22 years ago, when I first faced the same situation you have described, I decided upon a straight-foward attendance requirement.   It gets the attention of singers -- especially since I make a big deal out of reading it & emphasizing it at either the first or second rehearsal of the semester.  In essence, there's a sentence which states that failure to attend a dress rehearsal or a performance listed on the syllabus will result in a failing grade for the semester.   There's an exception for grave illness of course.   Thhis policy has worked well.   As you would expect, I have a list of all performances for each semester included in each semester's syllabus. 

 

Terry

 

Emporia State University (KS)

tbarham(a)emporia.edu

I feel for you, Tim.  Been there, done that, got the T-shirt!

 

You can lead a choir to water, but you can't make them read your handouts.  And you have no coercive control over volunteer singers other than dropping them from your ensemble.  In an educational ensemble you can use grading, but that might also lose your singers.  Are you prepared to do that?

 

This fall my ensemble schedule was posted as of late August, and announced as completely as I could.  And still, a couple of weeks before our Fall Concert, one of my singers without whom the concert could not have taken place "discovered" that on the day of the concert she would be on her way to Texas for a conference in her field (engineering) where she was giving a paper.  And her plane tickets were non-refundable.  I had no choice but to panic and reschedule the concert for the day before, which brought it into conflict with a football game with the starting time not yet announced!  In the end I had to reschedule the concert TWICE!

 

I can certainly sympathize.  I'm involved in so many different things, with lots of advance planning and scheduling for all of them, and sometimes I compartmentalize them in my mind and miss conflicts as well.  Heck, sometimes I lose track of WEEK, not just days!

 

And just this week onr of my violinists realized that on the first night of our Madrigal Dinners in December, she has a conflict with another ensemble concert and hadn't realized it.  (She's a Music Technology major, and the other concert is one on which she's playing computer in a "Laptop Orchestra"!)

 

My policy in terms of genuine conflicts is that the students should never be put in the middle, and the grownups should work out the conflicts as well as possible.  But in the case of "human failure" there isn't much you can do except drop someone from your ensemble for being unreliable.  That's not something I would be comfortable doing, but you have to keep in mind the reactions of your OTHER ensemble members to the situation.  Nobody is irreplaceable.

 

In my university entertainment ensemble, performance attendance was always required, but if a student had a serious and unavoidable conflict I tried to work with them.  But in anticipation of illness, injury, or terminal flakiness I had backups (understudies) named for all solos and all dance routines, and there was always someone ready (or not!) and willing to step in when needed.  We don't tend to think in those terms, but it's a fact of life in professional companies and a normal thing to do.  You might want to think about doing the same, at least for the most necessary solos.

 

The good news is that there is always someone ready to step in and save the day, and it isn't always someone whom you would have anticipated doing it.  THOSE moments are really golden!  And the next time you audition solos there's nothing wrong with telling Singer #2, "You sound really beautiful on this, but I can't give it to you because you've been unreliable in the past."  It's a lesson that flakes need to learn.

 

All the best,

 

John