After many years of dreaming, and a year of planning we are thrilled to announce that The Center for Sound Music Education is officially a registered Not for profit organization. Our board and creative directors are excited about this first step in the realization of many creative projects that will be of service to our community and communities abroad.
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There are many things I’ve learned on this trip. But to me the most important was the connections I made and the community that was built using music as a medium.
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Olivia Helewa
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The experience deepened my understanding of what community can be to its fullest potential, what role music can play in bringing people together, and the impact that community music can have on people. The experience has inspired me to continue the Ripple Effect by bringing joy and positivity into every day interactions.”
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Maxime Crawford-Holland
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As someone who wants to conduct choirs at some point in my life, I love how much this experience challenged what I think of as a traditional choir concert, and what can be done with choirs beyond the realm of just performing for a designated audience. It was such a great thing to see that choir, a thing that I already thought of as a community in itself could be used in a much bigger context to include community members, and our natural surroundings as well.
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Josee Landry
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Now that I know more about billet families and how easily community can be formed if you just reach out and ask for help, I will be on the lookout for opportunities for my future classroom, no matter how unconventional they may be. There are many different aspects of the human experience that can be linked to music and choral singing in order to enhance one’s life rather than just their knowledge and understanding of the repertoire. I will also try to include as many “outdoor” elements as my school board/job will allow me, such as outdoor rehearsals and field trips/concerts in outdoor areas, as we did for Ripple Effect.
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Jennifer Goordat
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From this experience, I will take away an open mind and an open heart to any and all opportunities! My overall experience has left me speechless; the beauty of the nature, the power of the music, and the kindness of the individuals have all made this experience a once in a lifetime opportunity! I really appreciated the inclusivity that came with every individual involved!
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Marija Ristic
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Something I appreciate from this experience is getting to meet new people, since I didn’t have any specific friends with me going into this trip, and being able to bond with them over a travelling experience, as well as a choral one. Overall, I thought the experience was incredibly rewarding; I saw first hand how music touches many people’s hearts and lives.
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Carole Lyn Palattao
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For me, one of the most valuable parts of the Community Through Choral Arts trip was working with the incredible creative team of Jennifer, Allison, and Essi. I feel so fortunate that they have let us into their network of strong, intelligent, kind, and incredibly talented women. This network expands to people like Babette, and others we met in Nelson as well. Their leadership was so valuable and in my opinion, is so important for young people to see. The combination of kindness, joy, and fearlessness is an incredible example to watch not only as people but as potential future educators of various kinds, and also made the process so enriching and enjoyable.
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Nikki Pasqualini
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The idea of combining choral singing with personal, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being is a concept that had been introduced to me briefly through Jen Moir’s classes, but had been further solidified during this experience. I believe that Ripple Effect had the biggest effect on me: being able to stay at the Yasodhara Ashram and perform in a natural environment was strenuous, but very rewarding. I didn’t believe that I could do something as intense as the set of performances required me, but I surprised myself, and it ended up being one of the most memorable concerts of my life.
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Jennifer Goordat
Photo by Bill Metcalfe
Jennifer Moir, Allison Girvan, and Essi Wuorela, like the wildflower’s workings, so remarkably fostered Community Through Choral Art’s growth.
Jennifer Moir, this course’s creator, found seeds for CTCA twice now. She noticed the wildflower seed in Nelson BC, and decided to seek its bloom there. And so, she became one with this seed’s root;
The root, in its wisdom,
held the flower stable
in beautiful and safe germination conditions.
Root sought empowering minerals,
for the bud to be grounded
in the wildness of itself and surroundings.
Jennifer Moir nourished the plant with necessary nutrients of joy, spirituality, and autonomy, for each petal of this flower to ultimately radiate its innate tint and fragrance, causing the flower’s whole to be of a unique wildness.
Then, from ground up, this seed stemmed with vision and tenacity toward a singular lifeline;
The stem, with root’s findings,
compassionately nurtured plant
spreading earth-blood across its body.
Stem held the supple wildflower
with all its fragility,
and inspired its inner diamondness.
Allison Girvan, the artistic director of “Fireworks” and “Ripple Effect”, with her stalk-like innovation and guidance, set us all up to blossom in full openness and oneness, with ourselves, each other, and Earth.
And in healthy sprout, this wilder-plant grew a powerhouse of a leaf…
The leaf shared its cultivated light with each petal.
It inspired a sense of love and integrity
for the flower’s respiration,
humility in its workings,
and generosity for its surrounding.
Leaf photosynthesized each breathing moment
into exquisite soul-food.
Guest singer Essi Wuorela, in her humble and bright spirit, and incredible musicianship, shared with us invaluable lessons about music and community. Exploring “Dobbin’s Flowery Veil” with Essi, and being in her presence throughout this journey, enriched our musical experience. With her, our singing; the wildflower breath, emitted more glee-oxygen than we had imagined.
The three independent and cohesive life-forces for this musical endeavour fortified us, petal by petal, to pop in our colour and light, and breathe as one entity in the pulse of our wild-life.
Their heartening support for one another also inspired us to hold each other, upon this wildflower structure, and in the world.
We made a magical, potent, and unforgettable aroma, in the atmosphere where we thrived. Each of us, in the cycle of a wildflower’s lifeline, are now renewed seeds, and will blow off into the wind knowing that one day we might become a leaf, a stalk, or a root, of an elegant wildflower.
It is the wish that this flower’s nature and nurture will become a lasting example of how we can also foster wildflowers that so strongly perfume positively influential magic-music in our communities.
We are thankful for these three strong women, and all they have shared with us throughout this experience.
Ripple Effect was an immersive choral journey, walking the community through the Ashram’s natural and structural atmospheres. Ripple Effect’s theme contemplates foreseeable and unforeseeable influence: of humans and their surroundings.
Both the rehearsal process and the concerts modeled the theme so deeply. Ripple Effect as a wholesome venture, was an illustration of how we can consciously and sensitively develop and contribute to community, through choral art: From singing world music, and living together in the Ashram’s culture, to learning from our artistic leaders, to diving wholeheartedly into the concert experience with the community.
The second half of our trip was spent preparing for the musical journey “Ripple Effect”, in the breathtaking Yasodhara Ashram. We lived there for a couple of days, and I believe it is safe to say that it now resides in many of us.
Making music “in the elements” of nature, as described by a course participant, and also inside the astonishing Temple of Light, was a learning experience of a lifetime. We sang between trees, on the shore, up mountain slopes, and at the entrance of the exquisite Temple, before entering it in song.
There was natural majesty engulfing us, and yet, the real wonder of the place is in its people. Continue reading
We experienced a mass choral event “Fireworks” with the Nelson community. There were around 500 singers and audience members sharing this musical journey.
We arrived at the venue early to set up for the event. It was interesting that we were the hosts and ushers to the community we were visiting ourselves! Then, the rehearsal began, and magic making happened. The support I felt in that room is unlike anything I’ve experienced before. What drew my attention was the constant palpable joy in the room. It was beautiful. When our choir was debriefing the event, another participant described a very same experience I had with relating to another singer, and I was assured that when we are in community, our connection and communication goes beyond words, to the soul level.
I cannot do justice to this experience by describing it myself, and so my colleagues shared some reflections of their experiences at Fireworks!
After two scenic flights, we landed in the heavenly little mountain bowl, Nelson, BC. In this bowl’s pit is a body of water, and up its curves is the town built between countless mountain trees.
We are fortunate to have been welcomed into the homes of wonderful host families, who are are an integral part of our choir community while in Nelson. Each group spent lovely quality time with their family. I found this to be very welcoming and energizing!
Hello and welcome to the Community through Choral Art [CTCA] course blog! I am Natalie, one of the participants in the course this year. I will be sharing chronicles of this learning journey, to celebrate the wonders this experience has to offer!
I am one of 23 participants from Western University, singing in this CTCA ensemble lead by Jennifer Moir. We are heading to Nelson BC tomorrow, to join with the community there for a “choir camp” experience of a lifetime, if I may quote Jennifer! We will be singing in a mass choral event “Fireworks”, and then preparing a musical journey, “Ripple Effect”, with the community, at the lovely Yasodhara Ashram.
We have been hard at work here in London, Ontario, and having a blast! Our rehearsals in preparation for this trip have been packed with unique moments. Meeting the CSME board members was an utter pleasure. We went on an imaginary trip to animal character realm with Babette Lightner, where we spontaneously found our inner tree-frogs. We have also related to each other in many ways, by sharing our ideas, singing in various settings like stairwells, and doing other insight-filled community-building choral exercises! Whether these ventures were awkward, enjoyable, comfortable, revealing, and everything in between, for each of us, I found that our community began singing itself into safety. I cannot wait to do much more of that in Nelson!
So this is us tree–stair frogs so far in our choir land, [being the “adaptive coordinating systems” that we are]. It is where we have been residing together for the past 5 days, and where we will continue to flourish as individuals and a community within the next two weeks.
We are excited to hop over to BC, and ready to ribbit with Corazón, directed by Allison Girvan, and the Nelson community!
Nelson, here we come!
Start your day, start your choir, your class, your meeting with this powerful ‘locating’ practice, the foundation for well-being. Adapt the words and gestures to your situation, your needs. Meet yourself and the world exactly as you are and it is, in this moment, with no need to change or improve. Simple wake up to the moment, the sensations, the big picture. You in and of the world. (K)Now anything is possible. The song arrives.
Welcome again to
The Center for Sound Music Education (CSME) and our blog. I am Babette Lightner one of the co-creative directors. I have been exploring human structure and function for 40 years. Here at CSME one of the underlying premises is that we are designed to function as a whole system. If that premise is true then how do we scaffold education from a Whole System perspective (Wholeness Perspective)? When you are part of Kalied Festival, Community through Choral Arts, other workshops and classes you are experiencing the Wholeness Perspective in action.
To help you recognize this perspective I want to shine a light on the language aspect of Wholeness. To see the practical use of this perspective we will compare the affect of instructions about standing up from a Wholeness perspective to a postural/separate body from mind perspective.
Do this first:
We would do the following the first few times together to help people understand their relationship to gravity and the way the system works as a Suspension system.:
(Note that in a gravitational universe the earth is coming up underneath you just as you are coming down to meet the earth. Since most of us have been inundated with images and ideas of how gravity pulls us down let’s put a little more emphasis on the equally true but less detectable fact that there is an upward force of the earth up thru you. The huge difference in size makes undetectable the upward thrust. But none the less, the earth rises up under you and your feet come up under your lower legs, your lower legs come up under your thighs and this carries on in an upward direction right on through and out of you.)
Compare the above instructions with the following instructions that come straight out of a November 2008 New York Times article on fitness and walking, (NYTIMES 11/13 /08 p. E11Learning How to Walk (Chewing gum not Included) by Sara Eckel).
What is the experiential difference of the two ways of coming to standing?
What premise or point of view underlies each? Can you start to detect the point of view embedded in instructions? The first example is the Language of Wholeness the second is the Language of Separate Parts. In the Language of Wholeness you are not being asked to adjust your body in a specific way. You are being asked to do tasks and think about your system in relationship to the ground and gravity in a certain way. T
he instructions let your complex system do the adjusting. In the Language of Separate Parts the instructions are asking your conscious mind to tell your body what to do and leave it there. This is a nice idea if we worked like that. But we don’t. You can get to a position for a few seconds but balance, movement and other demands of your system reorganize you in moments. Being upright is not something you are designed to specifically control. It requires billions of bits of information and responses to occur in milliseconds. Your job is to w
ant to be upright to do something.
The goal of alignment and postural ideas is to help you function better, to set you up to sing well, play and instrument well. The problem is in how those ideas are communicated. What you need to function, to do a task, is similar across the board. The system wants volume in the torso around the organs, flexibility, stability and mobility. What this looks like from the outside is parts of the body seem lined up. It isn’t a task you need to control. It happens quite naturally when we are alert and available to take action to: catch a ball, bounce a basketball, push a piano, paint a wall, wave to a friend. The tors
o retains its natural length, width and depth without any holding. Your limbs are free to move at the joints. It is essentially natural core strength. Playing an instrument and singing are also functions, tasks, not unlike bouncing a ball. If you stand and look out at your audience and you aren’t feeling like you can bounce a ball easily then you aren’t in an optimal organization to make music. While the intention of alignment ideas is good, the faulty idea is that you need to control alignment, position yourself. If you learn a few tools for understanding balance and clarifying where your joints are and other self-assessment tools you can set yourself up for optimal functioning. It is the heart of teaching and learning from WHOLENESS. We will look at these tools in other blogs and in on-line courses we will be offering.
When we take advantage of our Wholeness we allow for the possibility of optimal performance and greatest efficiency with least chance of injury. Parts aren’t fighting with parts. The authority for how to be in the world remains with you, your system.
We would love to continue this journey of learning with you. Why don’t you register to be a part of our community? You will be welcomed into our community forums where you can participate in conversation with others who are exploring the same concepts. You will also get access to resources, new podcasts, and notifications about upcoming workshops and webinars. Click the button below to register.
