profile different areas: singing, conducting, teaching, playing the piano and organ, arranging, and adjudicating. "Just look for where the doors open." as You can see and hear George with the Vancouver Chamber at two upcoming concerts. Roberts Choir On March 14 at Ryerson United Church the choir will sing highlights from its recent American tour including of the first Vancouver performances Stephen Chatman's Due West and Bach's Jon Washburn's American Folksongs. Friday, April 10 they perform Easter Oratorio and The Vancouver Chamber Choir at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. George Roberts: back row, third from right John Wasburn: far right front row. performance music. Often the music chosen isn't available in a choral arrangement, so Roberts himself composes the choral version. "The goals that we have in a choir setting are blending and singing in tune; singing so that the voices don't s t Handel's Orpheum through Helping others get to where they want to be is one of Roberts' unmistakable talents. He's overcome the challenge of finding the right combination of music employment to add up to a full-time career. H i s way has been to gain experience in a lot of Brockes Passion at the TicketMaster Ben D'Andrea living in North Theatre. Tickets are available or at the door. is a freelance Vancouver. writer ' ^ c o u t particularly; and being able to sing high and low easily, and loud and soft easily." he says. These sound like difficult technical goals for a choir to achieve, but Roberts' approach is surprisingly straightforward. If you can speak, you can sing, he tells his singers. "I spend a lot o f my time ... just showing people how easy it is and how natural it is, that it's not a special acquired thing, that your body already knows how to sing. It's just a matter of getting out of the way and letting your body do what it already knows how to do." He compares singing to throwing or kicking a ball, something you do naturally when you're four or five years old. Roberts helps his singers recapture that naturalness of childhood singing. "It's a lot of undoing and unlearning for people." Roberts also takes an uncomplicated approach to teaching individual students. His first objective is to find out what his students want. "Where do you want to sing? H o w do you want to sing?" he asks them. " A n d then I help them get there."