Esther Morgan-Ellis shares the joys and the structures of this old style of singing together. The exuberance of the practice is echoed in Esther's own enthusiasm for the power of this tradition.

Esther Morgan-Ellis is a historical musicologist who focuses on participatory musical traditions, especially community singing and old-time music-making. She has written extensively about the early twentieth-century American community singing movement. Her research also explores contemporary traditions such as Sacred Harp singing, hymn singing, and revivalist old-time music, examining how communities sustain and reshape these practices over time. As editor and lead author of the open-access textbook Resonances: Engaging Music in Its Cultural Context, she highlights musical traditions from around the world to show how music functions within diverse societies. In both her scholarship and her work as a performer and educator, she emphasizes the social bonds and shared histories that grow out of collective music-making.

A documentary about shape note singing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BWEMU8Q8l1OWdI4d57iCKEUjqQOcgm4_/view?usp=sharing

And the global singings website: https://shapenotesingings.com/

Sam Lee is a British folk singer, song collector, and environmental activist who founded Singing with Nightingales, an immersive springtime series that brings audiences into the woods to experience live music in duet with nightingales. A Mercury Prize–nominated artist and passionate nature conservationist, he uses this project to connect people more deeply with the natural world, blending traditional song, storytelling, and ecological awareness into a powerful shared experience.

What is the song of a Nightingale if not a celebration of life? An expression of the energy in the roots of Spring, coursing up through the earth, through the trunks of the blackthorn thickets, through the leaves, the blossoms, through the buzzing insects and the munching caterpillars, streaming at last through the syrinx of our little brown birds as they perch at the peak of the season. Sometimes it seems as if they sing the season into being, sometimes they are the season’s self.

It’s one of the reasons we come to the woods every spring – to learn how to sing praise like this, and to sing praise ourselves. The Nightingale has maybe forty years left in Britain. Myself and the SWN team are intent on making those years good ones.

https://www.singingwithnightingales.co.uk

Chau Yoder was born in Hanoi, Vietnam. Since 1989, she has offered workshops and classes in Mindful Living, in youth, corporate retreat, and community settings.

Chau was Trained by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and ordained as a Dharma Teacher in 2003. She’s dedicated to sharing practical methods of mindful living that cultivate awareness of body and mind. She’s also a retired engineer, who spent 25 years at Chevron.

Chau lives in Walnut Creek, California, with her husband Jim, and is a grateful mother of two daughters and a grandmother of four.