You Are There: TTBB Choral Octavo

Ed Lojeski's arrangement captures Mandel's melodic elegance while building genuine choral sophistication into the voicing. The piece gives your men's choir material that feels substantial without requiring a vast roster or extreme vocal ranges, and the jazz sensibility creates the kind of engaging, listenable performance that audiences genuinely want to hear again.

Sophisticated yet warm, with the kind of melodic line that settles into memory without effort. There's an intimate quality to the arrangement that invites the audience into something genuine, rather than performed at them.

Men's choirs seeking repertoire that engages both singers and listeners. The flexible voicing options make it accessible to choirs of varying sizes while maintaining artistic credibility.

• Study how the harmonic colors shift across the different voicings (TB/TTB/TBB/TTBB options). Your choice here affects both rehearsal feasibility and the emotional shape of the performance.
• Let the phrasing breathe. Jazz-inflected arrangements live and die by their relationship to silence and space; resist the impulse to keep every note equally weighted.
• Pay attention to the interplay between bass and baritone lines. Clean independence in the lower voices will let the melody sing without muddiness.

Pair this with other standards-based literature to build a program that showcases your choir's versatility. It also works as an effective closer for a set built around American songwriting or as a welcome contrast to heavier classical material.

• Singing jazz-influenced phrasing and swing feel in a choral context
• Harmonic independence and voice leading across multiple voicing options
• Blending and balancing when different voice parts carry equal melodic weight
• Interpreting contemporary choral arrangements that prioritize clarity and musical storytelling