Welcome To Our Choir Land

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!