Meet Trailblazer Erin Hackel

Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Hackel.

Erin, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’m an Associate Professor in the Music Department at the University of Colorado, Denver. When I first started working there, I was asked to start a brand new vocal ensemble. I had no experience doing choral work, especially contemporary choral work (I’m classically trained), but I decided to go for it. I made a ton of mistakes and had lots of years not knowing what direction to take my singers. After a lot of trial and error, I ended up with a top-level mixed-gender ensemble called MIX. This group went on to win just about every contemporary a cappella award possible and started gaining national notice. They ended up opening for the Swingle Singers in London and winning an award for innovation at a festival in Denmark. While that group ran it’s course and the members graduated, I saw that there was a real need to lift up the young, talented female singers at the University. Lark began in 2014 and has overachieved its younger sibling, MIX, in the last five years. Lark’s many awards include SoJam champions, BOSS champions, Vocal Asia Seoul champions, VoiceJam champions, and several awards for choreography, outstanding arranging and performance, and recording. Working with these singers is truly a joyful collaboration of minds and talent. It is honestly a privilege to be able to work with them and help them find an audience and a stage to show what incredible things young women can do.

Has it been a smooth road?
No. Is it ever?? Sexism is real, misogyny exists.

Advice for young women: Keep going. Things will be thrown in your way. You will be told that something is impossible. Take the time to look and question-is it actually impossible? To quote Tina Fey (and Sesame Street!) “Go Over! Under! Through!” You will encounter people who expect you to accept “no.” If it is important to you, find a way to go over, under or through. Is it hard? YES. Will you fail? SOMETIMES. Keep going.

We’d love to hear more about Lark.
My work in the macro is achieving excellent contemporary a cappella performance pieces. To get to that place requires a few things. One of my specialties is in the pedagogy of contemporary singing styles, or, in layman’s terms, I teach people to belt high and belt healthily. When I first started teaching, almost all vocal instruction was in classical techniques. I myself was a strictly classical singer, with numerous operatic, oratorio, and art song performances in my repertoire. The music department I was ultimately hired to work in, however, is a contemporary department, and I found myself at a complete loss as to how to properly instruct my singers in pop, rock, jazz, etc. I spent around a decade researching, experimenting with my own voice and attending the workshops of the few people who were teaching contemporary singing in a scientific manner around the world, finally coming out the other end with my own method for teaching singers to sing in any style they want to sing.

Lark is a collaborative a cappella ensemble. This means that we do everything off book-little to no written arrangements and that everyone is an active part of every piece of our performance, from choice of repertoire to movement, to costuming, makeup, and more. I act as the hub of the wheel, laying down a framework for an arrangement, then soliciting, collecting, and filtering ideas from the singers. We will spend quite a bit of time getting an arrangement on its feet, collaborating with our sound engineer for special effects, nuance and overall sound experience. We then move onto the choreography stage, where we find a movement concept that will suit the piece. This is especially important for competitions, where the performance is judged as a whole. Once it is together, the rehearsal process changes to extreme honing and perfecting. Since nothing is on paper, the arrangement is completely mutable; we can change anything that we don’t feel is working. The longer we get for this phase, the more the arrangement will change from anything like what we started with. It’s almost like a flower blooming; each stage can be lovely, but it’s the end bloom we are working for.

We often end up with extremely unique products, that are literally made for a particular group of singers and their particular talents. For example, last year’s incarnation of Lark did an arrangement that melded a segment of a Vivaldi motet with a Billie Eilish song. We called it “Vivaldi in a Crown.” There’s no way you get to that product without seven unique minds and their unique experiences working together. (It’s a great tune, by the way!)

Do you recommend any apps, books or podcasts that have been helpful to you?
Well, I’m an NPR nut, so if I’m listening to a podcast it’s likely to be This American Life. You can also catch me on Friday mornings commuting to work and weeping over their Friday StoryCorps series. Seriously! Major tear-jerker. Because I have to come up with a lot of movement/choreography concepts for non-dancers, I am frequently in a youtube spiral looking at interesting and unique dance videos. It’s surprising what you can pull from unexpected sources that can be so exciting and inspiring.

Contact Info:

• Website: ucdlark.com
• Email: erin.hackel@ucdenver.edu
• Instagram: @ucdlark
• Facebook: @ucdlark

Image Credit:
Liv Berger (headshot only)

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