The St. John Recovery Choir is welcoming new and old members to begin rehearsals for the fall season, which culminates in a concert and dance party on Dec. 20 in Frank Powell Park.
The choir will be collaborating with Quelbe Resurrection again this year. “Thanks, Sing St. John, for inviting us back for your holiday concert,” said band co-founder Carl Powell Sr. “Everyone in Quelbe Resurrection is so excited and looking forward to this collaboration. Let’s go make some holiday memories together!”
This year, to make things easier for residents of St. John who live closer to Coral Bay, Tuesday night rehearsals will be held at Our Place from 5 pm. to 6:30 p.m. beginning Sept. 30.
And to make things easier for folks who like to sleep a bit later on Saturdays, rehearsals at Hawksnest Beach will be held from 10:30 a.m. to noon starting Oct. 4.
“After our One Love dance party at Our Place in June, we realized the importance of being accessible to singers and audience members who live in Coral Bay or East End,” said choir director Kristen Carmichael-Bowers. “It’s easy for those of us who live in Cruz Bay to get in a mindset that centers around this end of the island. You matter, Coral Bay; we love you! Come out and sing!”
In the coming weeks, choir members will begin learning holiday songs for Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, Kwanzaa, and Old Year’s Night. No singing experience is required, and members don’t need to know how to read music. Carmichael-Bowers provides lyric sheets, guide tracks, recordings, and sheet music to use for practice.
For the December concert, the St. John Recovery Choir will be joined by St. John’s community church choirs, the Senior Singalong, Ocama Youth Choir, the Echo People and Quelbe Resurrection Band.
“Sing St. John is about inclusivity and thinking with a community mindset, rather than an individualistic one,” said Carmichael-Bowers. “Shared cultural experience, especially when using our voices, our breath — using all of our very different individual bodies to make something — gives form to our sense of what we are as a community.”
All of Sing St. John programs are still offered free of charge. “There is a $50 materials fee for the Recovery Choir that can be easily waived by checking the box when registering,” said Carmichael-Bowers. “This is an especially hard time for some of us,” she added.
New and old members can register online at www.singstjohn.org. (“People sometimes miss the final step,” Carmichael-Bowers said. “To complete the registration, be sure to hit the ‘submit’ button at the end of the process.”) Registration materials in paper form are also available at the Sing St. John office located inside Pelican Post in Cruz Bay.
The Recovery Choir (which got its name following Hurricane Irma in 2018) is one of four choir programs under the Sing St. John umbrella. “We serve over 1,000 people in audience members, including 360 singers from five years old to seniors; we provide a choir program for every elementary school and every homeschool child on St. John,” said Carmichael-Bowers.
Carmichael-Bowers epitomizes optimism, but she admits that this year presents new challenges. “I cannot deny the reality; things are getting exponentially more difficult for community nonprofits to function,” she said. “Cost of materials and cost of living are rising, and the available grant funding is far less. We have more than 65 volunteers that make this possible each year, and there’s no extra built into our budget — it goes directly to sustaining these programs.”
To help fund its programs, Sing St. John is beginning its fall appeal now. Donations can be made online at https://www.singstjohn.org.
“Grants, which are becoming more scarce, often require a matching amount, so we always need to show that we are receiving voluntary community funding,” Carmichael-Bowers said.
Membership in the Recovery Choir is open to anyone 12 and older. Children aged eight and above are welcome to attend with a parent. For further information, contact Carmichael-Bowers at 802-380-0761 or email her at kristen@singstjohn.org.
