hotel with huge lobbies and lots of different options.

So it is something that we try to pick hotels and locations that one, is geographically accessible, and two, that there are so many different ways to configure your own schedule and itinerary.

So we’re dealing with a lot of different groups from across the country, a lot of different styles, and we try to celebrate those by being something that really works for all of them.

And we just got done, or I should say, you just got done hosting the Nashville contest a couple of days ago, and that was in the Gaylord Hotel, and there’s, you know, restaurants and waterfalls, and a waterpark, and all kinds of stuff to do.

It was really cool.

Well, thanks, Garrett.

Like, you were there, like, you were…

I was judging.

I brought my kids, and they had a blast running around and doing the hotel thing, and my wife and I got zero sleep, and…

That’s a vacation.

So it was one of those moments, you know, we’re in this really nice hotel and I’m sleeping on an air mattress on the floor because my kids kicked me out of the bed.

Oh, wow.

So it’s something that, I mean, we love to celebrate family at HOA.

And, I mean, I think about my time as a director and also as a student, you always have those students that, I mean, don’t necessarily have the same kind of family life that you and I were blessed with.

And they have an adopted family in their ensemble.

And so what is an experience that they can have, that they can go in and walk in the Gaylord Opryland Resort and go into that Delta Atrium and just look up?

I mean, simply just look up.

And next year at Disneyland, we’re at the Disneyland Hotel and literally, you can walk 100 feet and it’s downtown Disney, and you walk another 100, well, it’s probably longer than 100, an extra 100 feet, but another 5-minute, 10-minute walk, and you go from downtown Disney to the entrance to both Disneyland and California Adventure.

So, and that is from the hotel where we perform.

So, it’s not really based on, well, it is based on experience.

We want the experience to come first, and we want to make sure that the kids have an experience that they can just take away and remember for the rest of their lives.

Okay, so next year, you’re going back to Nashville, to the Gaylord.

You’re going to be at Disneyland like you just described.

What other sites do you have, and what are those hotels like?

Okay, so we’ll be in, like for instance, next year, we’re going to be in Orlando again, and this weekend, we’re in Orlando.

Same hotel, but what’s really cool about it is, we’re at the Hilton, let me make sure I get this right, Hilton Lake Buena Vista, Disney Springs area.

And from where they perform in the Palm Ballroom, it is 10 feet from the sidewalk to the skyway, and it’s another, I keep going back to 100 feet, but it’s 100 feet, maybe a little bit more across the street on a skyway, and you’re in Disney Springs.

It’s accessibility to performance, but it’s also accessibility to food and points of interests.

Because I mean, as a director myself, I mean, you got to feed the kids, you got to feed those masses.

And so you got to make sure you pick a hotel that has a lot of food options.

And so you try to pick a hotel that has food options inside the resort, but also you pick a hotel that has options within proximity.

So Orlando is one of those.

The next week, I mean, we go three weeks in a row this year, but the next week is New York City, which is really pretty cool because it’s in the Sheraton Times Square, which you see all of those ads about Times Square.

And it is literally, you walk out the door of this hotel and you look up and it is all of those things.

It is one, I’ll go to 100 yards this time, no more 100 feet.

It is 100 yards from the Winter Garden Theater where Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster played Music Man and you just keep walking a few.

And it is Times Square as you know it, with the ball drop and all of that fun stuff.

So it’s, and it’s lights on 24 hours.

There’s just so many things to do and you talk about proximity of the things.

It is from warm up to performance to critique.

It is just a hop, skip and a jump in a hallway away from each other.

It’s very, very close even in performance at the hotel.

So lots of things to do in proximity in New York City.

Well, then I wanted to bring that up because I think for people who’ve never participated in an HOA event, they kind of think like, oh, we’re performing in the hotel.

That’s kind of weird, but these are cool hotels and cool places.

Yeah.

All right.

So you alluded to this a few times, but you were a choral director yourself.

You had a show car program.

You hosted your own contest at your school.

So for all of the directors listening that have to host their own shows, what are the differences between doing an event like HOA on site at a hotel, on location versus doing it in your high school?

I’ll start with the similarities.

Can I do that?

Sure.

It is very similar in a lot of ways.

I worked at a school where I was able to start our very first show choir contest at that school.

And it was something that we built from scratch.

And the community came together, and it was something that brought that tiny knit community all the way together and built it stronger.

And I really feel that even to this day, that really made that program start to take flight.

And so the similarities are, you still have the same headaches with staffing, you still have the same headaches with trying to entice groups to come to your contest.

And ultimately, you want to make an educational experience.

I want it to be ultimately something that the kids can go, well, I don’t know, that was so awesome, and secretly learn something.

And the directors go, that was an amazing educational opportunity for my kids.

And as a director, I tried to do that as well.

I mean, we were one of the ones that were the first in Indiana to do the whole clinic thing.

Now, everybody does it.

HOA started doing that as well, and pretty proud of what we’ve been able to do with HOA, with our staff and our judging panels, just in the short time that I’ve been a part of the organization.

And being a director is very different than working for HOA in certain aspects.

As a director, I didn’t know how to work with union teamsters.

And that’s something that’s been a very educational thing.

And working with the various types of personalities and businesses and economies that work within the entertainment industry.

And on a professional level, it’s a lot different than high school because you can’t get away with all of those things that you could as a high school director, hosting your own.

And if you run on time, fantastic.

If you don’t run on time as a high school director, oh, there’s always next year.

If you don’t run on time as a national competition host, you are subject to, how should I put this?

Your business might fail.

The whole business model might fall.

So it’s something that’s taken very lightly, I think, in the show choir world.

But I really take it very, very seriously.

And it’s something that I find that because I build our schedules based on what the directors submit to me, if we’re not running on schedule, I find it kind of disrespectful.

And it’s something that I feel like you got to do your due diligence as a director to make sure you’re rehearsed enough for a national competition.

And what you mean with that is it’s not a set time slot for every group.

You actually literally ask the groups, how much time do you need?

So it’s so funny, on Facebook, I can’t remember if I posted or somebody else posted that we were in on time in Nashville, and we did awards actually 25 minutes early.

Which I was a little apprehensive about because of the live stream, because grandma and grandpa watching at home, like are they going to know that the awards happened or they don’t care.

They just want to see Bobby or Sue perform on stage.

So we make sure that live stream is on time.

But running early, we don’t use a stopwatch, we don’t penalize, and we don’t, I mean, we basically put it on the directors, like you said.

It is, we send a form that they have to give me their set up time, they give me their tear down time, and they give me their show time.

And I have basically a block of time that I’ve already pulled, made in a schedule.

And the groups that go over that time, I adjust and I have enough time to do that.

And then we release the schedule.

And that’s part of why you don’t know who’s coming to an HOA until the very last second.

Because it takes so much time and I take it so seriously with that schedule.

So, it’s really the most stressful thing I do.

And it’s the thing I really am passionate about.

Because when I was first coming on, I ran it just like I did as a high school director.

And I got burned.

I had a few of our visiting directors that didn’t read anything I said or anything I wrote and didn’t care what the timing situation was and just kind of walked in and set up their stuff and tore down their stuff and didn’t pay any attention to the schedule.

And, I mean, frankly, I find that disrespectful.

And, I mean, that’s just my own opinion.

And if you don’t know, listening, Dan writes famously good emails in the middle of the night.

Well, I have a four-year-old and a six-year-old.

So, I mean, in the middle of the night is basically my workday because I work a lot.

I do a lot at home.

And I’m fortunate enough that we’re, HOA can be done in the off season, not from an office, but which is very, very cool.

And I’m so thankful for that because that’s, I mean, my wife is working on her PhD.

And so we ended up moving to do that.

And, but yes, you’re absolutely right.

I famously e-mail sometimes after my kids go to bed, that’s usually when the emails start to be composed.

And they’re good emails.

People should read them.

I’m just saying.

People should read them.

Well, they are kind of wordy.

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed in this podcast, I do talk a lot.

I’m chatty.

I’m chatty Cathy.

Like, I get it.

This is content.

It’s all about content.

So I just let it run.

Let it run.

Yeah.

So nobody hears it because I’ve just kind of rambled.

But…

All right.

So I think it’s worth highlighting for a minute that this is your job.

Like full time, you work for HOA year round.

It’s not just something that happens like two months out of the year or three months out of the year.

And I think that’s just worth highlighting.

Like there’s a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes to set up an event like this.

I mean, preaching to the choir for everyone who has to host their own.

But, you know, it is literally the choir.

But it is different when you have to work with, quote unquote, you know, professional organizations, you know, unions and businesses and hotels and Disney and all of that other stuff.

I mean, and you don’t have your army of parent volunteers that you have at a school, you know, which I feel like to me would be the biggest difference.

You can’t just be like, Jimmy, go get your mom.

You know what I mean?

Like if something happens at an HOA contest.

Well, and I am really the only full-time employee.

We have the owners.

And then we also have folks that come in for our events, like yourself, that come in and adjudicate.

We have our live stream crew.

We have the folks from Box 5 that come in and work the live stream.

We have our AV folks that run the sound and lights and build the stage.

And that’s all one company.

And then that we have the folks that put the pipe and drape up.

And we have the folks that mean it’s literally taking all of these different freelancers and different companies and making them HOA for a weekend.

And it’s really a lot of fun.

I mean, ultimately, it’s something that I get to have my cake and eat it too.

I get to go work and feel like I’m impacting choral music for a weekend, and really become a show choir kid again, watching these shows on stage and admiring the craftsmanship that these directors, choreographers, and arrangers can come up with, and just be amazed again by how these judges can even sort through it.

I mean, I have you as a judge, and you judge a lot.

I judge, like this year, I did it once because we could work it out with my wife’s schedule, but last year, I did it twice, and I was exhausted.

I mean, my brain was, and running an HOA is kind of the same thing, but I don’t have that accountability because you’re kind of like the weatherman.

You know, like nobody will like what you do.

Like even the winner is going to be like, what are you saying?

Like, why isn’t it?

I mean, you scored me an eight here.

Why isn’t it a nine?

Like, I mean, you really are, as a judge, you are a weatherman.

So nobody likes what you do.

It’s just like you got to raise it in ways that you can build it.

So I’ve never heard it described quite that way, but I think I’m going to start using it.

Well, and, you know, I worked in broadcast news for a while.

After my undergrad at Ball State, I worked in television and I produced.

But what do you put in the towards the end of your broadcast?

You put the weather towards the end of your broadcast.

Why?

Because nobody wants to watch the news.

Everybody’s going for weather and sports.

They just want to know what the scores are, and they want to know if they need a coat tomorrow.

Like that’s essentially what they want.

And so like these choirs are trying to put them in front of the best judges that they can to get the best feedback.

And it’s fun to pick these panels because I get to look at, oh, who do I want to work with?

And like last year, I got to work with the studio producer for Glee and the guy that basically taught the studio musicians for Glee.

And I get to work with all of these folks that I’ve been admiring from afar as a director, admiring from afar as a student, admiring from afar.

I still do it.

Listen to me.

I’m ridiculous.

Well, just last week, the panel was me, which I cheated because I live like 25 minutes from The Gaylord.

That’s not a cheat.

But we had Tennessee, we had Colorado, we had virginia, Iowa, Nebraska.

I think that’s everybody.

And then with the live crew team, we had Mississippi and Oklahoma, and I don’t know where else.

And Indiana.

So, I mean, it really does bring in a national group of people, which you wouldn’t normally get.

And to have a panel of that size too, I mean, it was a seven-person panel.

It was really awesome.

Well, and we try to do the big panels because we want a diversity in the opinions of the judges.

I mean, they all know what quality is, but they might like an apple, they might like oranges, they might like pears, they might like kiwi.

And so, I mean, to hear them talk, my job is when we start looking at revising the score sheet, building a score sheet that celebrates all of those different styles and that can be adjudicated based on the techniques of the students and not necessarily because the judge liked this or they liked that.

They liked, they saw that the execution of the students was stellar.

And it’s not giving weight to, it’s not, if a group spends a lot of money and they’re not very talented, you’re still not going to do very well at an HOA.

You’re just not.

Well, it’s apples and oranges, but it’s also, when you have a lot of groups that are evenly matched that come together, that larger panel really helps to make that experience, I think, worthwhile for everybody, because it becomes less about, oh, this one person is the reason blah, blah, blah happened, right?

And it’s more about, well, I look at it this way, different judges notice different things.

And so when you have a larger panel, you have more to point to of, look, these people saw this, these people saw this, these people saw this, and you learn more from it, and you get recognized more from it too, I think.

Well, and I think I do have a really strong opinion of that diversity.

And the more voices and the more diverse the voices in the room, the better the education the kids are going to get.

Like I sat in a critique this last weekend, and both critique judges did an amazing job, and they could not have been more different in their approach.

One was so active and like engaging the kids, and they were just so dynamic.

And the other one really had so much power in the room that they as they walked in, they were so like they commanded a presence about it.

And it was just, I’m going to talk to you and never really raise their voice and just gave a nice even keel.

And every time and that’s another thing I get to do, which really makes me happy is that I get to go watch all of these things happen.

And I get to see the different styles of teaching and the different styles of adjudication.

And I’m not, I mean, how many times do you see me up there during a show, Garrett?

Like I’m not up there while you’re judging.

I’m up there.

I think I saw you twice.

Well, and that was probably because I’m putting out a fire somewhere doing something else.

And I’m, I really, my job is to make sure that the experience goes, executes, and it’s not my job to make sure that you’re, you’re putting your seven or your eight or your nine or your ten into an app or on a score sheet.

That’s what I hired you to do or hired all these judges to do.

So I don’t, like, I have folks that check the scores to make sure the math makes sense and makes sure that everything is in order on that side.

But as far as like results, I really don’t have a hand in it, unless there is something that is never been encountered.

Like if we have something that we don’t have a rule for and that we need to address or something like that, which really rarely happens and hasn’t happened in the last two years that I know of.

So, it’s been very cool.

So, as a former director and as somebody who is involved at every level in these national events, what are the benefits that students get from traveling to compete?

What do they get from making a big trip out of it and going out of state and going into, and doing the whole thing as opposed to just staying local and competing at their regional high school, whatever happens to be that weekend?

What are the benefits of not only competing, but travel competing?

Well, our company only has three values, just three.

And the first one is to create safe and life-changing experiences.

That’s the very first one.

And I think that an HOA absolutely does that, and student travel absolutely does that.

I worked at a school that was very rural.

It was just skyscrapers were a very unique novelty to witness going into a big city.

And when I traveled with my students, it was very interesting because they were asking me where, like they were joking, but they go, Mr.

Baker, where’s the tractors?

Mr.

Baker, where’s the horse and buggy?

Like it’s just, it’s very interesting.

And I knew at that, when I’d hear things like that, I knew that that was automatically worth it.

Because I’ve expanded their worldview, and they may never move away from their hometown for the rest of their life.

But they might have gone to New York City and performed in Times Square once, and they’ll tell their kids and their grandkids about it.

And that’s what I’m about.

It’s a life-changing experience.

And I think it’s important that with our values, that students are safe and we create safe environments.

I, as a director, wanted to take this job at HOA because there’s some negative motivation to this.

Because I’ve been attending so many contests that, as a regional contest attendee, and you bring your kids to a high school, and there aren’t guides, and you get lost in one of the largest schools in the state you’re in.

Or I had to write an article about this for a travel magazine, but I was a director and I took my kids to New York City about 12 years ago.

The Finale Nationals debacle, where my kids were put in a situation which wasn’t safe.

And I mean, even we were the first group to go, and they’re still laying audio cable and hooking up the sound.

And Chad Alexander was there as a fan, and he’s feeding the judges, like he’s going to grab them.

I mean, this wasn’t an HOA at all.

It was a one contest, one fluke thing.

And, I mean, David Mullencamp brought Los Al, and they performed, my kids performed.

And it was so funny because Mario Lopez was supposed to be the MC, and he was contracted for a certain amount of time.

And he left after the second group in finals because he was, it was time for him to go.

And so he went.

And again, those those union guys, right?

Yeah, it is like, but the contest ran until like it was like one of those situations where you hear about lately, where the contest ran until 3 a.m.

And I sent my kids home, my home, I sent my kids to the hotel at one o’clock.

Because I was like, it is one o’clock in Times Square in New York City, and my kids are downtown.

And I this is not safe.

And so I had my chaperones take my kids back to the hotel.

And I had I had two of my seniors that were there for awards.

And we did it that way.

And so we were going to celebrate the, the finals performance at the hotel the next morning, because I wanted to keep everybody safe.

And so that’s something that is very, very important to me for my experiences as a director, not because I experienced so many positive things, but because I had some negative things happen to me as a director, too.

And that was a big, big learning point.

And something that I vowed that I didn’t want my high schools that I taught at and the contests that I hosted while I was a director to ever happen.

So yeah, that was a big, big deal for me.

And the second, sorry, I rambled on about one value.

There are three.

Second one is take care of one another.

And that kind of goes to what Heart of America is all about.

Like our folks have called it share the love.

And it is just as important to be competitive and caring of one another as it is to be competitive and compete.

So it’s like backstage at some of these HOAs, it’s very, very fun because you see all of those parents that have been working and building those backdrops backstage, joking around with all of those other parents from all across the country with having that shared experience.

And students backstage getting ready to go up for awards going, this is my senior year, this is it.

And I’m hanging out with a bunch of kids from California and Mississippi, and Nevada, and Arizona, and Indiana, and Ohio, and Illinois.

And I mean, it truly is a Heart of America.

And so, and then the last one is a simple one.

It’s just do the right thing.

Like, sounds really simple, but you know, when, I mean, there are a lot of opportunities to not do the right thing.

And it’s important to me that we take care of our groups, but, I mean, ultimately, we want to take care and do right by them and everybody that’s participating, including the staff.

So one last question for you before I let you go.

Now that you are behind the scenes, what have you learned about Show choir that you didn’t know before?

Oh, wow, that’s great.

That’s a good question.

I was highly competitive as a director, and what I guess I’ve realized coming back from it is that all of the energy and love I had as a director is what everybody’s doing, and what directors are doing all over the country.

And that’s a special thing.

It is such a special thing to love through service, love your kids through service, love your students through service.

And directors are doing that every day in schools that are less than ideal.

And there’s no situation that’s perfect, and there’s no situation that is going to be ideal.

But what I learned as the director of HOA is that I’m trying to take care of all of those teachers, and trying to give them something to not worry about by coming to our events.

So yeah, I over plan.

Yeah, my emails are really wordy.

But I have a lot of passion to make sure that I’ve covered the details so directors don’t have to.

And the only times I feel like I fail is when a director has to do something that I could have.

And luckily, in the last few years, I haven’t had many of those and been very, very fortunate to work with people that make that possible.

I mean, our HOA team, like when I talk about the team and it is big, but and it is a lot of people, but I love them.

Like they are family.

And so, like, I mean, I hope you understand that, Garrett.

Like, I mean, you’re part of that family.

Like, as an adjudicator, I tell judges and I tell staff members, oh, you’re in the rotation, which is just shorthand for you’re in the fam.

And I mean, you’re in my family.

It’s how I would treat my own family.

And my grandparents were farmers.

My uncles are all farmers.

My dad’s an engineer.

And I’m so proud of what my parents were able to do.

And my mom worked at a school for 35, almost 40 years.

And she has the servant’s heart.

My dad would do anything for my sister and myself.

He has a servant’s heart.

And so like, it’s all I can do.

And I will push myself until people tell me to slow down, take a nap, go get some dinner or something at these contests, because I am so passionate to make sure things are right for these directors that love on their kids like they’re their own kids.

And that’s why I do this.

It’s really simple.

Well, what’s in store in the future for HOA?

What do we have coming up next year?

25, 26, 27?

Lay it on us.

Well, so let me a little philosophy first.

So HOA is all about trying to make sure that we go to different places.

I mean, we have some tent poles.

We have, I mean, you know, we’ll always be in Nashville, always be in Orlando.

And hopefully we may have found a home in LA.

Who knows?

I mean, having never gone there, there’s such a rich show choir tradition now in California, that I would love to see some of those groups.

And also groups in Arizona and Nevada and all of those Northwest states.

I just think what’s in store for us is to make the connections nationally.

And I still dream about Heart of Mexico and Heart of Canada.

And like, you know, just like I keep thinking of that heart with all the like, I see the flags in your room and I keep thinking, oh, wouldn’t that be cool with like the Union Jack on there?

Put the little heart around it, right?

Yeah.

Well, HOA Heart.

You know, I think it’s really important that we get our word out, because we’re such a unique thing and it’s such a life-changing experience for people, that everybody should be doing choral music in whatever fashion you can do it.

Whether it’s concert choir, vocal jazz or rock-a-pella, show choir or any other idiom that you can think of.

That’s where I want HOA to be.

I think it’s important that that’s our vision.

In 25, we’re doing our events in LA, Orlando and Nashville.

In 26, we’re looking at similar, but we’re hoping to add.

But that’s all dependent on how many groups we can get.

I mean, the more groups there are at our events, the more opportunities there are for us to add on.

HOA really is about diversity.

And so diversity of location is in the future, and diversity in our events is always in our future, and diversity in our panels and live stream teams.

And something that I really want everybody to know is that, like, I really think that we change lives when you change the student and you change…

I used to tell my kids and they’d laugh at me.

I’d always be like, yeah, you’re the ones that are going to save the world.

You’re the ones.

And like, it’s just…

I say it just as matter of factly as that.

Like, and these directors, I’m just so amazed at what they do because they change so many lives.

They don’t even know it.

Some of them kind of know it, but they don’t know it.

They think they impact somebody, but like, there’s going to be the kid that sits in the fourth row of their freshman choir that doesn’t say anything all year and then, like, can’t take choir the next year, and then for the rest of their lives are going to be like, you know, Mr.

Breeze was just the best teacher I’ve ever had.

And they’re going to talk about that impact, and that’s changing a life.

It really is.

And our HOA is just an extension of that, is allowing the director to allow kids’ lives to be changed in a positive way.

So that’s what I’m about.

Well, thank you.

This was really fun.

I hope people enjoy getting to know you, getting to know HOA, and I hope people sign up for more of them because I think it’s important for show choir as a art form, as a community, however you want to think of it.

But I think it’s important for us to have these regional events and these larger events that bring in more people from different locations and kind of just tie things together and spread the word, like you said, in ways that are not possible in the average season.

Well, thanks for having me, Garrett.

I really want to create that student experience that they’re going to have for the rest of their lives.

Show choir Sessions is written and produced by me, Garrett Breeze.

Visit breezetunes.com to get episode transcripts from the show, other resources for show choir directors, and browse our extensive catalog of more than 1,000 custom show choir arrangements available for your choir to perform.

You can get in touch with me by emailing garret at breezetunes.com or using the contact form on the website.

Post-production audio is done by Jacob Mlaski, and our show music is by Garrett Breeze and Kaz Brindis.