The Choral Commons (Emilie Amrein & André de Quadros)

JEREMY HANEMAN is a conductor and musical director who specialises in choral and operatic repertoire. He is the Co-Director of Together Productions, a company that produces ground-breaking work using music and the arts to inspire social change.

SINGING OUR LIVES is a ground-breaking project bringing refugee, migrant and local communities together with professional musicians to compose new music and perform together. 

Conceived and developed by Together Productions, the project has attracted partners including the Royal Opera House, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the International Organization for Migration, amongst many others. The project celebrates diversity and solidarity through choral music, and has pioneered a unique collaborative dialogue and composition process that results in powerful new works reflecting the culture and experiences of hundreds of people from diverse backgrounds across the UK.

KRISTINA GILLIS is a graduate of the threshold program at Lesley University and a member of Cambridge Common Voices. ANDY CLARK teaches at Harvard University and is director of Cambridge Common Voices, a choral organization that strives to create an inclusive musical space and practice and explore innovative approaches to music making.

CAMBRIDGE COMMON VOICES is a community chorus established in partnership between Harvard College and the threshold program at Lesley University. A transition program for young adults with diverse learning challenges. We spoke with the group's director Andy Clark and founding member Kristina Gillis, in late May.

HALIM A. FLOWERS was arrested at the age of sixteen and sentenced as an adult to two life sentences in the District of Columbia. His experiences as a child in the adult prison system were filmed in the Emmy award-winning documentary “Thug Life In DC.” In 2005, he started his own publishing company, SATO Communications, through which he has published eleven books. On March 21, 2019, Halim was released from prison after serving twenty-two years. 

Halim Flowers is an artist, poet, and performer. His fashion line “Ideallionaires” is a social justice brand that incorporates his poetry into apparel to amplify social impact. He serves as a consultant for Vera Institute, where he uses his experiences as a juvenile lifer to educate attorneys, judges, and prosecutors on how to effectively implement restorative justice principles into our juvenile justice system. You can learn more about Halim on his website www.halimaflowers.com.

In early 2020, VOICES 21C, a Boston-based artists’ collective developed a program on peace and justice for performance at the Eastern Division conference of the American Choral Directors Association. For the third act on race and mass incarceration, the ensemble invited Halim to collaborate in poetry, narrative, and song. Discover VOICES21C at www.voices21c.org.

The Empowering Song approach was originally developed in Massachusetts prisons by André de Quadros, Emily Howe, and Jamie Hillman to create an artistic interdisciplinarity that, while rooted in music, stretches into different arts areas. This approach which traverses improvisation and storytelling through poetry, songwriting, visual arts, movement, and theatre, has been used in multiple choral settings and missions, including community choruses, reconciliation and peace-building projects, mental health programs, and displacement contexts.

Emily Howe is an ethnomusicologist, music educator, and conductor based in Boston. In 2012, Emily started co-teaching in Boston University's Prison Education Program, where she has worked to develop interdisciplinary pedagogical strategies that empower incarcerated people to explore their creative potential. She currently teaches at Curry College in Boston. Bobby Iacoviello is a formerly incarcerated person who participated in the Empowering Song course through the Boston University Prison Education Program. 

Alysia Lee is the Founder and Artistic Director of Sister Cities Girlchoir, the El Sistema-inspired, girl empowerment, choral academy in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey. She is the education program supervisor for Fine Arts education for the Maryland State Department of Education where she shares her vision of statewide equity and excellence across five arts disciplines: music, dance, visual arts, theatre, and media arts. 

In today’s episode, Emilie and André speak with Alysia Lee about her work with the Sister Cities Girlchoir and about creating opportunities for girls to collectively narrate their own past and present experiences as well as their connections to historical, social, political, and economic futures. 

Black activist and poet, Sonya Renee Taylor, writes, “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was never normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, My friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

This week, instead of a long form interview, we’re sharing a portion of the presentation Emilie and André gave to Chorus America this past June, three weeks after the brutal murder of George Floyd and the countless uprisings for Black Lives around the country. The conversation, titled Reimagining the Choir, explored some uncomfortable topics before considering a pathway forward based on mutuality, community, and reciprocal relationships. 

Indigenous people have been subjected to colonization for centuries. However, by contrast with several other settler nations, the genocide of indigenous people in the United States has rarely entered the mainstream narrative. Recently, some in our profession are interrogating the colonial nature of the Euro paradigm of choral music while searching for more expressive and authentic expressions of indigenous culture.

Conductor, educator, and scholar, Dr. Jace Kaholokula Saplan is known for his work in celebrating the intersection between Hawaiian music and choral performance. He is director of choral activities and assistant professor of music at the University of Hawai’i, and the founder and artistic director of Nā Wai Chamber Choir.  

Nā Wai Chamber Choir is a treble ensemble dedicated to the preservation, propagation, and innovation of Hawaiian choral music. They perform a diverse array of repertoire from across the world, rooting process and perspectives through a Hawaiian lens. Since 2009, Nā Wai has commissioned and mentored emerging Native Hawaiian composers and choral musicians, toured throughout rural Hawaiian communities, and led workshops on the performance of Hawaiian choral music throughout the country.

Tesfa Wondemagegnehu is a conductor, educator, and activist. He teaches at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he conducts two choirs and teaches courses on the intersection of Music & Social Justice movements. Through the love and dedication of music teachers with whom he has studied, and an abundance of grit and determination, Tesfa has risen to be one of the most sought-after conductors and educators in the country and is on the cutting edge of music-related social justice movements throughout the United States. He is the co-founder of the Justice Choir movement, a grassroots movement that aspires to harness the empathetic, collaborative, and collective power of communal singing for social and environmental change.

The songs you heard  in the middle of the episode were recorded at a Black Lives Matter protest that took place in Washington, DC, on June 8th. The recording was generously provided by Micah Hendler who leads the DC chapter of the Justice Choir. The sound sculpture that you heard at the beginning and end of this interview was devised by creative producer Chris Clark and featured narration by members of VOICES21C.

In her book, Borderlands/La Frontera, the great Chicana poet, author, and activist, Gloria Anzaldúa writes, “Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line…The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.” Recently, the field of choral music has begun to extend the work of social justice to borders and the harm they cause. As we struggle for ways to understand the lives of refugees, immigrants, and the displaced through music, we find ourselves seeking to engage deeply with the prohibited and the forbidden. How can we get close? How can we listen deeply? How can we compassionately reflect these stories in our music-making?

Ahmed Anzaldúa is a Mexican choral conductor, classical pianist, and music educator of Egyptian descent. He is the director and founder of Border CrosSing, an organization dedicated to integrating historically-segregated audiences, repertoires, and musicians through the performance of choral music. 

Founded in 2017, Border CrosSing envisions fundamental change in classical music culture, so that every concert, every audience, and the artists on stage truly reflect the cultural reality of the community. Their work provides opportunities for people from different backgrounds to understand each other in new ways through their multi-lingual Puentes concert series, educational programs in schools, and collaborations with Minnesota-based arts and cultural organizations.

Palestinians and Israelis are deeply divided by borders, religion, and political orientation. This is partly caused by the asymmetrical power dynamic resulting from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. This hotly contested landscape presents enormous challenges for those who seek to build choral bridges, and to create communities between groups who do not typically interact. While there have been numerous choral and musical peacebuilding efforts, fundamental questions remain about whether and how to create choral music that is focused on justice and peace.

Micah Hendler is a musical changemaker and organizer, working to harness the power of youth voices to make a difference in their communities. Micah founded the Israeli-Palestinian Jerusalem Youth Chorus in 2012 as a synthesis of years of work in musical community-building and conflict transformation. The Jerusalem Youth Chorus is a choral and dialogue program for Palestinian and Israeli youth in Jerusalem, whose mission is to provide a space for these young people from East and West Jerusalem to grow together in song and dialogue. Through the co-creation of music and the sharing of stories, they empower youth in Jerusalem with the responsibility to speak and sing their truths, as they become leaders in their communities and inspire singers and listeners around the world to work for peace, justice, inclusion, and equality.

In 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many others called for a “revolution of values” in America. They sought to build a broad, fusion movement that could unite poor and impacted communities across the country. Today, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has picked up this unfinished work. From Alaska to Arkansas, the Bronx to the border, people are coming together to confront the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy.   

Yara Allen and Chiron Hribar are Co-Directors of Theomusicology and Movement Arts for the Poor People’s Campaign and founders of the Moral Voices Choir. Yara Allen is Director of Cultural Arts & Theomusicologist for Repairers of the Breach, a non profit organization that works nationally to advance a moral agenda that uplifts the moral values of love, justice, and mercy for the poor, women, LGBTQ people, children, workers, immigrants, communities of color, and the sick. Chiron Hribar serves as the Director of Cultural Strategies at the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, an organization that works to raise up generations of religious and community leaders committed to the unity and organization of the poor as the leading social force in the building of a broad transformative movement to end poverty.

As choral musicians increasingly interrogate elitism and exclusion in choral practice, we search for ways to bring protest into practice and to organize and collaborate for racial, economic, and social justice.

Emilie Amrein and André de Quadros interview cultural strategists, organizers, and activists in an edited podcast format. New episodes are released biweekly on Sundays.

Emilie and André speak with Arlene Goldbard about the role of culture in forging equitable futures in our communities.

Arlene Goldbard is a writer, speaker, consultant and cultural activist whose focus is the intersection of culture, politics, and spirituality. Her two books on art’s public purpose—The Wave and The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists & The Future were published in spring 2013. Prior books include New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development, Community, Culture and Globalization, an anthology published by the Rockefeller Foundation, Crossroads: Reflections on the Politics of Culture, and Clarity, a novel.

Arlene has addressed academic and community audiences in the U.S. and Europe and provided advice to hundreds of community-based organizations, independent media groups, and public and private funders and policymakers. Find her blog, talks, and writings at www.arlenegoldbard.com.

Nicky Manlove and Bradford Dumont introduce the engender podcast, where they will interview gender diverse choral practitioners in a special twelve week series this spring. New episodes are released on Thursdays.

The engender podcast is a special project of The Choral Commons. In this twelve week series, Nicky Manlove and Bradford Dumont consider singing and the wisdom of gender diversity. Each episode will highlight stories of resilience, imagination, and brilliance from gender-diverse choral artists. In the first episode, we hear Lindsey Deaton, Bex Bagnato, Erik Peregrine, Jace Kaholokula Saplan, Logan Bradford, Michael Bussewitz Quarm, Abdullah Hall, Mari Esabel Valverde, and Nicky Manlove describing what they love about their experience of gender. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from trans and gender expansive choral artists about their work!

The Choral Commons begins our spring gather series on incarceration by welcoming Dr Catherine Roma, professor emerita of Wilmington College, and one of the foremost figures in prison choral music. Her work in Ohio has attracted admiration and attention nationwide. To this gathering, she has invited Michael Powell, an artist with whom she worked in the Marion Correctional Facility’s KUJI Men’s Chorus. An accomplished percussionist, Michael, recently released, starred in the production of Hamilton while incarcerated.

This session will undoubtedly shed light on the perennial question of how to begin and build a prison choral program. Perhaps, more importantly, it will present the transcendent and compassionate power of choral music in inhumane settings.

This spring, we are taking a deep dive into the work of cultural strategy, organizing, and activism, talking with folks doing this work every day in our communities. On Sunday, we are delighted to continue this series in a conversation with Monica Curca, who speaks about the role of culture and art making in the practice of "taking up space for peace."

Monica Curca is a cultural organizer, peacebuilder, communications strategist, designer, and facilitator, leveraging the power of storytelling and human-centered design to create communities where everyone belongs. Based in Washington, DC, Monica’s passion is activating and resourcing leaders and communities to co-create transformative change. Monica is the director of +Peace, a campaign platform powered by peacebuilders, and is the founder and director of Activate Labs, a non-profit organization dedicated to building a global creative force for peace and justice.

You can learn more about Monica and her work at:
https://pluspeace.org/team

In this conversation, André and Emilie speak with Dr Mary Cohen and special guests from the Oakdale Choir. Mary L. Cohen is associate professor of music education at the University of Iowa. She researches music-making and well-being, songwriting, and collaborative communities. In 2009, she founded the Oakdale Prison Community Choir, comprised of men incarcerated in the Oakdale Prison and people from the community. Mary's research centers around how music education can be a tool for abolishing the prison industrial complex. 

You can learn more about the Oakdale Choir here: 

http://oakdalechoir.lib.uiowa.edu/

This week’s episode of engender features Lindsey Deaton, the director of the
San Diego Queer Youth Chorus and founder of the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles - TCLA. Lindsey brings years of experience as a trans leader of trans-serving organizations, and demonstrates a clear and resolute vision for empowering trans voices to improve the world around us.

For more information about Lindsey and her work, visit her website:
https://lindseydeaton.com/

Emilie Amrein and André de Quadros host the third of five conversations about choral and community arts programs in prisons featuring Amanda Weber and Natalie Pollard. Amanda Weber is passionate about uniting music, art and community through her work as a conductor, teacher, performer, artist and social activist. She completed her DMA in conducting from the University of Minnesota in 2018 and now serves as Minister of Music and Arts at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis. Natalie Pollard is a formerly incarcerated participant of Voices of Hope, a women’s prison choir at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee, MN. The choir was founded in October 2015 by Amanda Weber and rehearses weekly at the prison.

You can learn more about the Voices of Hope here:
https://amandakateweber.com/voices-of-hope/

This week on Engender, Nicky and Brad are joined by Bex Bagnato. Bex is a singer with Anna Crusis Women's Choir in Philadelphia as well as being a clinical care manager in Philadelphia. They speak to us this week with a focus on individual language in our choral spaces as well as the cultural language of our choral communities. Bex is on the board for Anna Crusis as well as a member of the choir's Trans Inclusion Committee

On this episode of Surge, Emilie and André welcome Michael Rohd to a conversation exploring the intersections of culture, story, and community transformation.  Michael is a co-founder of Center for Performance and Civic Practice, where he holds the position Lead Artist for Civic Imagination. He is also founding artistic director of the 20 year old national ensemble-based Sojourn Theatre. In 2015, he received an Otto Rene Castillo award for Political Theater and The Robert Gard Foundation Award for Excellence. He is an Institute Professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design & Art and is is author of the widely translated book Theatre for Community, Conflict, and Dialogue.

You can learn more about Michael and his work at:
https://www.thecpcp.org/

In part four of this series, Emilie and André talk with Jody Kerchner and Jerome Thompson about the power of communal singing in prison contexts. Jody Kerchner is Professor of Music Education and Director of PACE (Pedagogy, Advocacy, & Community Music Engagement) at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She teaches courses in community engagement, music psychology, choral conducting, creativity, and principles of education. She is also the founder and director of The Oberlin Music at Grafton (OMAG) Choir in Grafton, Ohio. 

Born and raised in Cleveland, OH, Jerome Thompson now lives again with his wife, Victoria. They have been together for almost 50 years. Jerome is a founding member of the Oberlin Music at Grafton (OMAG) Choir, and participated in it for almost four years. He appeared in several Shakespearean plays and other dramatic productions as a part of the Oberlin Drama at Grafton (ODAG). Jerome is also a fine woodworker.

On this episode of Engender, Nicky and Brad are joined by Erik Peregrine to talk about a choral world where trans singers, conductors, and administrators can thrive. Erik (they/them or he/him) enjoys an active career as a conductor and educator, currently serving as music director for the University of Arizona’s Collegium Musicum and as the artistic director of Ensemble Companio, an award-winning Northeastern chamber choir. ​​

Peregrine has previously held a wide variety of conducting and teaching positions across North America, including with the Tucson Masterworks Chorale, Woodbury Chorus & Orchestra, One Voice Mixed Chorus (MN), Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, Vancouver Peace Choir, and the University of British Columbia Choirs, among others. 

For more information about Erik, please visit: 

http://www.erikperegrine.com/

This conversation considers the choir as a space of plurality where one might discover and experience an authentic sense of self and personhood in artistic, academic, personal, and professional settings. Listen in as Jace, Nicky, and Brad explore the constellation of issues surrounding decolonization and gender, including queerness, community, and choral practice. 

In this episode, The Choral Commons shared the audio of a live roundtable conversation on Singing in Prison with some of the guests from our winter gather series: Mary Cohen, Jody Kerchner, Cathy Roma, Amanda Weber,  and special guest Wayland Coleman. You won't want to miss this essential conversation about the communal singing in prison contexts

Communal singing has often been a driver of positive, justice-focused social change, from the history of protest songs in the US Labor Movement to the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, from the Civil Rights Movement to the Baltic Singing Revolution. Yet just as often, music has been used to affirm and reinforce the status quo in ways that have been harmful and violent to many. Here at The Choral Commons, we wonder how we might harness the power of song across non-violent movements in order to build a road map for a just and equitable future for us all. 

We are delighted to continue this series in a conversation with Sage Crump. Sage is a culture strategist and facilitator who expands and deepens the work of cultural workers and arts organizations in social justice organizing. Sage is a member of Complex Movements, an artist collective that supports visionary organizing. Sage also holds the position of Chief Architect of Emergent Strategies Ideation institute. Her work incorporates complex science, emergent strategy, and creative practice, to imagine the world we want to live in and to build strategies and practices that will get us there.

Aisha Shillingford is an artist, writer, and strategist originally from Trinidad & Tobago. She has been a spiritual and cultural organizer and network weaver for social movements. Aisha has earned a BA in Environmental Analysis and Policy, a Masters of Social Work with a focus on Community Organizing, and a Masters of Business Administration with a focus on Innovation, Creativity and Social Entrepreneurship. She is the artistic director of Intelligent Mischief, a creative studio and design lab unleashing Black imagination to shape the future. 

 In this conversation, Aisha offers us a provocation to dream expansively about the future of choral music and community, imploring us to extend our frames of reference to imagine impossible realities. Aisha reminds us that seeds of the impossible have been and continue to be sown in the imagination of those whose realities have been confined by systems and structures that divide, violate, erase, and oppress. She asks us to make space for the unknown in our dreaming of a just and compassionate world and offers a recipe for a collective choral futuring, built on the values of self determination, participatory design, and time intensive relationship building. 

You can learn more about Aisha and her work at Intelligent Mischief at the website:

 www.intelligentmischief.com

The Choral Commons hosts a timely conversation with Black choral leaders on the liberatory potential of the ensemble as a site of radical imagining.

Panelists:

Alexander Lloyd Blake, Tonality/Los Angeles County High School for the Arts

Arreon Harley-Emerson, Choir School of Delaware/Equity Sings

Alysia Lee, Sister Cities Girlchoir/Maryland State Department of Education

Dr. Zanaida Robles, Harvard-Westlake School/Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church

Tesfa Wondemagegnehu, St. Olaf College/Justice Choir

This week's episode of Engender features singer Logan Bradford who speaks with Nicky and Brad about their experiences navigating choral spaces as a trans person. Logan speaks honestly and incisively about their search for a musical and creative home in choral communities designed for cis-gender singers, the notion of birthing a not-yet-imagined reality into existence, and the painful act of walking away from people and communities that continue to harm trans singers.  Logan is a Tucson-based musician and alum of THEM Youth Ensemble.  

On this episode of the Gather series, Emilie and André speak with Javier Rodríguez, Sophie Wingland, and Ron Yokely about how they are using music to respond to poverty, housing insecurity, addiction, trauma, and homelessness in Chicago. Harmony, Hope & Healing supports adults and children as they heal from traumas associated with homelessness, incarceration, addiction, and isolation. The organization provides on-site music classes and workshops in shelters, residential programs, drug treatment centers, community centers and Cook County Jail.

You can learn more about Harmony, Hope, and Healing at the organization's website:

https://www.harmonyhopeandhealing.org/

This week's episode of Engender features Michael Bussewitz-Quarm, who speaks with Nicky and Brad about her experiences as a composer and advocate for the transgender community. Michael is passionate about effecting change through choral music on topics ranging from the health of the world’s coral reefs and the epidemic of gun violence in the United States to the global refugee crisis.

For more information about Michael, please visit her website: 

https://www.mbqstudio.com/

Emilie and André speak with Leeav Sofer and Marilyn Irizarry about how the organization Urban Voices Project is responding to poverty, housing insecurity, addiction recovery, trauma healing, and homelessness in Los Angeles.

On this episode, Nicky and Brad have a conversation with Abdullah Hall from the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles about the intersections of race and gender, as well as their experiences with singing and advocacy.  The Trans Chorus of Los Angeles is one of the first all Trans-Identified Chorus in America, consisting of Transgender, Non-Binary, Intersex, Gender-Non-Conforming and Gender-Fluid individuals.

OnRaé LaTeal is a musician, producer, activist, and educator based in Washington, DC. She has held a variety of roles at the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian’s contemporary art museum on the National Mall. She recently managed ARTLAB, the Hirschhorn’s digital art studio for teens, which offers racially inclusive and diverse educational experiences for youth. She is currently serving as Education Coordinator of the Smithsonian’s new community engagement initiative “Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past.” She is also the founder of two DC-based grassroots programs rooted in the arts, technology, and racial and gender equity, the Black Girls Handgames Project and Freedom Futures Collective. 
 
In this conversation, OnRaé provokes us to consider what it means to be on the right side of history. She inspires us with her album, We Keep Us Safe, a 23-song visual album that she created with student artists and activists reimagining public safety. She challenges us to work harder for racial and educational equity in our communities. And with her work, she demonstrates the creative potential of music to energize and coalesce social movements to effect change nation wide. We hope you'll find inspiration in OnRaé LaTeal’s call for all of us to imagine the just and compassionate world of our wildest dreams. 

On Wednesday, Emilie and André spoke with Jonathan Palant and London Alexander about how the Dallas Street Choir is responding to poverty, housing insecurity, addiction recovery, trauma healing, and homelessness in Dallas, Texas.

On this episode of Engender, Nicky and Brad interview composer Mari Esabel Valverde and speak about the honesty of gender diversity, the humanizing power of representation, and expansive notions of choral excellence. We loved this conversation. 

Mari Esabel Valverde is an award-winning composer and singer in steady demand across the United States and Canada. Based in North Texas, she sings in multiple professional ensembles and teaches singing and transgender voice training with TruVoice Lessons. She holds degrees from St. Olaf College, the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, France, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

In the finale of our second Gather series, Emilie and André interview Jonathan Pallant (from the Dallas Street Choir), Marilyn Irizarry and Leeav Sofer (from LA's Urban Voices Project.) 

Rukhsana Nezam is the founder and director of Justice & Joy, a consulting practice that focuses on the intersection of community development, socially-engaged art and urban planning. She works with governments, artists and grassroots cultural organizations to bring creativity and imagination into community planning and to de-silo the way we run cities. 

Rukhsana currently collaborates on creative placemaking projects throughout the country, including the ambitious Chouteau Greenway in St. Louis, a project designed to connect 17 city neighborhoods linking parks, business and arts districts, transit corridors, and cultural/educational institutions in a rich and inclusive celebration of art, commerce, culture and history. 

In this example and throughout her art practice, Rukhsana strives to disarm and disrupt public space norms using play and participatory performance. She urges us to consider how imagination and cultural knowledge can guide urban design, planning and policy and how artists and cultural practitioners can help us re-imagine a better public realm, and civic systems that work for all.

We were delighted to talk to Rukhsana Nezam in March. You can learn more about her work with Justice & Joy at the website: www.mallorynezam.com

Nicky Manlove and Bradford Dumont facilitate a roundtable with guests from the Engender series: Abdullah Hall, Erik Peregrine, Jace Kaholokula Saplan, Lindsey Deaton, Logan Bradford, Mari Esabel Valverde, and Michael Bussewitz-Quarm. 

Elise Witt is Artist-in-Residence at Global Village Project (GVP), a school for teenage refugee girls in Decatur, GA. GVP is a special purpose middle school for teenage refugee girls from Afghanistan, Burma, Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, and Central African Republic. GVP serves girls whose formal education has been interrupted by war and refugee camp experiences. 

Today on The Choral Commons, we take a  deep dive into place-based practice, eco-justice, and our relationship with the land in a conversation with Kyle Lemle. 

Kyle Lemle works to catalyze the impact of organizations that work at the intersection of environmental justice, forest restoration, and spiritual ecology. Kyle is a climate organizer, a lover and protector of forests, a spiritual practitioner, and a choral activist with the Thrive Choir. 

Based in Oakland, California, the Thrive choir is a diverse group of vocalists, artists, activists, educators, healers, and community organizers who join together in, what they call, big harmony to celebrate the confluence of their many cultures & identities. Their music illuminates the joy, pain, and beauty of what it means to be human in this time of systemic transformation. 

As a climate organizer, Kyle has mobilized thousands of people in the streets of San Francisco as a leader of RISE for Climate. Kyle has worked in international and grassroots community forestry projects from the pine forests of the Himalayas to the mangroves of Southeast Asia to the urban forest in San Francisco. Kyle plants trees at sites impacted by violence across the US with shovels made from guns, through his work as co-founder of Lead to Life, an arts collective dedicated to creative interventions bridging racial and environmental justice through ceremony and art practice.

You can learn more about Kyle at www.kylelemle.com.

Welcoming immigrant children from around the globe, The Pihcintu Multicultural Chorus helps restart young lives. War-torn villages, bloodshed, refugee camps, famine, and political turmoil were devastating realities for many of these young singers before being embraced by the warmth, companionship and harmony that Pihcintu provides.

Con Fullam is an award-winning producer, musician, and songwriter, who combined his passion for music with a deep concern for the effect of world issues on children in founding The Pihcintu Chorus. This unique chorus of young women from Cambodia, China, Congo, El Salvador, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Viet Nam, British West Indies, and Zambia, along with children whose families have been here for generations, have formed a powerful and permanent bond. 

Common Ground Voices / La Frontera brings together a diverse group of artists in community music and peace-building projects situated at the border of Mexico and the United States. Through its signature programs, weeklong residencies and two-day encuentros, Common Ground Voices / La Frontera considers forced migration, identity, place, belonging, and shared humanity in this politically charged and historically contested region.

CGV La Frontera aims to generate meaningful collaboration through music, explore and create music of shared human values and aspirations, contribute to community music as an exercise of non-violence, and utilize music as a springboard for a meaningful discussion about social and political change within the group as well as with the society in general. We believe in transcending political and demographic borders through art-, theatre-, and music-making; in the transformative potential of immersive and experiential encounters with difference; in the power of proximity to expand perspectives and open hearts; and in the role that culture-bearers play in building community.

Emilie Amrein (she/they) is a cultural strategist, a community music practitioner, and an advocate for justice-centered choral practice. She is executive producer of The Choral Commons, and co-artistic director of Common Ground Voices / La Frontera, a bi-national community music project that aims to build relationships and understanding across political, demographic, and perceptual borders as an exercise of non-violence. She is also founder of Peregrine Music, an arts and education organization committed to engaging communities in meaningful dialogue about the most pressing social issues facing the world with creative, youth-driven performance projects. Emilie has presented her work for several distinguished professional organizations, including Chorus America, the American Choral Directors Association, the College Music Society, and the National Youth Leadership Council. Emilie is Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at the University of San Diego where she teaches courses on the intersection of music and social justice movements, community music, and changemaking.

Soprano and Choral Conductor, Dzaya Castillo Jiménez studied music at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes and has diplomas in Choral Conducting and Mexican Ethnomusicology. Since 2001, she has served as Academic Coordinator and Teacher Trainer in the community choral program, RedeseArte Cultura de Paz and SALUDARTE de CONARTE in various border cities of Mexico such as Tapachula, Nogales, Ciudad Juárez and also Mexico City. Beginning in 2014, she has served as coordinator of choirs for the Redes 2025 program at Tijuana’s Centro de Artes Musicales, a program that promotes individual, community and social transformation through art. This program currently serves 300 choristers who sing in Community Choirs and 110 youth in Selection Choirs from various neighborhoods and communities in Baja California. She has conducted choirs in renowned spaces as the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall and at the International Choir Festival "Tlaxcala Canta," and Youth Creating Harmony Festival in Encinitas, CA, among others. In 2018, she founded and directed the International Festival “Coralifornia,” an annual choral festival bringing choirs together from across the continent in song.

The Tacoma Refugee Choir began as a pilot project in August 2016 in partnership with Tacoma Community House with a group of 22 refugees and community members.  The program was well received and quickly grew to create a welcoming and affirmative learning experience for over 600 participants from 52 nations along with diverse members from the U.S. The group's primary objective is to create space where meaningful relationships can develop and members can uplift one another, using music as a tool to engage members and open the door for authentic expression, interconnection, and healing. 

Erin Guinup is the founding Executive and Artistic Director of the Tacoma Refugee Choir. A passionate advocate of community singing and the power of music to heal and unite communities, she has led community singing events and spoken at national conferences for Chorus America, National Association of Teachers of Singing, American Choral Director’s Association, and the International Congress of Voice Teachers in Stockholm, Sweden, and TEDxSeattle. As a solo artist, Erin frequently performs as a guest soloist with ensembles including Symphony Tacoma, Ensign Symphony, Northwest Repertory Singers and Tacoma Concert Band. Specializing in both classical and contemporary technique, she is a sought-after clinician and voice teacher with students on Broadway, regional theatre and operatic stages, and television’s American Idol, The Voice, and America’s Got Talent. She is a composer and author, contributing to the books So You Want to Sing Music by Women and My Body Was Left on the Street: Music Education and Displacement. Most recently, Erin was named one of five Women to Watch by South Sound Magazine.

Thierry Ruboneka is a peace advocate, entrepreneur and has a great passion for music. He moved to United States in 2016 with his family as refugees after spending so many years away from their home country DRC which was torn apart with war. He studied Multimedia while in his refugee in Uganda and went ahead to manage one of the most successful digital music startups in Africa. He has over Seven years’ experience in administration, business development and management. After arriving in United States he has worked with organizations for Refugee Services and resettlement, he is an exceptional event organizer with hands on experience very detail-oriented, with a reputation for thorough process documentation creation, review, and training. His ability to speak fluently 5 different languages gained two years’ experience working with immigrants and refugees from different countries and nationalities. in the same year of his arrival he worked with Uganda North America Association to bring the first beauty pageant of Miss Uganda North America to Washington and has started his own start up to promote African Culture and life style. 

Maurice Lekea, born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), arrived in the US in 2000. After 19 years of living in Washington, his Asylum case finally got approved in July 2019. While raising 5 children (3 sons and 2 daughters) as a single dad, Maurice went to school in North Seattle College and worked a full time job. He then continued his education at Edmond Community College. Despite speaking no english when he first arrived in America, Maurice eventually became a certified French - English Interpreter/Translator in 2008 . He worked for Rosetta Stone coaching French. He also provided translation services for hospitals, social services, courts, and immigration. Maurice has enjoyed his volunteer work with the Shoreline YMCA after school program “Hangtime”. In August 2019, Maurice joined the choir: “it was an outstanding experience to meet people from different backgrounds, ethnics, cultures etc...developing friendship.” 

André de Quadros facilitates a roundtable with guests from the Here, There, and Everywhere series: Emilie Amrein, Dzaya Castillo, Con Fullam, Erin Guinup, Maurice Lekea, Thierry Ruboneka, & Elise Witt

In January, The Choral Commons hosted a round table discussion on justice-centered choral advocacy, accountability, and strategic planning for the new year with  panelists: Catherine Dehoney, President & CEO, Chorus America; Maria Guinand, Vice President, IFCM; Mackie Spradley, President, NAfME; Elizabeth Swanson, Vice President, NCCO; and Andre Thomas, Vice-President, ACDA.