Meet Rebecca Chock

I had trained in choral education for my undergrad, but when my children were very young I chose to work as a pianist since I didn’t want to work full-time until they were older. Because of that, even though I was “around” music educators, I often felt a little passed over since I didn’t have my own school or community choir.

My first ACDA event was here in Hawaiʻi, even though I had heard about it for years while working as a collaborative pianist. When I moved here, I wanted others to see me as a director, but I also realized I needed help seeing myself as someone with the ability to direct. I can’t even remember how I first heard about the event, but I went to my first ACDA gathering at UH West Oʻahu and I was just wowed by how friendly everyone was and how much I learned. Even though at the time I was serving as a volunteer director at my church, I was treated like I belonged—and that experience gave me the confidence to finally start seeing myself as a director too.  

As an accompanist, I’ve so often relied on my sight-reading skills to get the music into my students’ ears—but I don’t like the result. Too often, my students only seem to care once a concert is on the horizon, when suddenly they want to look and sound good for their parents. Until then, it can be difficult to get them to fully engage. I deeply want them to discover the music on their own, not just for the performance. So this year, I’m trying to “rip off the bandaid” and stop giving them their pitches as we learn.

It’s meant stepping way back into the beginnings of literacy—the kind of work we do with children when teaching them that “a” stands for “apple.” My students aren’t exactly excited yet, but I keep them moving, and I’ve been scouring the internet and classes for ways to help them internalize concepts without being spoon-fed. Honestly, I really have no idea what I’m doing! It wasn’t the way I was taught, and it takes my greatest strength (sight-reading choral parts) and sets it aside completely.

I used to direct a men’s choir before I moved away from Utah that started organically at my church when a group of guys needed help putting together a difficult song they wanted to sing. That’s when I first learned to really look at my singers while conducting—which felt terrifying at the time. But through their confidence in me (and their ability to keep everything fun), I realized it could feel good and supportive. The music we sang felt like it was making a difference in people’s lives as we rehearsed and performed together.  We sang together for almost ten years!