The Canaries in the Cage: Lessons in the role of leadership and pedagogy in conducting from the Widening Young Male Participation in Chorus Project

The recruitment of boys to choirs is hard. The retention of boys in choirs beyond the age of 11 is often harder than the initial recruitment. Case studies from the Widening Young Male Participation in Chorus project (Boys Keep Singing) have shown that in spite of a number of interventions with regard to pedagogy, the personal characteristics of the conductor or leader remain by far the most significant variable. Models such as Shulman's codification of knowledge bases have not been able to capture this elusive ingredient.