Hello Friends of Voices of Hope … Old and New, Young and Old!!
This post contains TWO important pieces of news:
You may be a Voices of Hope singer, recently on hiatus and eager to return… or someone new to us and eager to get started! Either way, we welcome you and hope you will join us for our Spring Sing starting Sunday, April 22nd.
Rehearsal Dates (note…Sunday OR Mondays!):
** 6:30 – 8:00 PM **
Sunday, April 22;
Monday April 30th;
Sunday, May 13th;
Sunday, May 20th;
Monday, May 28th; and
Sunday, June 3rd
Culminating in a “House concert” on Friday, June 8th.
Rehearsal Location: the Church of the Epiphany, 1336 Pawtucket Ave; Rumford
Membership Cost / Dues:
- $30 minimum per singer
- $45 minimum per singing family (2 plus)
The membership fee should be paid by all at the first rehearsal. The deadline to pay membership dues is the second rehearsal. These fees help us to pay for the music director and to cover the costs of music and other materials.
Please read the following wonderful letter from Beth Armstrong, our Music Director, to get a full accounting of the ‘what next’!
Letter from our director – Beth Armstrong
Dear Women of Voices of Hope:
We have just completed a very successful session of our chorus, and the steering committee has met to talk about our future. As many of you know, Kim has decided not to continue as co-music director, so the question is, what next? With input from some of you, and our own opinions, we have decided that this group is too good and too much fun to let this stop us, so we are announcing another session, with me as your only music director. I am delighted that Voices of Hope seems to be healthy and growing. I think there is no reason why we can’t continue to grow and prosper, and I am excited to be a part of that!
We don’t want to wait until September for another session, so we are going to do a spring session. We know that many of you have conflicts this time of year, but we are hoping that the schedule we are announcing is flexible enough to make it possible for many of you to participate. We are going to emphasize working further on music we have already learned, to polish it and improve our group’s sound. We will also learn a couple of new songs. We are going to include some organized activities for a few minutes each week, designed to get to know one another better. Not only is it more fun if we know each other, we also will sing better if we are friends. We are going to aim toward an informal, friendly performance, a house concert, held in the back yard of Ginny Fox’s house on the East Side of Providence, with our audience sitting on a deck or on a lawn. We will have food and beverages for them, so it will feel as much like a party as a concert.
Rehearsals are later – 6:30 to 8:00 – to accommodate outdoor activities in the spring. Rehearsals are usually on Sunday, but twice on a Monday, to accommodate my performance schedules with other groups. Rehearsals are 90 minutes long instead of 2 hours, but we will start ON TIME and end on time. If you could make a real effort to be there on time, we will get enough work done, I think.
Singing together is more than fun. It is an opportunity for people who are perhaps not involved in the arts in any other way to express themselves artistically. There are some messages that are most effectively communicated musically, and music has a way of reaching a listener that language alone does not. Thus, as singers, we are both empowered and empowering. Think of the first sound heard by a human at birth – it is the sound of their mother’s voice. Women’s voices nurture, soothe, educate, commiserate, rejoice, and encourage. Women’s voices can heal. Women’s voices can chastise. Women’s voices can change the world, and indeed, often have. Let’s be sure that there is a place where women, accustomed or not to singing their message, can sing together for pleasure, for peace, and for justice – in Rhode Island. Voices of Hope offers that opportunity. I am glad it exists; let’s make sure it does!
I hope to see many of you on April 22.
Love, Beth
