Thoughts from the Greenhouse

Broccoli seedlings, happy in their bigger homes!

This week at the farm, we are transplanting seedlings into bigger pots so they get stronger in the greenhouse before we put them in the ground. It got me thinking about life, and creative life especially.

When we transplant the seedlings, we give them new and better nutrients, their roots have more room to spread, and they thrive very quickly. At first, they look too small in their new home and they flop over because of the shock of the change. But after a day, some water, and some sun, they stand right up, ready to grow!

Think about your life and your creative practices. Do you need ‘transplanting’ so you can stretch your roots and grow? How about some new ‘nutrients’? Are you giving yourself enough ‘water’ and ‘sun’ and taking care of yourself?

The metaphor can only take us so far, I suppose. But it’s worth looking at how you might be limiting yourself, what you wish you had more of in your life, and whether you are looking after yourself in ways that are good for you.

This isn’t about taking a huge leap from a little starter pot into a giant planter. Just the next size up.

Maybe it means that you take the next tiny step towards that dream you’ve always had - or you allow yourself to even consider it at all. Or you unsubscribe from the news on social media and go to bed earlier. Or you stand in the sun and breathe for a minute or two.

For me, the nutrients I want to add in my life are adventure, curiosity, and trust. I’m looking after myself by going outside every day, playing piano, and drinking good tea with milk - simple things that nurture me. These days, I feel like a newly transplanted seedling, ready to grow!

What do you think? Are your roots feeling a little cramped? Or are you in a new and bigger pot, and feeling a bit shocked? What’s one small thing you can do today to help yourself grow?

We Are Designers!

My friend and colleague, Geung Kroeker-Lee, has a passion for urban design. He believes that “our environment can/should inspire us, and shape our behaviour.”

This belief spills over into his musical life. He recently gave a presentation to choral colleagues, where he presented this definition of a healthy community from the Canadian Institute of Planners’ Policy on Healthy Communities Planning:

... a healthy community is defined as “a place where healthy built, social, economic, and natural environments give citizens the opportunity to live to their full potential,” regardless of their socially, culturally, or economically defined circumstances.
A healthy community allows “people to come together to make their community better for themselves, their family, their friends, their neighbours, and others.
A healthy community creates ongoing dialogue, generates leadership opportunities for all, embraces diversity, connects people and resources, fosters a sense of community, and shapes its own future.”

This definition already speaks to me, but he has adapted it for choral communities:

... a healthy choir community is defined as “a group of people where healthy built, social environments give individuals the opportunity to sing to their full potential,” regardless of their musical background, training, or socially/culturally defined circumstances.
A healthy choir community allows “individuals to come together to create beauty, develop empathy and understanding, and through singing make their wider community better for themselves, their family, their friends, their neighbours, and others.
A healthy choir community creates ongoing dialogue, generates leadership opportunities for all, embraces diversity, connects people and resources, fosters a sense of community, and shapes its own future.”

I love this.

For Geung, taking the time to be mindful planners of our choral community is as important as the music we create, and that it isn’t much different than a city planner designing a neighbourhood.

He has admitted to me that he loves thinking about the start of the choral season: How can we set the tone for the whole season from the very beginning? What foundational pieces do we lay to ensure that our communities stay resilient and healthy? How do routines define and shape our community’s behaviour?

These are worthwhile questions to consider – especially as we start to look forward to rehearsing in-person again.

Designing a community might seem daunting, but it is well worth the effort! Don’t forget: Good Community = Good Music.

Here are some of Geung’s suggestions for starting a new choral season from a community design perspective:

1. Consider having a “returning members meeting” (an idea we have both learned from our Edmonton colleague, Katy Luyk) where your returning members can see each other and catch up, reminisce about the previous season, and close the previous chapter together. They can then welcome the new members with open arms, ready for new connections.

2. For the first rehearsal, don’t set up rows of chairs right away. Allow people to greet each other and mingle (as opposed to only meeting the one or two people right next to them, or only their section-mates). Do your warm-up, some ice breakers, and move around the whole available space while encouraging your singers to interact with each other.

3. Invite your choir members to help define what the community will look like for the season. Put up chart paper with some prompts and markers, and ask your singers to add to them anonymously and at their leisure. The prompts could be: what are their personal goals for the season, their goals for the choir, what do they need from each other, and from the artistic staff. Read them out and discuss, or type them up and print it for everyone (perhaps as a word cloud).

As conductors, we wear many hats and do many jobs, but our goal at the heart of it all is to bring people together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Mindfully designing healthy choir communities is one aspect of that.

We are community designers! Let’s make healthy choir communities!

The Mushroom at the End of the World

It’s amazing what you can find when you’re not looking for it. I was reading Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s book The Mushroom at the End of the World, minding my own business and learning about matsutake mushrooms when I came across this:

How does a gathering become a ‘happening,’ that is, greater than a sum of its parts? One answer is contamination. We are contaminated by our encounters; they change who we are as we make way for others. As contamination changes world-making projects, mutual worlds – and new directions – may emerge. (27)

I couldn’t help myself. I started thinking about music making and choir, even though Lowenhaupt Tsing is very explicitly talking about mushrooms, ecology, and precarious economies of mushroom pickers.

I admit, her use of the word ‘contamination’ is an unfortunate one for this exact moment in history - please wash your hands!! - but the sentiment struck me.

“How does a gathering become a happening?” – or in choir terms, how can we go from being a group of people singing in a room together to a Choir? What happens when we take the time to ‘contaminate’ each other with our ideas and creativity? What new worlds and new directions can we open for ourselves as we transform?

A page later, another one:

Collaboration means working across difference, which leads to contamination. Without collaboration, we all die. …
We change through our collaborations both within and across species. The important stuff for life on earth happens in those transformations. (28,29)

How can we bring transformational encounters to our musical lives? How do we foster them in our rehearsals and for our audiences? Who can we collaborate with in new and interesting ways?

How can we encourage transformation in more than the traditional one-way street of conductor to singer, or choir to audience? How can rehearsals and concerts become a two-way street? What do we have to gain from taking the time to consider these things? (I think it’s a lot.)

Perhaps this is our route to survival as artists, organizations, and people in a precarious world that doesn’t always see the value of the arts.

Create “transformation through encounter” (28) with our art and contaminate the world, in the best way!

Simple, but Powerful

A prof once asked my undergrad music education class to state our personal philosophy of music for an assignment. I had no idea how to answer it, so I made something up that sounded plausible. Only now, many years later, can I actually lay claim to my own philosophy of music making. 

It is simple:

Good Community = Good Music

Simple to say, yes, but there are so many facets to explore in what can contribute to “good community.” At a basic level, I believe that if the people making music together care for and about each other, the music will be better and performances more impactful. 

The singers who feel supported and part of a community will be comfortable to be vulnerable with each other when they sing together. They will get on stage and be able to connect directly with the audience because they genuinely connect with each other.

That is when the magic happens. That is how you hook the people who have always thought choir is boring, and show them how engaging it can be.

There is so much more to this idea, but for now, you can see it in action with this Bon Iver piece sung by Prairie Voices. This choir has always strived to have a culture of strong community and connection between its members.

Here, they lay all their emotions out and aren’t ashamed or scared of them. I never had to demand or cajole or convince them to do it, we talked about the song and the text, and they did the rest.

It is powerful music. It is powerful community.