Trinity Newmarket Singers

Our spring thoughts went swiftly to thoughts of home, gathering at home for the holidays, and going home. But, we went pretty deep into what home is and where home is. Family, and more specifically for most of us, mother makes home. The Beatles had us thinking about how family isn't always a warm embrace for everyone. People can feel lonely at home when they they don't meet expectations, their authentic selves are not acceptable. This is a big theme in my work on inclusivity in the church. And, we also talked about the landscape of Ontario feeling like home, or how some specific "country roads" will take you home. We marvelled at how songs can mean different things at different times, how we hear different things, and how talking about them makes them so much more meaningful. This is something I remember discussing at my old Book Club, about reading. I wonder if you've had that experience too, a book club. Singing together and then puzzling over the messages and t...

Our Spring theme continued, and it was more about change and life this time. Celestial events, and moons and stars took a small role. It was a rainy day, so we started with Blame it on the Rain, and only remembered the chorus, and the short bridge: I can't, I can't, I can't, can't stand the rain! Useful lyrics.  We talked about how the world can shrink down to 2 people sometimes, and then the rest of the world can be a nuisance. Change the World reminded us of Rewrite the Stars.When you're in them, life's changes feel so big sometimes. Then we remember that it's mostly just seasons we're going through from childhood to old age, same as it's always been. We don't really want to be forever young, do we. And, what's next is something we need to go through. And then, we're told that there could be life everlasting, there is eternal light, eternal rest.   We saw that pop songs are easier to sing than John Stainer (even for choir folk). And, we...

What a wonderful afternoon! We had the largest group in a long time, and it was fun to have all that extra energy. We still managed to do quite a bit of talking about life and music.  I went on a bit about the Persian new year, happening tomorrow morning. It's the first day of spring. The vernal equinox happens at 10:46am. That is the astronomical spring, the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator – a line directly above Earth’s equator. So, our theme was Spring (as advertised), but my playlist was Songs about Celestial Events and Change.  Winter has been very long this year, long and cold. So, a celebration right now is a very good thing. I'm happy to be celebrating Nowruz, the Persian New Year with my family tomorrow. I talked a bit about the Haft Seen, which I love, the table of symbols, things that represent wishes or hopes for the new year, like abundance and prosperity, health and love. Here's a link to an article about the Haft Seen table.  Spring is about ne...

We stayed in the 1970s for most of our hour, but ventured into the 80s for a few songs. As usual, we laughed at some of the lyrics we had misunderstood or totally missed when we were young. Often when we dance to a song, we don't really listen, and maybe just sing along with the chorus. The other thing we laughed about was how much drug culture we noticed in the seventies songs. We wouldn't have noticed it then, as some of us were still quite young then.  We talked about unique elements in songs that we wouldn't have thought would be good, but they are. The b-b-b-Benny stuttering and the n-n-n-nothing yet and other stuttering caught our attention. We decided that it not just super-fun to sing, but it was also very inclusive. So cool to introduce stuttering into pop songs, and excellent that they are so well loved! We could stay in the 70s and 80s longer, and we'll turn back to them again in the future, but next week our theme will be SPRING! Spring officially starts on ...

We missed a bunch of people today, but had a great time, 4 of us connected to my choir. Choosing an era instead of a topic made this an easy playlist for me. Apple Music has several playlists of music from the 1970s. I simply chose one. Normally, we sing songs from a playlist which I create, choosing each song for it's connection to the theme, and hopefully connection to us. Last week, when we sang from my Songs with Dogs, Cats, Pets playlist, we noticed that several songs we liked were from the 1970s and wondered whether we should look closer at the that decade. So, that became our theme this week.  Sure enough, we found that we remembered and liked most of the songs on our list today. We laughed about not remembering the words, or never having known the words aside from the chorus, or being surprised that we misheard/misunderstood the lyrics, as we often do. Memories of our lives at the time and our feelings about things in the past arose and inspired conversations about all kind...

It was a lovely afternoon spent in lovely company. I baked raisin bran muffins earlier and brought them with a few slices of a pumpkin loaf I baked earlier in the week. We didn't manage to eat much because we sang a lot today, and had some lively conversation as well. Who knew there were so many songs about pets, or on the theme of pets ?! Some songs were obvisously not about cats or dogs, but about people (What's New Pussycat?), and some really had nothing to do with pets (Year of the Cat), while others were about pets but sounded like they were about people (Martha, My Dear). We had fun looking up the year of release of some of these songs. How little were we when we first heard these songs?! So many songs were from the 1970s.  I'm thinking, for something different, to look at a playlist of 1970s songs.   I hope to see you next week. For now, here's what we sang and listened to on Feb. 26th: Always on My Mind and I Want a Dog by the Pet Shop Boys Cat's in the Cra...