Category: Vocal and Choral Music

Sharing the Tradition

Post author By Lolly Lewis
Post date May 23, 2023

June is African-American Music Appreciation Month and AMN celebrates that Black music is the foundational American music. The centuries-old tradition of singing spirituals has imbued our culture with its fundamental musical character, spreading into the blues and jazz of the early 20th century and beyond, to inspire folk songs, protest songs, and popular music of all kinds. African-American music also excited classical music composers like Dvořák and Debussy, not to mention our home-grown classical artists like Gershwin and Bernstein, inspiring them to incorporate the melodies and rhythmic ideas of Black music into the broad European tradition.

So should all Americans, and non-Americans, too, be able to learn this music and participate with joy in singing spirituals? It seems simple—and yet…

Some of us feel sensitive about these boundaries, and personally I don’t want to misstep. Does it appropriate someone else’s culture to love singing this music? Can those of us outside the tradition join with our fellow Americans in this fundamentally joyous experience without taking anything away from the personal histories of the enslaved people and their descendants who created this music?

I stopped by the rehearsal for AMN’s Song Circle session featuring Cary Sheldon and Dr. Candace Y. Johnson, and I got to hear them running through the traditional spirituals that we’ll be singing on June 7, and also at AMN’s 3rd annual Juneteenth Choral Celebration on June 19.

We took a quick break to talk for a moment about spirituals, our deep connections to this music, and how we can honor this musical tradition with humility and respect, and with the joy and love that it naturally brings.

Enjoy this engaging conversation that affirms our love for the music and for singing it together!

Soprano Candace Y. Johnson, DMA, has been on the voice faculty at the University of California-Berkeley since 2009, teaching applied voice classes and a musicology course she designed based on her research and performance of works by African-American composers.

Lolly Lewis is the founder of Amateur Music Network.

June 2023 events with Amateur Music Network

June 7: First Wednesdays Song Circle with Cary Sheldon

June 19: Juneteenth Choral Celebration with Candace Johnson and Kev Choice

AMN mentors Community Talking about Music Vocal and Choral Music Workshops

Meet Song Circle Mentor Cary Sheldon

Post author By Lolly Lewis
Post date February 12, 2023
2 Comments on Meet Song Circle Mentor Cary Sheldon

Old friends are the best! AMN’s Lolly Lewis and her long-time pal Cary Sheldon are thrilled to be collaborating on Song Circle, the new online sing-along event premiering Wednesday, March 1, and returning the first Wednesday of April, May, and June.

Cary’s background is as eclectic as her song choices: Growing up in Cambridge, MA, she was surrounded by music of many styles—in her family of devoted music-lovers, at schools that nourished her natural love of performance, and in a community that supported her musical vitality.

Cary and Lolly got together via Zoom recently to talk about the workshop, to which “Everyone is welcome!”

The workshop format is unique. A small group of singers will convene live in Cary’s living room, while everyone else will sing along online. Cary chose the core repertoire from her huge catalog of songs, making sure to include a variety of styles. She also took care to consider accessibility, that the songs would be fun to sing but not too challenging: The idea is to get to the core experience of singing together. For Cary, singing in community is even more gratifying than solo performance.

Enjoy their whole conversation in this video!

Cary shares her evolution as a singer.

We both got a little choked up thinking about how so many people have been told they “can’t sing.” Cary testified to how many of her voice students had been told this, only to find their musical identities could bloom with a little bit of encouragement. Being told you can’t sing to being told your voice—and thus your very self—has no worth.

“Everybody’s voice should be heard!” We want everyone to be able sing freely and experience the joy of music in Song Circle.

“It’s all about connection and reclaiming our mutual love for singing around the campfire.”

Judgment-free zone!

So let’s make new friends and keep the old—bring your loved ones, both near and far, to Song Circle on the first Wednesday of the month. See you March 1!

Community Vocal and Choral Music Workshops

Family Sing 2022 with Valérie Sainte-Agathe

Post author By Lolly Lewis
Post date November 15, 2022

Valérie talks about bringing the Martiniquan tradition of Chante Noel to our family and yours!

Join us for our second annual FAMILY SING holiday sing-along with the world-renowned San Francisco Girls Chorus!

SFGC Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe will lead the in-person and online choirs in holiday favorites and new-to-us music that will warm our hearts during the holiday season. Invite your family and friends to attend at the Kanbar Center for the Performing Arts in San Francisco, or sing together online. This is a great way to connect with loved ones who live far away! Invite family and friends from wherever they are to join via Zoom and let the joy of singing together kick off the holiday season.

Attend online or in-person at Kanbar Center
44 Page Street, San Francisco

IN PERSON: Adults $25, youth ages 10-18 $12.50
IN-PERSON FAMILY PACKAGE: Bring the whole family for $50
ONLINE ONLY: $15

Chamber Music Jazz and Beyond - Non-Classical Music Vocal and Choral Music Workshops

The magic of singing together

Post author By Lolly Lewis
Post date October 5, 2022

Anyone who has sung in a vocal group or a chorus knows the feeling: something is just special when we sing together. There’s a marvelous sense of reaching out, of connecting with other voices to make a sound that is more than just our single notes, a sound that merges and grows, with multiple melodies blending into a harmonious whole. Whether it’s a circle of friends singing folk music in our living room or professional singers in a concert ensemble, it’s that elemental joining of voices that, for me, brings emotion to the fore.

We’re so in luck to have Dashon Burton back with us on October 16 to lead a master class on ensemble singing. Dashon is an acclaimed soloist who is equally practiced in singing with others: He is part of Roomful of Teeth and Kaleidoscope, two of the top vocal groups working today!

I can’t wait to get Dashon’s perspective on the singing of two groups in our master class: the Drew School Singers who will sing the luminous 16th century madrigal O Occhi Manza Mia by Orlando di Lasso, and the women’s choir Conspiracy of Venus who will sing A Place Called Home by rock goddess PJ Harvey.

I caught up with Conspiracy of Venus founder and leader Joyce McBride to chat about the group and about her musical path writing and arranging choral music. Music is so much about connecting, about blending our minds and sounds into one. It’s what we aspire to in life as well as in music, don’t you think?

Enjoy the interview and then join us for Dashon Burton’s vocal chamber music master class workshop on October 16!

Community Composers Jazz and Beyond - Non-Classical Music Vocal and Choral Music Workshops

Juneteeth Choral Celebration

Post author By Lolly Lewis
Post date June 5, 2022

Don’t miss our second annual JUNETEENTH choral celebration, led once again by the wonderful Candace Y. Johnson. If you attended her Spirituals workshop last year, you’ll remember what a joyous occasion it was to sing Moses Hogan’s arrangement of Deep River on the first Juneteenth federal holiday. This June 19, Candace will lead us in singing a new work by Roland Carter, the esteemed choral composer and conductor whose arrangement of Lift Every Voice and Sing has become the iconic version of the Black national anthem.

Carter’s new work Make Some Noise, Get in Trouble honors the great civil rights leader John Lewis who admonished us to get in “good trouble, necessary trouble.” The piece draws its text from Congressman Lewis’s speeches.

It’s a first for AMN: we’re very excited to be part of a commissioning project to perform a new work. And in this case, it’s a project that’s totally aligned with AMN’s values of community participation, amateur music-making, and honoring our diverse American musical heritage. This exciting project was coordinated by the national choral advocacy organization Chorus America.

In a recent conversation over Zoom, Candace and Roland met with AMN founder Lolly Lewis to discuss the piece and the upcoming workshop. Candace noted that she heard a particularly fluid, almost river-like character in one of the sections of the music. Roland noted that yes, in fact he referenced the Spiritual Wade in the Water in that section. “I always like to quote a Spiritual if I can. One that has meaning, not just any Spiritual, but it has to reflect the text and it becomes an important part of what I do,” he explained. “Doing art songs – and I call my solo Spirituals art songs because I like the play of the piano with the voice – is all about the interpretation of the words.”

Listen to Candace and Roland’s discussion about the music and how to interpret the details of this new piece that incorporates traditional choral singing with elements of gospel and even hip-hop! And then join us on June 19 to lift our voices in a Juneteenth celebration of America.

June 2023 events with Amateur Music Network

Make Some Noise, Get in Trouble!