DISABILITY JUSTICE, RADICAL INCLUSION, AND THE CHOIR

ANDREW CLARK & KRISTINA GILLIS

MUSIC:​ Original instrumental by Sai Pitman

ANDRÉ:​ Support for The Choral Commons comes from the University of San Diego, the
Karen and Tom Mulvaney Center for Community, Awareness, and Social Action and the
College of Arts and Sciences Arts Engagement Initiative.

EMILIE:​ USD’s Arts Engagement Initiative supports artistic action embedded in and
responsive to ever-changing social, cultural and political circumstances, deep and
meaningful engagement with community, and increased access to the arts on the USD
campus and beyond.

ANDRÉ:​ The Choral Commons is a community where choral music practitioners and
organizations can gather in order to envision equity-centered choral futures. With our
community and creative partners, we hope to empower choral practitioners with additional
strategies for innovation, grounded in culturally responsive, critical and equity-centered
values.

ANDRÉ:​ People with disabilities have frequently been forgotten, neglected and excluded
from choral music as they have from the larger societal spheres. Recently, choral
organisations have become more conscious of this serious deficit and are finding ways to
include people with disabilities. During this current pandemic, let us consider how to move
forward more equitably and inclusively in the future.

MUSIC:​ Bright Ideas by Shin Suzuma

EMILIE: ​Andrew Clark feels that disability is a facet of human diversity worthy of creative
exploration and appreciation. Affirming the individual and collective funds of knowledge
within its community, Cambridge Common Voices aspires to frame disability as a resource
of artistic ingenuity that holds the potential to broaden the concepts of choral music and
revolutionize artistic practice in conventional settings.

EMILIE:​ I'm Emilie Amrein,

ANDRÉ:​: And I’m André de Quadros,

EMILIE:​ And this is the Choral Commons Podcast.

ANDY: ​I have a good friend who I teach my class with named Catherine Branch Lewis,
who's an activist and teacher scholar of flutist. Catherine has cerebral palsy, and when she
teaches our class, she defines disability as necessary, creativity. That in fact the problem
that exists is not with the person, it's with the world that's not built for all people. This is
what's important because we have a tendency of looking at other people and sort of seeing,
“Well this is what they need. This is the problem that we have to address.” The problem
actually isn't with the people, the problem is with the structures and the problem is with what
we've normalized and how do we really think more broadly about our practice in a way that
can broaden the circle of inclusion for all sorts of folks who are learning music in all sorts of
ways, and who express music in all sorts of ways.

MUSIC:​ Bright Ideas by Shin Suzuma

EMILIE: ​Cambridge Common Voices is a community chorus established in partnership

between Harvard College and the threshold program at Lesley University, a transition
program for young adults with diverse learning challenges. We spoke with the group's
director Andy Clark and founding member Kristina Gillis, in late May.

EMILIE:​ So Kristina can you tell us about yourself?

KRISTINA:​ My name is Kristina Gillis. I'm from Westboro, Massachusetts. I work at the
brothers market in Kendall Square as an assistant baker. I specialize in making cookies.

EMILIE: ​That's awesome. I know we're going to talk a lot about music today, but I'm curious
about your baking. Can you tell me just a little bit about what that's like?

KRISTINA: ​Well, when I worked at the, when I was at... well, I'm still at the bakery, but
when I was there, I, well, they made the batter of the chocolate chip cookies and then I
would put them on, I would put, I would scoop them out onto the baking pan and I did that
with the crinkle cookies and so that was good, but here at home I like to make chocolate
chip cookies and brownies.

EMILIE: ​And what have you been doing since March, Kristina? Since everything has
changed?

KRISTINA: ​Well, I've been doing zoom activities from school on zoom. I've been also doing
Best Buddies lunch things. I've been doing of course the Cambridge Common Voices every
Sunday, singing lessons every other Sunday. With Rachel from Singapore. I've been doing,
I've been working out and doing a puzzle and keep myself, keep myself busy and going for
walks.

EMILIE: ​Do you like the new kind of setup where you’re doing all of this or do you miss the
way it was?

KRISTINA: ​Well, I mean I'm getting used to it, but I can't wait to when we get back so we
can do some social stuff because I'm a social butterfly. I'm not very, I don't like the idea of
being on a device trying to try and when you can’t, when you can’t see your friends and give
them a high five or anything. But I like the idea that I have something that keeps me busy so
it's fun.

EMILIE:​ Yeah, I think that sounds like how I’ve been feeling about it lately. So, what about
in Cambridge Common Voices? What kind of music do you do, Andy and Kristina?

ANDY: ​It's a good question for us because, Kristina, in particular spends a lot of time
contributing ideas. One of the things about our group that we try to do is to give the
members a chance to share some suggestions. And Kristina, do you want to tell them the
story about how we put together our holiday concert?

KRISTINA: ​Sure. Well, Andy’s like OK, why don't, why don’t we ask everybody what songs
they wanna do for the holiday show? So we had to retype them or whatever and so by the
time that was done like I asked like my friends and stuff, by time that was done it was like
30 songs or more, and Andy goes, I said, “Here's the songs for the course for the holiday
show,” and he goes, “That's great but, that's about like 30 songs or more that you're going
to be, we're going to be doing this until February.”

ANDY:​ It was, yeah it was about, it was about 40 or 40 or 50 songs.

KRISTINA: ​Yeah, it was a lot.

ANDY: ​Kristina has this incredible gift of just a really broad knowledge of pop music and
folk music, and music from lots of genres, certainly Broadway. And it's really, it's really fun
when we're kicking around ideas and developing a concert program together, that Kristina
makes some wonderful suggestions and then really a rehearsal doesn't go by where we
don't ask Kristina about a particular song that we’re singing and she gives us a lot of really
wonderful information.
MUSIC:​ Bright Ideas by Shin Suzuma

ANDRÉ:​ Andy could you give us some context and tell us what impelled you to start the
program and how it's developed?

ANDY: ​Yeah, I guess I'll try and give maybe the shorter version of the story. First of all,
Cambridge Common is a public park in Cambridge, MA that borders and connects both
Lesley University where Kristina is a student and the Harvard campus where I teach. And
it's also the place where about 250 years ago, George Washington gathered with his troops
at the beginning of a revolution. And so when we were deciding what kind of name, I don't
know if Kristina remembers this, but we had a long meeting back in the fall of 2018. Kristina
brought up a lot of the principles that had been taught that we grew up with together by the
great late Fred Rogers. And Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood and the way that music wove its way
into the building of this community of this, of this neighborhood, where people would engage
with each other for who they are. So we were sort of singing some of those songs and
having conversation about the neighborhood, and we realized that Cambridge Common
was our, our neighborhood, and so we share this neighborhood we share in the sort of
revolutionary spirit that the space is always embodied going back 250 years.

ANDY: ​Yeah, I got to this, to this place really through a series of crises. I was a graduate
student in 1999, 2000 at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, which is my hometown. And in the
middle of my graduate program, my mother had passed away after a long battle with
cancer. And my teacher at the time, the late Robert Page, was very much kind of in the old
school mode. He was as irascible as he was compassionate, and I think he had, he had a
kind of empathetic connection with his students. He knew that I was going through this
crisis. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go into music, I wasn't sure of anything. And he had been
a part of a meeting after a Pittsburgh Symphony concert in the fall of 1999, where a group
of really sort of musical leaders, leaders of the music community in Pittsburgh had gathered
to hear an impassioned speech by a pediatric neurosurgeon named Donald Reigle, who is
also passed away. And Donald Reigle had founded a nonprofit organization north of
Pittsburgh called The Woodlands, which is this beautiful campus that is built and universally
designed in its architecture and programming to enrich the lives of individuals with
disabilities and chronic illness.

ANDY: ​And Doctor Reigle had asked these sort of Pittsburgh music celebrities, “Can you
create a music camp? We have a camp for athletics. We have a camp for life skills. We
even have programming for cooking and camping out in the woods, wilderness, but we
don't have anything with music.” And so, Dr. Page thought about this and at a conducting
lesson he said, “Well, I know what you're going to do this summer. You're going to work at
this camp.” And I said, “I, you know, I don't want to do anything right now, and I certainly
don't feel like I have any expertise or experience in working in this, in this environment.” And
he said, “Well, I don't really care. You're going to do it anyway.”

ANDY: ​And so a group of us gathered together and kind of created a camp. And I think the
reason why it worked as well as it did is precisely because we didn't have any expertise and
much experience in creative arts therapies and special education or inclusive music
education. And the only way that we could make it work was to respond to, in a kind of call
and response, the desires and the ideas and the creative impulses of the participants at the
camp. And we literally just created a pedagogy and created a music practice on the spot. It
was entirely improvisatory. And it was so enlivening and enriching and challenging and
frustrating and rewarding. And I've been doing this work for 15 years.

ANDY: ​And fast forward to like sort of the second crises was very kind of cliched midlife
career crisis of trying to figure out like what is it that we're really doing in choral music and
choral music education, and specifically for me, why was it in those few weeks every
summer I was feeling this sense of of really deep bonds and authentic community building
and music making that was in the service of telling important stories of advancing advocacy
and activism and social justice. Why was it so creative? Why did I feel more like an artist
those two weeks then the other 50 weeks of the year in this incredibly like privileged and
amazing job that I have at Harvard with our wonderful students and wonderful choirs there?
And why couldn't I bridge that gap in some way?

ANDY: ​So right around that time, my relationship with Andre had deepened through our
work together at the Norfolk Prison in Massachusetts, having had a chance to take André's
class at BU on Empowering Song and a host of other sort of serendipitous events in my life
where I finally just kind of said, “you know, I've got to bring The Woodlands culture to
Harvard.” And the last piece of this was that in musicology and in music history or music
theory, musicology and ethnomusicology, critical disability studies became a growing point
of interest for a lot of scholars writing some really remarkable work. So it kind of gave me
the street cred to silence the impostor syndrome voice inside of me, to say, you know, let's
teach a class. Let's teach a course where we can explore this literature, but more
importantly, learn about this intersection of music and community building and disability
theory and disability rights by working in the community.

ANDY: ​And so for a couple of years, our students were partnering with organizations all
around Boston that were already doing this work and then three years later, we decided,
let's just try and start a project here. And it just so happened that two blocks up the street
from my office where Kristina goes to school, lhe Lesley Threshold program had been very
open and welcoming to this idea of bringing together their students and our students and to
make music together in a way where everybody felt welcomed and empowered and, and so
Emilie, when I had a chance to meet Emilie for the first time, she put it beautifully, this idea
of, of creating spaces of intentional difference. And that's what we were trying to do and you
know, being very careful of power dynamics and a lot of the subconscious or even
conscious ableism that certainly I've fallen into those traps and still do all the time, but, of
genuinely wanting to create a space where we weren't providing a service, we weren't
seeing ourselves as, you know, as mentors or as as you know, folks who are trying to do
some good. We wanted to create a music ensemble where we could experiment, where we
could find new ways of, of learning songs where we could, yeah, use our group as a
resource of ingenuity that could in some way inform what happens with other choirs.

EMILIE: ​Just coming back to kind of your own personal experience and your kind of the call
to kind of do this work. I thought it was very interesting how you characterize the crisis that
you were going through at the time and the way that ingenuity and innovation and creativity
kind of sprang forth from that place of crisis, and I think that there's, that's like a common
trope, I think, when we're talking about innovation, but I wondered if you could speak just a
little bit more about the the way that your own personal crisis positioned you in a posture
that allowed for a different kind of listening, maybe to the community, listening and engaging
and being in a relationship with the community that I think is like a missing step in the
narration between, in a lot of peoples like conversation about innovation, right? Cause I
mean, it's like yes, we have a crisis. We have a pandemic. Surely we're going to come up
with some brilliant ideas to innovate and to be creative and respond to these limitations with
something new and interesting. But, I think there is something like a step in the middle and
it has to do with that posture, so I wonder if you could speak to that.

ANDY: ​Now that's a rich question. Thank you so much. And I have just a quick sidebar. I've
been thinking about that a lot, as all of us, at least in teaching situations, are trying to plan
for the fall and for a likelihood that part or all of it might be virtual, and we can come up with
the most amazing content and ideas and sort of creative solutions, but, if the students and
singers themselves are finding it difficult to engage or to be motivated, or yeah, I'm finding
right now, like I'm starting with what could I do rather than what do the students and singers
need? So that's, that's always present. But as far as the crises go, I mean, I probably should
have followed up that finding a home and a community at The Woodlands in many ways, I
think really saved my life. I'm, you know, it's like finding a new family. It really has become
like a second family.

ANDY: ​So that first summer, still just months trying to sort of process my own personal
grief, this trauma, losing a parent and feeling so lost. We were getting ready for the concert
and I was just out in the parking lot actually I think just sort of shooting baskets at a hoop
with a couple of the participants, and a young man named Brandon came up to me and you
know he was just sharing how excited he was for the concert and you know, really hyped up
for it and he said, “You know my family is coming. My mom, my dad, my sister, my
grandmother's coming.” I said well, “That's great Brandon.” He said, “Is your family
coming?” and I said “Yeah, you know my dad, my dad will be there.”

ANDY: ​And you know, like in a typical situation, you say something like that there's a
certain social cue, like I'm going to tell you about my father, but I haven't included like other
people you know, maybe for reason right? And he said all that “You know, that's great, you
know. Is it just your dad or your mom coming too?” And then again, you know, I like sort of
demurred. I wanted to kind of give the cue like I don't want to talk about this. I said “No, it's
just going to be my dad.” And he said, “Well, why? Why isn't your mother coming?” Like he
kept persisting. And, and I said, “Well, you know. She died, she actually died four or five
months ago.” And, and then sort of gave me this, like, this bear hug that was like really
intense and long. And then he looked at me and he said, “Did you cry?” And it was just so
powerful because there was a kind of authenticity. There was sort of just kind of the
shedding of putting on airs and pretense and just sort of getting to the heart of a friend who
was suffering. And this happens a lot at this particular place, not because there are folks
with disabilities, but because it's, there's a culture at this, at this place of just, of that kind of
Vulnerability and respect and support. Like that kid who was 17 at the time did more for me
than like any other friend or therapist or clergy member. It was so cathartic and you know, I
think, crises, you know getting back to crises.

ANDY: ​I think what we're learning is, and this sort of takes it into the realm of disability
theory, right? I mean, I have a good friend who I teach my class with named Catherine
Branch Lewis, who's an activist and teacher scholar of flutist who trained at Rice in
Eastman and. Catherine has cerebral palsy. And when she teaches our class, she defines
disability as necessary creativity. That, in fact, the problem that exists is not with the person,
it's with the world that's not built for all people. And the scholar, Joseph Straus, who's
written a lot about music and disability studies. He defines disability or a disabled person as
someone with a culturally stigmatized body. And so I think this is what's important because
in situations in different places, whether it's in a, a community like The Woodlands, if it's in
an incarcerated setting, we have a tendency of, of looking at other people and sort of seeing
well this is what they need. This is the problem that we have to address where, you know,
for me, I've had to learn I think the hard way that the problem actually isn't with the people,
the problem is with the structures and the problem is with what we've normalized, and so
that's what I'm, that's what we've been trying to interrogate with this group that actually,
well, it's not, it's not, maybe it isn't like thinking about the subconscious ableism of having to
read western notation right? Is that, is it a problem if somebody can't read music? Well, how
do we really think more broadly about our practice in a way that can broaden the circle of
inclusion for all sorts of folks who are learning music in all sorts of ways, and who express
music in all sorts of ways?

EMILIE: ​I think that, that the way that you characterize the interaction. What was the, what
was the young man's name?

ANDY: ​Brandon.

EMILIE: ​Brandon, right. So the way that you described that interaction and the kind of
norms of social cues, right, this is like the way that you know neurotypical folks kind of
characterize people with autism or autistic people, right, that they don't follow social cues or
they can't perceive them in a way that positions it as a deficit. When in fact, like the way that
you describe that interaction is being more human as being more meaningful as being like,
transformative and healing for you. You know what, where is actually the deficit, right? Is it
perhaps in the way that we've constructed the scripts that allow us to interact in a way that
Dehumanizes us and Dehumanizes lots of people.

MUSIC:​ Bright Ideas by Shin Suzuma

ANDRÉ: ​Andy let's go back to the kind of the big meta picture of choral music. And I think
you've talked about your own personal travels and detours on the Main Street and on the
side streets of choral music. And I guess as, as we've talked about many times before,
choral music is shifting its way of thinking about itself. Our profession is rethinking itself.
And not everybody has done the journey that you've done, and, but what are the, what's the
power of choral music for, for us as professionals to make it more inclusive, more
engaging? What are the roadblocks to make it more inclusive?

ANDY: ​Yeah, I go back to a moment I remember vividly back in the I guess January of 2016
being in a pavilion with you and your choir in Manado, Indonesia. And we were kind of
sitting in a circle, and we were talking about some of these things, and Andre I love the way
that you had framed it at that moment, which was good, like, really important for me to think
about it this way that like what's happening is not necessarily a rejection of convention, or to
say, someone that the way that you experience and, and love and aspire to make choral
music in your life is inherently wrong or needs to be replaced. But that, the way you put it
was that there are folks who are broadening the circle of what choral music can mean, what
it can do, how it can be experienced and for what purpose. And it is a really exciting time to
be in the field in and to sort of see not only, you know, the work in the so called mainstream
that people like me grew up wanting to emulate an aspire toward, but to also sort of be a
part of a broader conversation that in a way asks some of these critical questions about:
Who's making music? Who's not making music and why? And who is choral music for and
who's been part of, part of these communities and have we maybe left, left behind?

ANDY: ​The other thing, and again I don't claim any expertise, but it is interesting to read
critical disability theory, which often has at its target what are called regimes of
normalization, and you and I have talked about this a lot. In fact, we've written about it
together a lot. That you know, we can certainly, even though, like choral music is diverse in
terms of where and how. people experience it, there is to a certain degree, on a certain
spectrum, a normativity. At least in the West at least, the way you know I thought of choir
that: a choir looks like this, it does these certain things. Whether you know what constitutes
refined singing? What constitutes an incredible ensemble? How do we evaluate whether
performance was successful or not? All of these things, by and large have been, have been
normalized, and what, going outside the norms you know sort of stretches us, requires us to
kind of think critically about why, why is it that we keep replicating the same norms and
values and conventions and again not, one of the things too I think we set up too often are a
lot of false binaries.

ANDY: ​And I have to check myself on that too, because you know we've had students at
Harvard, who on a Saturday night, you know, sung the B Minor Mass, and on a Sunday
afternoon they’re, they’re improvising on a mashup of Beatles songs with Cambridge
Common Voices, that there's so many different ways of living into this magic of being in
community with other people and singing with other people. But, yeah, I, I do think that it's
important, it took me about 10 or 15 years to figure this out at The Woodlands. It can be
very cliche to say, “Oh, if I'm in a space of neurodivergence or folks with disabilities, that
they're the teachers and I'm the student.” And there's some ableism there too. I think that
you know this sort of inspiration porn we talk about in our rehearsals, that, yeah, we want to
inspire people, but not through pity and not through, you know, perpetuating the kind of
power and disempowering perspectives of disability identity. But that in fact, you know,
we're not taught, really to listen to the experiences and desires and creative impulse of our
singers in such a way that can give, give birth to the kind of creative and spontaneous and
exciting musical life that really could be possible.

ANDRÉ: ​Could I ask a follow-up just to that? So you've talked about regimes of
normalization and I think the normalization, the pathology of normalization, which you have,
you co-authored an article with Emily Howe and two other colleagues who talked about how
we kind of worship the sound that we produce and we place that above, above all else. And
so, so while we, we do all kinds of different things, it's of course acknowledging that
sometimes the beauty of the sound is not what people are attracted by therefore,
sometimes it's, it's a beautiful, it's like a beauty contest, if you know what I mean. So how do
you reconcile this beauty contest? It's, does that kind of make sense for you that somehow,
yes, we can broaden the circle, but the beauty queens get the beautiful stages and the
other folks don't.

ANDY: ​Well, I'll tell you what, if anybody had a chance to be in our small Holden Chapel in
Harvard Yard back in December to hear Kristina sing her silent night solo and just as
importantly to hear her speak about what that piece meant to her, meant to her life, meant
to her relationship with her late grandmother, it was one of the most beautiful things that I've
ever witnessed in a performance space. And I would have, you know, I think the folks who
were moved by that kind of soulcraft, you know that that was artistry, it was sort of
beginning with, you know, Kristina talking about what this piece meant to her from the depth
of her soul and Heart. Then tying that to a kind of empathy that was acknowledging that the
holidays isn't necessarily all about Santa Claus, and feeling good, and buying presents,
and, and having parties that it brings for some folks, maybe for all of us, some longing and
some pain. And then tie that to her beautiful singing that she practiced long and hard for.
You know that was, it was, that was profound. So I think what we have to do is really set our
sights on how we define these words we throw around all the time, like excellence and, and
virtuosity. Right so, you know one of the things, one of our mantras with Cambridge
Common Voices is that vulnerability is virtuosity. And this actually comes from one of the
sort of thought leaders in music and disability studies, a musicologist named Stefan
Honisch, who writes about vulnerability's virtuosity. And you know that's, that's a radical
mind shift for a Harvard student who has been inculcated and taught that the technocratic,
that getting things right, is the pathway to success and self actualization and to, you know,
acquiring a career or trade right? And so, that's a big part of the vocation for me is to create
a space where the pervasive culture of, at a place like Harvard is disrupted in some way for
our students, to be, so that they begin to kind of think, we all begin to kind of think together.

EMILIE: ​I like this idea of disruption and I wanted to just pull in the work of Sonya Renee
Taylor. Do you know this, this philosopher activist? She has written a book and manages a
blog called “The Body is Not an Apology” and I really was thinking about this idea of beauty,
and physical beauty and the movement to body positivity that has happened lately in kind of
conversations about bodies, right? And especially bodies that don't conform to norms as
you were speaking about earlier, and I wonder if, like what would it look like in choral music
if we have the equivalent of a body positivity movement where we were re-learning a way of
seeing and listening and hearing and being and knowing, that allowed for true diversity to
flourish and thrive. And, also ,I was thinking, so I should have you respond to that part first,
but then Secondly, I was thinking about the way that Western European musical practices
have been historically disembodying and if we were to reconnect sound to bodies rather
than have it exist in this abstract kind of ethereal plane, right, what would that mean for us
as human beings and artists and as bodies, right, in relationship with one another?
ANDY: ​Yeah, those are fantastic questions. One of them I'm sure, maybe it's the same for
all of you, but one of the most heartbreaking experiences that we have way too often is to
connect with someone in our lives that maybe we know well, or not, who says I don't sing,
I'm not a singer, and I think that's, I think over the last few generations, that's become more
and more prevalent of folks who are told or who are taught that their singing voice is not up
to singing in front of other people, singing with other people. I don't think it was always that
way. Maybe it was, I don't, I'm not really sure, but my heart breaks. There's a part of my
soul that just cries every time somebody says, apologizes.

EMILIE: ​Right, and you take that further, right, like this idea that if a person's voice is
actually their body, right, that in fact, what they're saying by saying, “I cannot sing, I have no
voice,” is that I don't exist as a body or that I'm not seen as a body, right? And it's so
heartbreaking.

ANDY: ​This time last year I had spent three, spent three weeks in South Africa with 30 of
our students and with our colleagues, Mollie Stone, Patty Cuyler, and several teachers and
singers from a few different black, South African choral groups and we decided to take this
tour and to really not bring any music to perform. The tour was to go to South Africa and to
learn. And we learned 24 pieces in the course of a week, that we were unable to learn this
music without incorporating our bodies in ways that most of us weren't quite comfortable
with or familiar with, certainly I wasn't. Of course we know in most sub-Saharan languages
there's not a separate word for music and dance. And the kind of liberation, to say nothing
of like just even philosophically, what would it mean if we not only made music but lived our
life with a spirit of call and response, of being so present and like in the moment, what
would it be like to enter into performance spaces where the audience performer binary was
completely shattered and you wouldn't dream of sitting still while your friends are performing
for you, that in fact they're performing with you. Yeah, I mean that was, that was also
disruptive, I think for me and for a lot of our students, just based on kind of how we've been
conditioned and taught.

ANDRÉ:​ No, no. I mean I think, I think just to, to dig a little deeper on Emilie's point and we,
you know, I've talked about this before Andy, if we if we went into the prison, into the
empowering sessions that we've done together, like for example, I think about that
incredible conversation you had, musical conversation and improvisation with a prisoner,
and, and if we had recorded that and played that, let's say on Facebook or somewhere,
people would have thought, “What's the big deal? What's so interesting about that?” My
point is that, is that this question of the sound as an abstracted aspect of the, of the whole
system of the whole, sorry, the whole, the wholeness of, of the context, the community, the
intention, and all of that is somehow being pushed to the margins, and it still pushes the
margins too, isn't it? We’re having these conversations, but our professional organizations
struggle with this, and I don't mean, you've been an advocate for us to think differently, but,
but the, but the edifice is pretty strong to protect this, these paradigms of social hierarchies?

ANDY: ​Well, there's no doubt about it. And choral music is so closely tied, at least in the
west with subjugation right? It's like fall in line. I'm going to tell you what to wear, where to
stand, what to sing, how not to move, how to use your body, who gets to be involved, and
who doesn't. You can't help but think, you go to other contexts too and it just sort of opens
your eyes to the depth, to the depth of this normativity and kind of fetishization of, of a
certain kind of technique or so-called virtuosity.

MUSIC:​ Bright Ideas by Shin Suzuma

EMILIE:​ So Kristina tell me about the, the other people in the choir and what kind of other
strengths they bring to the space.

ANDY:​ Yeah, who sings who sings in the choir, Kristina?

KRISTINA: ​It’s me, me, Suhas, Tess, Ellie, Lauren, Jack, Sai, Maggie, I’m trying to think of
James’ wife.

ANDY: ​Oh yeah, Jenny.

KRISTINA: ​Jenny and then, oh Nathan.

ANDY: ​Yep.

EMILIE: ​There's a lot of people. How many people are there total?

KRISTINA: ​About 20.

ANDY:​ Yeah, I would say we have on any given Sunday, about 20, that's right, or maybe
about 30 on the roster. And Kristina, where are all these, where all these people from?

KRISTINA: ​They're from, most of them are from Massachusetts. Well, Rachel is from
Singapore so she's 12 hours ahead of us. Oh, and Sasha is in San Francisco. And Brighton
is in South Carolina.
ANDY: ​Where do they all go to school?

KRISTINA: ​Well, some go to Harvard and some go to learn about music at the Berklee
School of Music right in Boston. And, my friends, we go to, we’re in the threshold program
and some are alums and some are first years, and bridge, and almost going to be bridge
years.

ANDY: ​And then Maggie and Sai go to what school?

KRISTINA: ​They go to Perkins.

ANDY: ​Yeah, the Perkins School for the Blind in nearby Watertown. And Kristina I don't, no,
you've helped me with this. Maybe you could share a little bit about the types of choirs that
you sang in before Cambridge Common Voices and what's the same and what's different
between those experiences?

KRISTINA: ​I have sang in the Westbrook Glee Chorus since March of 2009. I don't sing in it
anymore, but it was a good experience. There were about, about 100 people in the chorus
and we did two shows a year, one for the spring and one for the Holidays. And it was a
great experience, but I kind of, I like singing, I like singing in the Cambridge Common
Voices much better because in the other chorus I felt like I was the only one who had a
challenge and, and also who was the youngest 'cause everybody else in the course was
older than me.

EMILIE: ​Well, I'm so glad that we've been able to spend some time together today. I think
it's really, it's really a gift to be able to hear from both of you about what this choir has meant
and how that work will continue.

MUSIC:​ Bright Ideas by Shin Suzuma

ANDRE:​ Kristina Gillis is a graduate of the threshold program at Lesley University. Andy
Clark teaches at Harvard University and is director of Cambridge Common Voices, a choral
organization that strives to create an inclusive musical space and practice and explore
innovative approaches to music making. You can learn more about their work at
www.singatharvard.com/CCV.

EMILIE:​ ​The Choral Commons Podcast is hosted by Emilie Amrein and André de
Quadros, produced by Emilie Amrein in partnership with ​Chorus America and the Eric
Ericsson International Choral Centre​, and supported by listeners like you.
ANDRÉ: ​Additional institutional and creative partners include the Harvard Choral
Program, St. Olaf College, University of Hawai’i Choirs, the University of San Diego,
Manado State University Choir, Na Wai Chamber Choir, and Voices 21C.

EMILIE:​ ​If your organization would like to join our list of sponsors, please reach out to us
at ​thechoralcommons@gmail.com​. Or consider joining our community of supporters on
our website, where you can schedule regular donations of 5 or 10 dollars a month to
help us offset the costs of producing these programs.

ANDRÉ:​ ​The Choral Commons aims to provide a space for choirs and conductors to
envision innovative and equity-centered practice. We produce podcasts and interactive
webinars and offer curated resources on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

EMILIE: ​We connect and engage community in meaningful dialogue on pedagogy and
practice, and incubate creative, artistic, and compassionate choral projects that empower
choral music organizations to work for a just and peaceful world.

EMILIE: ​The instrumental music you heard at the beginning of today’s episode was
performed by Sai Pitman, an 18 year old student at the Perkins School for the Blind and
member of Cambridge Common Voices. Later in the episode you heard an improvisational
choral meditation created by members of VOICES 21C and Cambridge Common Voices in
response to today’s conversation. The creative leaders for this project were Brad Dumont
and Krystal Morin. You can listen to the full recording and learn about their creative process
on our website, www.thechoralcommons.com.

MUSIC:​ Bright Ideas by Shin Suzuma