Monday at the refugee center was hopping. When I first began volunteering in January 2017, it had been a residential center. There were residents who have been living there for years, waiting to hear if they would be able to stay in Belgium. Over the past nearly three years of volunteering, I have seen the…
Category: voice
We could try it and see
This Monday at Petit-Château marked the third week in a row we have been working on a new song. it is a song that raises questions that are universal concepts for the human experience: freedom, nationality, identity, fear, violence, acceptance, judgment, power. We filled two large sheets of paper the first week with words…
The Pigeons of Petit-Château
In my nearly 38 rotations around the sun, I have found that there is a deep longing in my own being to be connected with the natural world and with the many species beyond my own with whom I share this beautiful planet. I have friends from my park ranger days who would tell me…
Ride the creative wave
I recently wrote a song from my friend Mohammed’s story. The song was derived from a very small portion of the much longer story. We filled several large sheets of paper before beginning to work on the chorus, and it was only a few phrases that made it from the story to the finished song….
Remember Rose
It has been bitterly cold in Brussels. Having lived in Alaska and New England, I know how to endure winter. Inclement weather does not typically keep me indoors. However, when my husband and I moved to Belgium, I left behind my lined winter boots. Along with most of my other belongings, they are packed snuggly…
Will you join us?
Malcolm and I have spent a lot of time trying to clearly communicate what makes the Story-to-Song method different than other songwriting out there. Having been trained as scholars in the Prescott College Sustainability Education program, we have learned firsthand how important it is to be able to offer a clear and concise response to…
Gotta get out
Most days, I live in my mind. I staff museum sites at a park, and there are many hours of the day where my own inner voices carry on a heated dialogue while I intermittently sit, stand, and talk with visitors. This winter was a rough one for me, both emotionally and for my immune system. On…
Speak like you are a Fortune 500 Company, but don’t quit your day job just yet
Don’t call us, we’ll call you. It’s not you, it’s me. These clichés were ringing in the back of my mind during one of our recent evening sessions at the Sandbox. There were two gentlemen seated at the front of the room. They were entrerpreneurs with startup businesses in the Boston area. They each introduced…
Perfect Pitch
Last night was the much anticipated, anxiety inducing Mid-Pitch for the Merrimack Valley Sandbox Winter Accelerator Program. I spent the better part of the day and week before reflecting and revising my pitch outline. A challenge with selling songwriting products is finding ways to describe something that can be rather abstract and difficult to explain…
Singing the songs of the people.
I grew up in a small town in eastern Massachusetts on the south shore. Throughout my childhood and into college, music was my identity. I played and performed classical piano; I was first chair for the clarinet in the school band; I listened to any and all music I could find. I started plucking around…
Guiding Song 