Voices of Friendship

Voices of Friendship is a choir for senior citizens living in familial or assited residential care and their caregivers to sing together.  The choir rehearses in Holy Spirit Episcopal Church's Parish Hall every Monday from September until the December concert at 10:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. We start rehearsing again in January until the May concert.  Registration for the choir can be done via this link.

Voices of Friendship is about loving our neighbors as ourselves.  The music on our programs are largely popular standards, show tunes, and good ol' ballads that have been vernacular music for more than seventy years.  

Some journeys start with tears...

I hadn't been in Waco for six full months before I realized that isolation and the loneliness it inspires was hurting the senior citizens in this community.  It isn't often (anymore) that one winds up in the presence of strangers who are crying because of being moved by music, but I realized last December at a residential care center here in town that it wasn't the caroling of my Quire that had moved three senior citizens to tears that day.  They were alone and it was the holidays, and not all their holidays had looked like this.  I knew I wanted to change that, but I didn't know how... Until I met Edie Elkjer and her choir Love Notes Chorus down in Austin, Texas.  

Love Notes Chorus is also a ministry of an Episcopal church reaching out to seniors and caregivers enduring the ravages of memory loss and cognitive decline.  I joined their numbers last spring to sing with them and learn their processes so that Waco could have a musical place, free of "othering," where our city's caregivers (both in centers and families) and seniors could sing together so that their voices will be heard, their dignity as humans can be seen, and their needs for companionship are understood and met.

This choir really is for everyone.  You don't have to know how to read music.  You don't have to have a gorgeous voice.  The only requirement is that you have to want to be with other people and sing along to music you probably knew many years ago.  You have to long to share yourself with people and make new friends.  

Please join us on Mondays and then some of the loneliness in these communities of seniors will start to disappear... One voice at a time.