BLOGS

• Catching Up, August through December 2007 Blog

• We Be 3 Tour Blog

December 2007:

There are new photos and some stories if you go to the Blog above for Catching Up August to December '07.

It has been a big and wondrous year full of music and challenges for mind and body.

May we all thrive in the new year of 2008.Wishing you great and tender holidays extending strongly into 2008 with all our prayers in a mighty chorus for peace.

Blessings on all those whose bodies and souls need healing including the great Mother Earth herself and all her creatures.Stay warm and save time to go inside your own heart.

Much love all around, Rhiannon

SUMMER 2007 :

July 31, 2007 - High summer at home in Point Reyes.

Home after two profound musical tours in Europe. One with We Be 3 in May and the other with Bobby McFerrin and Voicestra in July.

I got to sing with my growing family of improvising singers in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Holland. I met new vocal friends and taught many new students of improvisation from 18 to 70 years of age.

It seems this work is calling me loud and clear. I have been improvising all these years of course, but it is now an even richer experience for me, reminding me of what is most important in my life and work. Improvisation has this capacity to teach us to how to live; understanding how to imagine all our options, how to be awake more completely in every moment, how to remember our gratitude for enormous daily blessings all the while singing.

What could be better?

I surely would like to figure out how to be at home and in the world at the same time, or at least how to bring my cats along!

Touring with Joey Blake and David Worm as We Be 3 was a dream come true. I have been singing with these two music masters for 25 years. Our friendship and intuition about one another is vital to the music we make. After all this time, it was finally possible to organize a month long tour teaching improvisation and doing concerts in the way we have long imagined, totally improvised. The beauty of it is that after so much work together, our music has the shaped quality of song form and the excitement of the unknown. The audience reaction was so strong and positive in each place. The students in the conservatories responded as though they were getting a piece of information that filled in a space in their education. I assume they will go further and hope to see many of them another year.

At the top of this newsletter is a link to the Blog of the We Be 3 tour with wonderful slide shows of the various cities and conservatories where we taught. Jan Watson, my partner and an amazing photographer, traveled with us and documented the dynamic interchange that went on in the teaching and performance.

Looks like we will return to Europe next May and continue.

The Voicestra continues to evolve and open. These concerts with Bobby and the 12 singer ensemble are improvised as well. As we get deeper with one another, a new phase of our work as begun. Four of us taught with Bobby at Omega in June and then all 12 of us taught at the Stimmen Festival in Basil, Switzerland late June. We have long been curious about one another and the various realms we bring to the music. This opportunity to be teachers together is very new and we are eager to pursue the collaborative nature of it. The concerts are taking new leaps in vulnerability and musical diversity as well. Hope you might get to hear us in 2008 when we have a 2 or 3 week tour of the US. Look for dates on Bobby's website soon or check on mine in the coming weeks as it solidifies. There is also talk of a tour to Eastern Europe and Russia next summer.

Just now, watering the garden seems the perfect counterpoint to all that. Balance is the key. Know what I mean?

The world situations are ever more dire and the solutions seem just at hand, but out of reach somehow.

So let the music bridge the gap and also get involved in whatever way you can in your community or out there in the large world.

We are all needed.

We are all part of this song.

I send you love and thanks for all you do in this world.

Rhiannon