Trinity Newmarket Singers

Since everyone was absent today, we’ll do Gratitude and Thanksgiving next Thursday. If we feel like it, we can do songs from my Home & Family playlist too. I won’t see you on Thanksgiving Sunday, so I will wish you a wonderful weekend and a very happy Thanksgiving, with an abundance of food, beauty, and love.

I'm sorry, sad, to announce that I'm not able to "open the café" today. I'm dealing with a head cold, not terrible but annoying and exhausting. You don't want my germs. I was planning to choose songs from my Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion playlist. I was thinking about yesterday, Orange Shirt Day, and the news I'm seeing on my socials about rape culture and how they're related. The common factor is the white male focus of our culture. I was reading about the Doctrine of Discovery in my Truth and Reconciliation work. "The Church" was and is such a huge influence on our attitudes about women and other cultures, people from other cultures. It shouldn't be, but Power corrupts. It's heavy, but I'm proud of my church, the United Church of Canada for speaking out against those attitudes and for working to "reconcile" and "restore" the family of God to include all of creation, like the Indigenous Peoples include al...

My September and School playlist grows anytime I hear something about the fall, or school, or new beginnings. I recently added Dolly Parton’s Here You Come Again, and today I added her Coat of Many Colors. I love it when I learn about things that were always there but I never looked. One of the greatest things about these Thursday afternoons is the way we listen to each other and easily switch to different songs or stay to linger on some songs or artists. I have my lists and always come with a loose plan of what I want to focus on, and ideas about which songs people might like, but going off on a tangent is always fun and fruitful. One unexpected tangent brought us to Pinterest a propos of the recipes for my treats. I was surprised by the realization that I do the same thing with Apple Music that I do with Pinterest. I make little collections and keep adding to them, playlists and ‘boards’ working the same way.  Another tangent led to Bridgerton. You Belong to Me by Taylor Swift is...

 New poster: Get Comfortable With Singing

I saw this post on Facebook and thought about it quite a bit.  It says "Singing is a miracle. It has been called the most complex coordinative act that a human being is ever called upon to perform" , and it's signed Dan Marek.   At first, it felt good, but then it didn't. Singing is a miracle. Yes! But, singing maybe should be no big deal. Everyone can sing. Babies sing before they can talk, and little ones can even sing a melody perfectly when you sing it in a different key and when you change keys. There are lots of examples of singing being something like walking, a thing that we can all do. It's a miracle like walking is a miracle then.  Check out the Wikipedia page on Singing.  There's so much information about formal singing and pedagogy. This is something that irks me, the idea that singing is something that requires instruction, and the focus is on the singer as a professional, performing for the enjoyment of spectators. (The article is also Eurocentr...

I'm planning to go to the first of the summer concerts at Riverwalk Commons in Newmarket on Thursday nights. There is a tribute band doing Elton John and Billy Joel songs. Lots of songs I can sing along with ;-) I hope to find some of my singing friends there.  There's also a concert in Aurora tomorrow, Wednesday evening. It's a good one: The Beresfords. They did an amazing Taylor Swift concert a couple years ago that had all the little girls believing the singer was TS herself. I'm not planning to go, but I could probably be talked into it... I've listed all the Aurora and Newmarket free concerts in my York Region Community Choir Calendar. Here's a link: YRCC Calendar Link I just saw on Facebook that there are concerts on Tuesday nights in East Gwillimbury and they have a market too, from 4-9. The Civic Centre is on Leslie at Mt. Albert Road (and south of Mt. Albert/Farr if you're coming from the west). The band tonight looks really good. I'm having a s...