Sonus Boreal

Today I leave on an excursion to Yakima with the choir I belong to, Sonus Boreal (Northern Sound). We are going to give a clinic at the Washington Music Educators Association conference. The clinic is titled "Community Choirs and Social Networking". We will show how our group began through social networking on Facebook and how we conduct business and recruit through other online means, in addition to Facebook.
We hope to remind music educators that even though schools are losing funding for music education, they still have a vital role to play in society. And we hope to inspire them to take action in keeping music alive in their communities. We also hope to help them see that their options are much broader out in their communities than just at the student-age level.
Our choir started as a group of student alumni from our director's various choirs, but now includes some of their mothers, as well as friends and strangers found out in the greater community. (I'm one of the strangers, found through a posting on Craig's List!) Some of us work out of the home, some work in the home. Some are music educators themselves, some can't read music. Some are single, some married. Some are moms with little ones, some are grandmothers. But we all have one thing in common: our love for music.
Another thing we are hoping to show is that even the most inexperienced group can take up challenging music and do it well. Right now we are working on songs in Latin, Swedish, Norwegian, an African dialect, and even English! Among the songs in our repertoire you will find double choir music, barber shop, antiphonal chant, and even some jazz with a little three part scat thrown in! We don't place limits on ourselves and we rely on our director to teach us what we need to know. The rest is just practice, practice, practice! With a little proper breathing (from the diaphragm!) thrown in...
We performed at the Lights of Christmas at Warm Beach this past year, at the Marysville Church of the Nazarene's Women's Christmas event, and at Marysville's Lights Celebration at Christmas.
You can't join us for this clinic unless you are going to the conference, but you may wish to join us for two upcoming events:
We will be doing a benefit concert to raise money for formula for orphans in Ethiopia on Saturday, March 17 at 4:00 p.m. at my church, Mountain View Community Church, in Snohomish. Admission is free. A love offering will be taken, with all monies going directly to Youth With a Mission (YWAM).
We are having our Spring-Summer concert in June this year, date TBA. It's going to be absolutely fantastic, so I hope you can be there!
We can't do this without you there to support us. (Otherwise we'd just be singing to the choir! Hahahaha! I crack myself up!) But seriously, we do this for you as much as for ourselves. We want to bring beautiful music into your lives and to have you leave with a song in your heart, if not a seed planted that you will someday join us!
We (Sonus Boreal) may be found at http://www.northernsound.org/ and also, of course, on Facebook as Northern Sound Choirs.
Music has been such an important part of my life, all of my life. I feel as though I would never have made it through some of the tough times without that one special song, played at just the perfect moment. Or without those old stand-bys that I could sing day after day to bring me out of the blues. Music is pure joy to me and I hope that everyone finds the joy, peace, and healing that comes from a beautiful song.
Happy trails to you, until we meet again...