Hello all!
I normally am not a fan of doing this sort of 'information dump' post, but I've had some exciting developments that I want to share (hoping to write a bit more about each one in future posts once I have some time):
Author moment: My article "The Art of the Day Job" was featured in the September issue of the Early Music America magazine, and is now available online. I'm excited to hopefully continue to explore this and other issues affecting the musical community in future writing!
DC Singer Collective: Community and Creativity Since the spring of 2021, I have been working on a project near and dear to my heart: the DC Singer Collective. The seeds of the project came from a group of us gathering over Zoom during COVID-19 to try and find some community and talk more openly about the common challenges (and joys) of making a life in the arts. I believe true musical excellence can only come with a concurrent sense of community, support and vulnerability: our goal as a group is to balance and grow both of those elements side by side as best we can.
Since that virtual start we have...
Campo delle stelle (an offshoot of the Collective) has:
Programmed and performed a concert of Monteverdi & Strozzi madrigals, "The Plague of Love" with a spectacular group of local musicians.
Thanks to the extremely generous support of many of you, we were able to both compensate our artists and get a fantastic live recording of our June concert.
We are currently scheduled to repeat the program at two concert series in DC: Midweek Music at St. John's and Epiphany's Tuesday Concert Series.
We have plans to continue to perform the program, potentially outside of DC as well, and to start to explore sustainable ways to continue our operations, all while prioritizing the supportive community currently at the core of the group.
If you are someone with nonprofit, legal, fundraising, or organizing experience and would like to be involved in an advisory capacity (aka let me buy you coffee and pick your brain), please let me know! And/or, if you would like to host Campo for an event, house concert, or at a local venue, you can contact me directly or at dcsingercollective@gmail.com (you can also shoot us a message here).
Cheers and thank you for following along - as things continue to come together, I am feeling incredibly grateful and in awe of the supportive community that I have around me.
Warm wishes for the chilly fall (if you're in cold climes!),
-Genevieve