A new podcast that explores the power of group singing. Stuart Stotts interviews song leaders, choir members, authors and a range of people who provide insight and advice on this ancient human activity. 

Rhiannon is a vocal artist with a vision of music as a vehicle for innovation, healing, transformation, and social change. A vibrant, gifted singer, performance artist, composer, and master teacher, Rhiannon has been bringing her unique and potent blend of jazz, world music, improvisation, and storytelling to audiences for over five decades.

From her stellar collaborations with the all-women jazz ensemble Alive! to a cappella ensemble SoVoSo’ to Bobby McFerrin  - Voicestra, and Gimme5, to her groundbreaking solo and ensemble performances, Rhiannon has paved a unique path as an independent artist. In recent years she has continued to refine her improvisation work by performing in other cutting edge ensembles.

Rhiannon’s long-awaited book about her life and teaching methods, Vocal River, The Skill and Spirit of Improvisation, was published in 2013. Read more about Vocal River. When she is not touring, she lives and works at Leo Nani Farms on Hawai’i Island, growing food and "cultivating the arts through farming." In 2016, Ha Lau Leo Nani, The Gathering Place at Leo Nani Farms, was built. This singing barn hosts Rhiannon’s workshops and teacher trainings, as well as gatherings with other selected teachers from Rhiannon’s extensive group of colleagues around the world.

For more info. Rhiannon Website

 

Reggie Harris has been singing and telling stories for over 50 years. He's a powerful educator about the history and the current state of civil rights, and, among other things, he is the musician for the Living Legacy Project, which offers pilgrimages to explore the history of civil rights in the South. In this episode Reggie explores how music feeds a culture that faces difficulty and discrimination. At the same time, he offers a lot of hope for the power of singing to get us through hard times. More information at Reggie's Website.

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Matt Watroba has spent most of his adult life sharing his knowledge and passion for folk music. As a performer, Matt has delivered thousands of shows in every kind of setting. As a song leader, he is committed to facilitating at least 100 community sings every year. Matt is inspiring as he talks about his passion and experience in community singing. www.MattWatroba.net

 

 

The New Hope Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama has a long tradition of gospel choir excellence. In this episode Pastor Clarke, Minister of Music Michael Mays, and Glennie Dotson, president of the mass choir, discuss the power of gospel music and the tradition of improvisation, praise, and uplifting spirit that are the hallmarks of the church. For more information, https://thehopebham.com

 

Ruth Pelham is a songwriter, activist, and community organizer. Ruth spent over thirty years bringing music to street corners, libraries, festivals, and other neighborhood spaces in her hometown of Albany. In the process, she created songs that are instantly singable and adaptable, and she learned daily about the power of singing to build relationships and community. 

Ruth's website.

Stacy Horn is an author and singer who talks in this podcast about how singing in a community choir provided a bridge to wholeness and community. It's been a long term commitment. Although she considers herself an average singer, she urges anyone with an interest to try singing as a remedy that can help bring sanity to a difficult world.

More information about Stacy here.

 

Sally began her career as a full-time touring musician in 1979. Her travels since have taken her to Europe, China, Hungary and Poland, England and Scotland and all across the United States. Her songs are accessible to singers of all types, and she infuses a deep respect and appreciation for community, tradition, and the power of music to nurture social change. Our conversation includes a rather detailed explanation of how to encourage successful round singing.

more information at https://sallyrogers.com/

Sandra Kerr has had had a long and distinguished career in Folk music. Trained by MacColl and Seeger in the controversial Critics Group, co- writer of the music for the much-loved cult TV series, Bagpuss, multi-instrumentalist, choir director , long time member of Sisters Unlimited, and much- respected lecturer and tutor on the Newcastle degree course in Folk and Traditional Music, Sandra has been awarded their highest accolade by EFDSS – the gold badge for ‘outstanding and unique contribution to the art of folk song.’ In each of those settings, bringing people together to sing in harmony has been a major feature of her work,  as an expression of her deeply held belief that group singing is a magical activity which binds people together, and helps us to understand each other and the world we live in. Sandra comes to us from northern England. 

https://www.sandrakerr.net/

Bonnie Lockhart and Nancy Schimmel have been singing at rallies and other political events for over sixty years. They discuss the challenges and joys of trying to rally people with music around a cause. Occupella is one iteration of their work, formed during the Occupy movement. More information at BonnieLockhart.com, NancySchimmel.com and the ever evolving Occupella songbook is available at occupella.org 

https://www.occupella.org/comprehensive.html

 

 

Jake Johnson is a cultural historian and author whose work focuses on the intersection of music, myth, and community in American life. His books—such as “Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America” and “Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America”—explore how musical theater and storytelling enable people to shape identity, belief, and belonging outside major cultural centers. Jake Johnson examines the everyday role of music as a form of world-building and myth-making, drawing insights from diverse communities. Our conversation explores the role of music in Mormon culture but moves beyond that into realms of identity, memory, and belong. For more information go to www.JakeJohnsonPhd.com. 

Rana is a unique women’s choir operating in Jaffa and comprised of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish women. The choir was founded in 2008 by Mika Danny, who serves as its musical director and conductor, and by Idan Toledano, who serves as the artistic director.

Rana has performed successfully throughout Israel and the world. The choir aims to express the female voice, which is not heard enough in their region, to cultivate dialogue, and create a cultural and human bridge. The choir’s repertoire includes folk songs and women’s songs in Hebrew, Arabic, and other cultures of the region.

Rana choir operates under the “Felicia Blumenthal Center for Music”, which focuses on discovering and providing opportunities and support for talented musicians and ensembles.

The bravery and vision of the choir is a central topic to our discussion.

 

 

https://ranachoir.com/en/home-page-english/#Our_story

 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3gTxEHwlGWZaN6o9NIgYdo

Catherine Roma has led community singing in a variety of locations and types, but she has a specific passion for working with incarcerated people. creating choruses and music that reflects a focus on dignity and social change. She discusses experiences and lessons from her more than 30 years of leading singing in prisons in Ohio.

Jane Sapp is a nationally admired cultural worker, musician, educator, folklorist, and activist whose approach to social transformation is rooted in the African American musical, cultural, spiritual and human rights traditions. Through her singing, documenting local culture and stories, song-writing workshops, and other expressive work with diverse communities and youth, Jane actively engages people in creative cultural processes that help them understand and see not only the challenges faced by their communities, but their assets as well. Jane has many recordings and a book Let’s Make a Better World: Stories and Songs of Jane Sapp. She has sung all over the country and farther, and her influence reaches around the world. Among other things she is currently working to document her stories as a way to reflect on her own work and on the cultural history of the last fifty years.

 

https://www.janesapp.org/about

Paul Tinkerhess is a long time community singer and songwriter from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Our conversation explores the ways we risk vulnerability and move forward as singers and as a community.

Elise Witt’s concerts of Global, Local & Homemade Songs™ and her Impromptu Glorious Chorus™ workshops create and connect singing communities around the world. Born in Switzerland, raised in NC, and living in Atlanta since 1977, Elise speaks 5 languages fluently and sings in at least a dozen more. From 2009-2024, Elise served as Director of Music Programs at the Global Village Project, (GVP) a special purpose middle school for teenage refugee girls in Atlanta, Georgia. Imagine a Circle: The Global Village Songbook: Using Singing and Songwriting to Teach English for Multi-lingual Learners is a book of 55 songs written by, with, and for the GVP students.  The Elise Witt Choral Series features choral arrangements of Elise’s compositions, and she recently published All Singing, a songbook with 58 original songs for solo and community singing. More info at https://elisewitt.com

Kate Munger has been passionate about community singing since she was 8 years old at Girl Scout Camp and has led community singing now for over 45 years. In 2000 she founded the first of now 200 Threshold Choirs around the world. Today at 74 she is retired from running the Threshold Choir and has returned to her passions of writing songs for medicinal use and singing at the bedsides of people who are dying, in coma and with folks who are incarcerated. Kate knows that this work is deep and serious and she offers a fresh, lively, sometimes irreverent, always relevant perspective. 

for more information https://thresholdchoir.org/kate-munger/

 

Threshold: the choir who sing to the dying - documentary https://www.theguardian.com/society/video/2025/dec/12/threshold-the-choir-who-sing-to-the-dying-documentary​

Mike Ross is the director of the Madison Youth Choirs. In this episode we discuss how group singing for children and young adults molds outlooks and understandings even as they engage in the joyful experience of being part of a choir.

https://www.madisonyouthchoirs.org/

 

Betsy Rose has been a singer and songwriter for over 50 years. Apart from her compelling and poetic writing, she has a passion for group singing, especially in political and cultural change contexts. Her songs have taken her around the world, but lately her main stage is at political street protests.

more at betsyrosemusic.com

 

 

My guests in this podcast are Denis Donelly, Cathy Baker and Dick Jackson. Denis, Cathy and Dick are codirectors of the community choir leadership training in Victoria British Columbia. The training began in 2004 and continues to this day with a yearly program of a two-week intensive in-person session and a full year of mentorship and ongoing networking opportunities through the Ubuntu Choirs Network. They each bring a rich history of singing and directing choirs and ta deep commitment to the empowerment and community that singing together creates.

 

https://www.communitychoirleadership.com/index.php

John McCutcheon has performed for audiences around the world for over 50 years. Beside his considerable musical talents, he's a committed song leader with a long history of encouraging connection and activism through group singing. We talk about his development of song leading as a skill and a passion. 

 

John's Website

Esther Morgan-Ellis shares the joys and the structures of this old style of singing together. The exuberance of the practice is echoed in Esther's own enthusiasm for the power of this tradition. 

Esther Morgan-Ellis is a historical musicologist who focuses on participatory musical traditions, especially community singing and old-time music-making. She has written extensively about the early twentieth-century American community singing movement. Her research also explores contemporary traditions such as Sacred Harp singing, hymn singing, and revivalist old-time music, examining how communities sustain and reshape these practices over time. As editor and lead author of the open-access textbook Resonances: Engaging Music in Its Cultural Context, she highlights musical traditions from around the world to show how music functions within diverse societies. In both her scholarship and her work as a performer and educator, she emphasizes the social bonds and shared histories that grow out of collective music-making.

 

 

And the global singings website: https://shapenotesingings.com/

 

 

Sam Lee is a British folk singer, song collector, and environmental activist who founded Singing with Nightingales, an immersive springtime series that brings audiences into the woods to experience live music in duet with nightingales.  A Mercury Prize–nominated artist and passionate nature conservationist, he uses this project to connect people more deeply with the natural world, blending traditional song, storytelling, and ecological awareness into a powerful shared experience.

 

 

 

What is the song of a Nightingale if not a celebration of life? An expression of the energy in the roots of Spring, coursing up through the earth, through the trunks of the blackthorn thickets, through the leaves, the blossoms, through the buzzing insects and the munching caterpillars, streaming at last through the syrinx of our little brown birds as they perch at the peak of the season. Sometimes it seems as if they sing the season into being, sometimes they are the season’s self.

 

It’s one of the reasons we come to the woods every spring – to learn how to sing praise like this, and to sing praise ourselves. The Nightingale has maybe forty years left in Britain. Myself and the SWN team are intent on making those years good ones.

 

https://www.singingwithnightingales.co.uk

Chau Yoder was born in Hanoi, Vietnam. Since 1989, she has offered workshops and classes in Mindful Living, in youth, corporate retreat, and community settings.

Chau was Trained by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and ordained as a Dharma Teacher in 2003. She’s dedicated to sharing practical methods of mindful living that cultivate awareness of body and mind. She’s also a retired engineer, who spent 25 years at Chevron.

Chau lives in Walnut Creek, California, with her husband Jim, and is a grateful mother of two daughters and a grandmother of four.

Singing that fills the living room or dining room or basement or kitchen is a tradition that's probably as old as group singing in itself. Phil, Beth, and Scott talk about their experience and tips for inviting people in to your home and to the songs themselves.

Phil Hoose information. 

Beth and Scott Bierko information

 

and a written piece by Phil and Faith Petric.

These days, many people can’t imagine singing out loud without a Karaoke machine.   It seems a shame, for nothing brings people together like making your own music in a group.   To help revive and energize the great art of living room singing, we two veterans of it would like to offer a few suggestions.  

 

Faith’s Part.  

 

Phil:   For about 35 years now I’ve been hosting group singing parties in my home.   Often I co-host them with a group of folks who come up to Maine from Boston to spend the weekend.   I don’t belong to an official Folk Club as Faith does, but I do try to schedule these events regularly.  I host one sing in the winter, one in the summer and usually one in the autumn.  We have a pretty big living room, enough to accommodate about 25 people.  Heaven for me is a place within a circle of those folks, when everyone’s voice is raised together in song.  

 

Here’s how I organize singing parties, with a few tips and precautions:

 

*About 2 months ahead of the date I send out an e-mail invitation to the usual suspects, inviting them to come and bring no more than one guest.   Usually the party is on a weekend night.   Our tradition is “Potluck at 5:30, singing at 7:00.”   We sing until we give out, which is earlier than it used to be.   I pass around a clipboard and ask everyone to update their contact numbers.  

 

*Sometimes, b ut not always, I propose—or solicit--a theme for the evening, pointing out that the theme can be broadly defined.  For example, once we did “lust,” but it turned out that every song anyone could think of turned out to be lusty in one way or another (e.g., “Amazing Grace” is really about lust for salvation and a of courser man must have lust for the lure of the mines, etc). 

 

*Children are welcome.   Often someone brings a movie or two for children who get tired of hearing their parents sing.  What do you do if a child grabs one of your harmonicas and wails in the wrong key during a lovely ballad?  Beam.  

 

*I ask everyone to bring five copies of the words and chords to their song.   If you ask for 25 copies, you end up wading through an ocean of paper on the floor the next morning.   Besides, if three or four people have to look on to same sheet, harmonies erupt.       

 

*Format:  We go around in a circle, with each person getting to name and, if they like, lead a song.  They also get to describe the accompaniment they want.  Many say, “let’s do this without instruments,” (or, in the parlance that has developed at our house, “holster your capellas”).  Sometimes we flip a coin to see whether we’re going clockwise or counter-clockwise around the room.  This can be a big deal, since it can take more than an hour to get around a big circle.

 

*Rise Up Singing (the Bible).   Alas, as our group ages, this glorious book becomes increasingly less relevant.   The font is now way too small for us.  A Rise Up Singing that our group could read would be thicker than the Tokyo phonebook.  Nonetheless, many folks still bring it, and still depend on it.  As their turn approaches, you can see them flipping through it, necks bowed, squinting at the tiny, tiny words.  

 

*Tuning.   We start the evening by tuning together, and stop to tune occasionally.   Staying in tune makes the evening so much better (ironically, after tuning for fifteen minutes, we traditionally lift off the party with The Beatles’ “One After 909,” which invariably knocks everything right back out of tune). 

 

Heather Mae is a genre‑defying artist‑activist whose music blends the storytelling intimacy of folk with the grit of alternative rock and the hooks of indie pop. She writes anthems about mental health, queer liberation, survivor empowerment, and social justice, inviting listeners into a space of radical honesty and shared vulnerability. Her double‑album project WHAT THEY HID FROM ME has helped to build a devoted community of “light‑seekers” and “good‑troublemakers” Her concerts feel less like passive performances and more like participatory gatherings that remind audiences they are worthy, not alone, and very much still here. And I would add Heather Mae has recently been spending time in Minneapolis and brings her unique perspective on what’s happening in the streets and in the shared voices of a resisting community.

the song Hold On in the podcast was written by Heidi Wilson. 

/Heather Mae's website

 

 

Today's episode features two different guests. Lauren McElroy is a song leader in Viroqua, Wisconsin. She frequently attends and offers songs as part of Wisconsing's gathers. Bev Grant is a long time musician, activist, and for many years a leader of the Brooklyn Women's Chorus.

https://bevgrant.com/

for Bev

and 

Motherofpurl.net

for Lauren

 

Heidi Wilson’s passion is to share songs in service to community and the wild world; songs that celebrate the seasons, bring groups together, offer thanks, muster courage, and make room for deep connection.   Heidi has been leading community singing groups in central Vermont and beyond for the last 19 years, and is touring The Well Tree, an original storytelling musical, with her trio Heartwood.

 

Other links for folks to look into:

@singingresistance

kairoscenter.org Songs in the Key of Resistance

 HeidiAnnWilson.com

 HeartwoodTrio.com 

Frankie Armstrong ( www.frankiearmstrong.uk) has been singing professionally since 1964. In 1975 she began her pioneering Voice Workshops  based on ethnic styles of singing - where singing is as natural as speaking. She has sung and run workshops all over Europe, N America and Australia

 

Frankie has made 12 solo albums and co-written three books on Voice, including Acting and Singing with Archetypes. She is President of NVN (Natural Voice Network. She offers workshops called Adventures in Voice and If you Can Talk You Can Sing as well as one called Rewilding the Voice. She’s been called :the godmother of the natural voice singing movement

 

Joanne Hammil is a composer, songwriter, choral director, music educator and performer.  Her passions for singing in harmony and creating community through music infuse her songwriting and teaching.  

 

She has directed many choruses throughout her career and has presented hundreds of workshops and concerts throughout the country.  

Our conversation revolves around attitudes and approaches that make group singing more powerful and inclusive.

 

Her own songs and choral pieces have been performed and recorded by many artists and have become standards in songbooks, harmony circles and choir repertoires.

For more information

https://www.joannehammil.com

 

Joanne’s version of Break Them On Down begins the episode. It is by Harmony Grisman. 

 

Nadine Cooper and Bernie Bracha started their first Tuneless Choir in 2016. Their sole aim was to have members walk out the door feeling uplifted. There were be no auditions, no music, no parts and no tuition.

 

Now there are over30 active tuneless choirs around the UK, with more in the planning stage.

 

https://www.tunelesschoir.com/story/