"This book, among many other things, will attempt a drastic re-arrangement, of sorts, of the conductor’s perceptual apparatus. Listening is a complex act. Listening into sound, and even through sound, is a deeply personal, spiritual, and all-encompassing musical/life experience if we allow ourselves to fully enter into that experience. Sound can be our greatest teacher, life lesson sharer, truth teller, and human bonder unlike anything we can experience."
—James Jordan
 
In Sound as Teacher, James Jordan shares a new perceptual pedagogy for training conductors, which he discovered while teaching at the Choral Institute at Oxford, a program he co-directs with British composer James Whitbourn. This book focuses on imageries to guide conductors into a more multi-dimensional hearing process. The text outlines the framework of Jordan’s teaching at the Choral Institute at Oxford. Sound as Teacher focuses on various independent but related paradigms for hearing “into” sound. The principles presented in this book are useful to all conductors and teachers, regardless of the level of the ensemble. Among the principles discussed:
• Developing the ability to hear “into” sound for components beyond correct pitch and rhythm
• Hearing sound as a fluid medium
• Hearing into the spiritual content of sound
• Where one looks affects an ensemble’s sound
• How to connect with sound and people with the hands and body
• How to become aware of the neurological phenomenon of “feeling synesthesia”
• Visual imagery that immediately deepens a conductor’s ability to hear “into” sound
• Relationship between generosity and gesture