A fine line

A fine line (April, 2022) Singing is vulnerable stuff. And as it turns out, teaching singing is pretty vulnerable stuff too. Teaching and learning are such deeply integrative processes that it is sometimes difficult to discern where the line between them is. The...

We sing who we are

Photo by Bo Huang (2019) We can only dance with the one who brung us. Namely, ourselves. Try as we might to be someone different, wedge ourselves into a box that seems more palatable, our voices will always resist this crime against nature. I know, because I have...

Showing up

Captured from Jana’s wall, October 2021 We are nearing the end of term and my students are getting into performance mode. This is the phase where I am reminding them to Show Up: where I ask them to truly come as themselves, open their artist hearts and let us...

My Call to Courage

Courage Personified: Viktor Frankel’s iconic book of survival reminds us of the power of both courage and hope Last week was one of those weeks where you feel like you’re hanging on just by sheer force of will. Unintentionally (though it could have perhaps...

Hard things

Hard things (Kimberly Barber, February 2022) This week has been full of Hard Things. There’s a war in Ukraine. The country is divided over the Emergencies Act, the so-called Freedom Convoy, COVID mandates and so much else. My kids have been struggling with...

Playing on the heart string

Heart strings (Kimberly Barber, February 2022) This week on Valentine’s Day, one of my former students, Sarah Stapleton, released her first album. It’s called Heartstrings, and features songs Sarah wrote and recorded herself–it’s largely a...