Welcome to my web—a chapbook of sorts—poetic musings on life, the Music-verse, and living music with the SYC Ensemble Singers.
We've been wrestling with new music since the late 1980s, building a space for diverse and uncomfortable sounds, asking—
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Can we really sound bad and be good?
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Is this even Music?
The short answer is YES.
Which led to—
3. How do we count this? 5/8 7/8 11/4
4. How do we sing that? And move?
5. How do we keep Together? Do we try?
Longer answers to all of the above come from 30+ years of conducting youth and young-at-heart choirs, being on both sides of the jury table at international competitions and festivals, and putting together a regional symposium.
We found them by rehearsing in a way that allowed for improvisation and subjective creativity—we made up Games Choirs Play, enabling us to sing anything, any time, anywhere. (Ask me about this and other workshop-lectures on curating and performing new music.)
In this life, I'm enabled by many people—family, friends, peers, students, teachers—and am indebted to Bert, with whom I share a love of small cobblestoned towns, and two cats, Max Headroom (1996-2008) and Henry.
Read : A life measured in song
Watch : The Art of Jennifer Tham (life after the Cultural Medallion 2012)
The background photos on this blog-site were taken by Hillary Lee, friend and ESinger.