Announcing our 2024-2025 season!
|
SINGPOSITIVE is an intergenerational community choir based in Jamaica Plain. Led by Lysander Jaffe, Lexi Ugelow, and our incredible volunteers, we welcome singers of all ages to make music together in community. Our fall semester starts September 15, 2024
|
|
|
|
SING • PLAY • in COMMUNITY • for JUSTICE
|
|
SingPositive is the community choir for everyone! Join us! |
SingPositive is an intergenerational family choir, rehearsing and performing in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
|
Imagine a community choir where your whole family is welcomed! SingPositive is a “village” of more than 25 families making music together on Sunday afternoons. Do you love to sing old favorites in harmony with friends? Would you like to learn new tunes with a professional conductor and a warm and enthusiastic community? Top it off with exciting collaborations with local musicians and community groups. Children, youth, and elders, we have as much fun learning the music as we do sharing it at Jamaica Plain community events like the Lantern Parade and the Wake Up the Earth Festival, and at shows in May and December.
Join our merry crew! Our seasons start in March and September- we hope you will join us! In addition, please consider making a donation to SingPositive! Your donations and support help us keep making music with each other and sharing with our community.
|
What do we sing? Check out our past concerts:
Spring 2019: Love Lessons
Lessons in love of all kinds.
Selections from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leonard Cohen (specially arranged for SingPositive by conductor Joel Sindelar), MaMuse, David Bowie, and more, including the Ukelele Band playing "Lava"!
Selections from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leonard Cohen (specially arranged for SingPositive by conductor Joel Sindelar), MaMuse, David Bowie, and more, including the Ukelele Band playing "Lava"!
Spring 2018: SingPowerful II
|
|
|
Fall 2017 Concert: SingPowerful!
|
Our Fall concert we offered up songs of light and strength for dark days and dark times! Featuring a strong performance by the kids' band, and accompanied by guitarist Naty Hernandez, we sang a variety of music, from punk to folk to hip-hop. Selections from Sweet Honey in the Rock, The Interrupters, Ledbelly, Jennifer Lopez/Lin Manuel Miranda, and Pete Seeger.
Watch our Fall 2017 concert: SingPowerful! |
Spring 2017 Concert: Dance, Sing, Revolution!
|
Spring 2017 featured a collaboration with JP dance school BalletRox, plus tap dancer Jenny Herzog on percussion! We met the turbulent times with an energetic, upbeat musical response. Selections from Kristin Andreassen, Bob Marley, Sly and the Family Stone, Leonard Cohen, The Clash, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and MILCK.
|
Winter 2016 Concert: Sing Justice!
|
Our December 2016 show featured a collaboration with local band Afrika Gente and vocalist Naty Hernandez. We were thrilled to present music in three languages, affirming the central place of immigrants in our communities.
Here's a sampling of the songs we sang: Clandestino (Manu Chao) Try Everything (Shakira) Visa Para un Sueno (Juan Luis Guerra) RESPECT (Latin version!) Adventure of a Lifetime (Coldplay) SingPositive topped off our season with an encore show for the residents of Mount Pleasant Home in Jamaica Plain. SingPositive was also proud to join Jewish Voice for Peace at the Chanukah Solidarity March Against Islamophobia on December 21st in front of the State House. We sang Clandestino and Qad Kafani ‘ilmu Rabbi. |
Spring 2016: Music to the Mother and Mother Earth
|
The Spring show was dedicated to mothers and Mother Earth and featured a collaboration with JP band The Grass Gypsys.
The performance included some old favorites, plus a twist: Three Little Birds I Can See Clearly Now Wonderful World The Times They Are A Changin' (2016 Climate Change rewrite) Forever Young And check out this video of Bohemian Rhapsody (Tantrum cut) - what fun to practice and perform! |
Artistic Directors
Lysander Jaffe (Co-Director) is a violinist, vocalist, and choir director, equally at home in classical music, traditional music, and educational settings. He serves as a Co-Artistic Director of Palaver Strings, a chamber orchestra and nonprofit based in Portland, ME, and of Culomba, a genre-defying vocal quintet based in Boston. A devoted student of traditional music, he has studied with master musicians in Bulgaria, Kosovo, Greece, Corsica, and Georgia. In 2020, he completed his Masters in Contemporary Improvisation at New England Conservatory, where he studied styles ranging from free improvisation to Hindustani music with Warren Senders, Joe Morris, and many others. As a teacher, Lysander is passionate about broadening the cultural horizons of students of all backgrounds. He has been on faculty for Village Harmony since 2013, where he teaches polyphonic singing styles from the Balkans and Mediterranean, and he has co-directed SingPositive since 2018.
Lexi Ugelow (Co-Director) is a lifelong learner and lover of intergenerational community singing. She is a professional singer, a song writer and has toured with groups such as Northern Harmony, performing and teaching workshops to adults and children. Her interests and experience with music spans from funk, to world folk music, to classical and her heart really lies with anything a capella. A firm believer that our bodies are our instruments, she encourages the practice of non-judgement during exploration of musical play. She was director of her a cappella group “The Limelights,” for three years before moving to NYC in the fall, where she worked as an Assistant Sound Engineer. Having grown up with the Family Folk Chorale, she is excited to be coming back home and joining the sister community of Sing Positive"
Joel Sindelar (Founder and Longtime Director) is a musician, conductor, and teacher living in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Previous to his work with SingPositive, he was conductor of the Newton Family Singers, and founded and conducted two other JP choruses: the Loose Canon Chorale and the Churchless Church Choir. He has taught music at many area schools, including the JFK School in JP, The Hurley School and Kingsley Montessori School in Back Bay, and the Lesley Ellis School in Arlington. Mr. Sindelar is a third generation musician, teacher, and scientist; he graduated from MIT with a Bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology, and from New England Conservatory with a Master's degree in Choral Conducting. His primary conducting teachers and mentors were Tamara Brooks and Lorna Cooke deVaron. After founding and directing SingPositive for seven years, he is shifting into a new role as Choral Director at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, but will stay involved with SingPositive in an important advisory role and as an occasional guest conductor.