Elise Witt’s concerts of Global, Local & Homemade Songs™ and her Impromptu Glorious Chorus™ workshops create and connect singing communities around the globe. Her songs are available for choruses and choirs through the Elise Witt Choral Series and for solo and community singing in All Singing: The Elise Witt Songbook, as well as on 12 CDs.
She currently serves as Director of Music Programs at the Global Village Project, a special purpose middle school for teenage refugee girls in Decatur GA, where she uses singing to help students learn English, share their cultures, gain self confidence, and learn to navigate their new world.
Choral
Kyla Tilley
Kyla Tilley is a Canadian prog-folk singer-songwriter known for her emotionally turbulent live performances, her gymnastic guitar playing, and her fabulous shoe collection.
Using whatever words she likes, Kyla constructs tales true and tall of fantastic exploits, mundane tasks, and moderate misadventure which she delivers with a mix of vocal fusillades, chaotic finger-picking, and kaleidoscopic rhythms.
Twelve such songs can be found on Kyla’s sophomore album Bloom & Grow. A mercurial collection of songs about personal growth, self-acceptance, and the obstacles that get in the way of an individual’s desire to leave something of themselves for the ages.
Kyla lives in a small town in Newfoundland and Labrador where you will find her strolling on the beach, hiking in the woods, and broadcasting glimpses into her songwriting sessions live on Twitch, where her stalwart followers are encouraged to heckle, cheer, and distract, as Kyla wrestles words, cajoles melodies, and hammers out guitar parts.
Kyla’s endeavours over the years have ranged from country to metal with many digressions in-between. She appeared in the documentary “Water Street” with country/folk band Bareback; performed at the Sound Symposium with experimental music group Sound Circus; had a song recorded by Canadian Idol finalist Jenny Gear; played art galleries and events as a solo classical guitarist and with the bass and guitar duo Cat’s Paw; performed with violinist Ed Hudson in folk duo Tea & Bread, which melded Kyla’s original material with Ed’s love of British folk song. She’s composed cat-walk music and provided guitar solos for comedian and fashion diva Cara Winsor-Hehir, and is one half of progressive death metal duo Molt. As Mistress Pandemonium, she was the riff-generating half of Newfoundland heavy metal band Endearing Perversion. She spent a decade singing a mixture of folk and classical music in Montreal’s La Chorale Harmonia community choir including 2 stints on the board.
Kyla Tilley singer-songwriter began releasing music in 2018 with Whimseys, a 5 song EP of some of her more whimsical numbers performed simply with guitar and voice, and Loose Summer, a mostly instrumental composition for a fashion show featuring 5 short episodes of airy guitar, flute, bottles and found percussion. These were followed in the summer of 2019 with New Shoes, Kyla’s first full length album, then Vagarys in 2020, another 5 song EP of odder fare, this time with bass and drums thrown into the mix.
Sharon Abreu
Sharon Abreu (“Ah-BRAY’oo”)
Sharon Abreu is a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, teacher, and student of life. She was singing harmony with her family around the dinner table by the age of 3. Sharon grew up with many musical influences, from classical and opera to Broadway to folk, pop and rock, and she enjoys mixing those up in her concerts. She performs as a solo artist and also as half of the acoustic Irthlingz Duo with her partner Michael Hurwicz. She has performed at venues as diverse as the Northwest Folklife Festival, the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and the United Nations.
Sharon was studying classical singing in New York City when she attended a pumpkin festival in the West Village and ended up joining the sponsoring organization, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. Through her work with Clearwater, she started using her voice and songs for environmental education and ended up singing in concert with legendary folksinger Pete Seeger.
Sharon has sung lead roles in operas including The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. She’s been a soloist in performances of major choral works including Bach’s Magnificat and B Minor Mass and Mozart’s Requiem and Vespers. Sharon starred in a sold-out run of the musical The Taffetas at the Orcas Center and in summer stock at the Ferry Terminal in Bellingham, Washington. Sharon has provided music for major international Earth summits at the United Nations in New York and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa. And she was honored to sing for Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai in Berkeley, California in 2006.
In 2007, she prepared New York City high school students to perform her climate change musical revue Penguins on Thin Ice for the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, receiving a standing ovation from a full auditorium of international delegates.
In 2016, Sharon performed her one-woman musical show The Climate Monologues in the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival, the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York, and for The MarshStream Theatre Festival online in 2021. She received the “Spirit of Nature, Ecology & Society” Environmental Justice Award for her performance of The Climate Monologues, at the Culture of Climate Change Colloquium at the City University of New York in 2011. Sharon composed and recorded the songs for Zero Waste Washington’s public school education program.
Sharon teaches voice, violin and piano, and she has been the vocal coach for musicals including Billy Elliot and Mamma Mia. For 2-1/2 years, she was a Musician-in-Residence with the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, bringing music and singing to local preschools. She is featured in Professor Mark Pedelty’s books, Ecomusicology (2012) and A Song to Save the Salish Sea: Environmentalist Musicians in the Pacific Northwest (2016).
Sharon has been a member of the Local 1000 North American Traveling Musicians Union, American Federation of Musicians, AFL-CIO since 1997.
Windborne
“A quartet the likes of which I haven’t seen since… Coope, Boyes and Simpson, the Watersons, or The Voice Squad. Just absolutely phenomenal!” -BBC Traveling Folk
Windborne combines bold and innovative harmonies, styles from a variety of cultures with traditions of harmony singing, and a vocal blend that comes from longtime friendship and years of singing together. They also carry on the alliance of folk music and social activism, breathing new life into songs of change from the past that still ring true in modern times.
“The best musical discovery of the year…Stunningly powerful vocal harmony… Windborne sets a new bar for folk harmony singing today” -Brian O’Donovan, WGBH-NPR
Hear Windborne in action:
Song of the Lower Classes – a protest song from the Chartists in England in the 1840s, a grassroots movement for voting rights
Stabat Mater (Corsica) live in Mont-Saint-Michel – a traditional setting of the Stabat Mater text from southern Corsica. A clip of this video went viral on TikTok in 2021, getting over 2 million views!
The Song of Hard Times – Windborne’s arrangement and expansion of a song from the 1930s, found in the archives at the Library of Congress
Instagram / TikTok: @WindborneSingers
MORE ABOUT WINDBORNE:
Internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble Windborne is a group of vocal chameleons who specialize in close harmony singing, shifting effortlessly between drastically different styles of traditional music within the same concert. Their musical knowledge spans many cultures, but they remain deeply rooted in American folk singing traditions – a typical concert program includes music ranging from American labor anthems and English ballads to ancient Corsican polyphony and traditional Quebecois tunes.
Hailed as “the most exciting vocal group in a generation,” Lynn Mahoney Rowan, Will Thomas Rowan, Lauren Breunig, and Jeremy Carter-Gordon share a vibrant energy onstage – their connection to each other and to the music clearly evident. They educate as they entertain, telling stories about the music and explaining the characteristics and stylistic elements of the traditions in which they sing.
But there’s another, crucial dimension to Windborne. They are adherents to folk music’s longtime association with social activism, in particular its ties to the labor and civil rights movements and others that champion the poor, the working class, and the disenfranchised. Breathing new life into old songs, they seek out music from movements over the past 400 years and sing them for the struggles of today’s world. They believe deeply in the power of music to change hearts.
In addition to performing in New England and around the world, Windborne has taught workshops in schools, community centers, singing camps, and universities. Seasoned teachers and song-leaders, they delight groups young and old with enthusiastic, clear, and nuanced instruction for musicians of all levels of experience. Singers not only learn the notes of a song, but also work on the varied vocal styles, language pronunciation, and gain an understanding of the song in its original cultural context.
In 2014, Windborne was one of 10 groups selected by American Music Abroad and the US Department of State to tour as cultural ambassadors through music. They traveled to Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Angola, touring with internationally known artists, performing at sold-out national theaters, and collaborating with traditional musicians in each country. They also taught music and dance workshops to schoolchildren, English-language learners, dance schools, choirs, and music conservatories.
Bennet Zurofsky
AILEEN VANCE
Singer. Songwriter. Music Educator. Choir director. I am especially passionate about music that gets ordinary people singing along.
Faith Nolan
Faith Nolan singer/songwriter, plays guitar, harp, banjo, ukelele- songs focus on social justice , kids music, LGBTQI- Enviornment-anti racism, anti-capitalism-ani-sexism, anti-homophobia- pro peace , love and joy Heritage – Black-Mi’kmaq-Irish , born in Nova Scotia -have recorded 16 CD’s, original many world languages used in lyrics and lots of blues folk jazz, reggae
FAITH NOLAN
Primary Song Genres:
Culture (language, religion, ethnicity, etc.):
Ken Giles
Ken Giles teaches violin/viola at D.C. Youth Orchestra Program and in private lessons. He also sings with the D.C. Labor Chorus. Longtime peace and civil rights activist, Ken was a member of the topical song group “Bright Morning Star” and played for peace demonstrations, environmental activists, and human rights groups. Ken teaches his students all kinds of music, including classical, folk, blues, labor songs, and civil rights songs.
Bev Grant
Bev Grant is a labor and social activist, feminist, singer-songwriter, photographer and 2017 Joe Hill Award winner from the Labor Heritage Foundation for her work as a cultural worker as well as the 2017 winner of the ASCAP Foundation’s Jay Gorney award for her song We Were There. Former leader of the cutting edge 70s and 80s folk/rock & world music band, Human Condition, Bev is also founder and director of the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus.
Bev grew up singing and playing with her two older sisters in Portland, OR. After moving to New York City in the early 60s, she formed her band The Human Condition, who recorded their first album “Working People Gonna Rise,” with Paredon Records, now distributed by Smithsonian/Folkways. Her song “Inez” is included in the Smithsonian/Folkways “Best of Broadside” collection.
As cultural director of the UALE NE Union Women’s Summer School she developed and wrote the theme song for the multi-media women’s labor history show, called “We Were There!”, which she presents throughout the United States and which became global when she presented it in October 2017 in Costa Rica at the United Trade Union Confederation’s 3rd Women’s Conference.
Ron Olesko, WFDU folk DJ and columnist, featured Bev and her recently released CD “It’s Personal” in the May 20, 2017 issue of SingOut Magazine, saying…
”Over the past few decades, Bev and her songs have been part of many social struggles including the labor movement, so it came as somewhat of a surprise to discover that her new solo CD It’s Personal is an introspective and heart-felt collection of personal songs. However, closer examination reveals that the songs in this collection give an insight into what has motivated and shaped this extraordinary artist. It’s Personal features a diverse mix of folk, jazz and good old rock and roll to gives us a glimpse of the world that is fighting to make a better place for all.”
Full Review: https://singout.org/2017/03/20/bev-grant-gets-personal/
In July 1917, Bev begin scanning images from photo negatives she shot as a radical photo journalist in the late 1960s, including some iconic photos of the early radical Women’s Movement (The Miss America Beauty Pageant protest in 1968, and the W.I.T.C.H. Hex on Wall Street on Halloween in 1968), She’s exhibited at OSMOS Gallery in NYC, and received several favorable reviews in main stream media. In December 2021, OSMOS published a monograph of Bev’s photographs called: Bev Grant Photography: 1968-1972.
“What struck me so profoundly was the fact that Grant prefigured this whole notion of intersectionality.” Grant’s images, Gingeras said, “tell the story of this utopic moment before things got very divisive and polarized. And the echoes of the struggles she documented are still being heard right now.” The New Yorker Photo Booth 9/28/2018 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-photographers-life-changing-encounter-with-political-struggle
Music website: www.bevgrant.com