Arts Week with Sister Alice Martin (Part One)

Wow! What an experience! Carolyn Morse-Finn and I got back late last night from our 5-day workshop with Sister Alice Martin at the Omega Institute. About 70 people also enrolled, so we had a big choir to sing with. There's so much to share that it might have to be split up into a few different "chapters"; here's the first.


On day one, Sister Alice quietly introduced herself and her brother "Fatty," who accompanies on keyboards (and who isn't fat at all, except in his immense talent). They have such a deep musical connection that he often guessed where she was going before she even had to say anything to him. That was very cool to watch. She asked us to seat ourselves according to what part we thought we sang. Sopranos sat to her right, tenors and basses in the middle, and altos to her left. I usually sing in the soprano section with Rock My Soul, but I decided I wanted to stretch myself and learn to sing alto parts, so I sat with Carolyn, who usually sings alto or tenor, and all the other altos.

Sister Alice then asked if anyone had certain things they wanted from the week. I raised my hand and said we were part of a gospel choir in New England and were looking forward to seeing how a "real" gospel choir did things. Others said they wanted to learn how to move when they sang, how to sing better, and some even said they just wanted to see what singing gospel was like in general. Sister Alice said there was one thing she was confident of, and that was that we'd leave much different than when we came. She was right.

She then went over the "rules." She stressed that we were a community, and that being a community would help us sing better. (That's our emphasis in Rock My Soul too.) She told us she moved a lot when she taught and sang, and she demonstrated what her hand gestures meant: there was one for singing in unison, one for splitting into our parts, one for stopping, one for swelling, and one for modulating (going up into a different key). Finally, she said that we were to look at her always as we sang. As the leader, she needed to have our complete attention if we were to learn all that she wanted us to. Her plan was to have us learn from 15 to 20 songs in 4 days, perform some of them on the 4th night for the entire Omega community of 400 who were there for Arts Week, and on the 5th day have our own talent show, where we could perform for others in our group if we wanted to share our gifts. That sounded like a lot, and some of us weren't so sure we could learn all that material, especially if we didn't have lyric sheets or sheet music! But she assured us that we would remember.

And off she went, right into the first song. She started by having us speak a line or two after her. Then she sang the soprano part, loudly and with such feeling we were left speechless with our mouths hanging open in awe. What a voice! She had the sopranos sing the lines after her--two, three, four, five, however many times it took to get it right so that the lines were sung with the same feeling and emphasis she modeled. Then she moved to the altos and sang that line, having us repeat the same way. Then to the tenors and basses, who most often had the same part. In some cases, she asked the "top tenors" to sing a different line, but that was more the exception than the rule. After we'd all sung our parts enough times that she was satisfied we'd gotten them down, we sang a section of a song together, over and over. When that was solid, she moved to the next section. And so it went until we'd gone through every section. Then it was time to put it all together and sing the whole song, with her coaching us by speaking or singing the lines right before we sang them. In 3 hours, we had 4 songs down. Whew! The interesting part was that it never felt like work. Because it was all in context and done with such feeling and gusto, it was downright fun, and we all bonded immediately through the experience.

We had a 2 1/2 hour break for lunch, and it was back to the workshop for 2 1/2 more hours of learning. We reviewed what we'd gone over that morning, polished up difficult spots, and learned some more new material. By the end of the day, we had 6 songs. She thanked everyone for their hard work, and with a big smile said that even though we might not believe it, we'd wake up in the morning with the words and music to the songs in our heads. She was right. I was astounded and very happy to see such an effective teaching method in action! I was also mesmerized that this way of teaching helped us learn so much more quickly than reading sheet music--it made us internalize the music and feeling behind the songs right away, and in that sense helped us sing in one day what might normally take weeks or months to accomplish through other methods.

But it wasn't just her teaching style that reached us so quickly and deeply. Sister Alice lives what she sings, and it shows. There is a peace about her, a calm and stillness that you know comes from many years of faith work. She embodies spirit in a way I've encountered very few times in my life, but each time I have, the impact is so strong it has changed me. I know the real thing when I see it, and Sister Alice is definitely the real thing. She and Brother Fatty are life changers. I watched their gifts of music and spirit profoundly touch those in our singing community, and it was something to behold.

From her peace springs a joy so big, so bold that it can't help but bust out and uplift everyone around her when she sings. That's how it was when she sang to us to help us learn our lines. Much different from the quiet reserve that so many of us in New England are used to, and it was reassuring to me as a gospel singer! (I have never been able to stand still or hold back vocally while singing gospel solos, and after watching Sister Alice, I realized that is definitely OK. She kept telling us to move with it, walk with it, and I was more than happy to oblige.) Carolyn and I sang so loudly that I wondered if my voice would hold out. I was worried that we'd offend those around us, because when you're in a choir you want to focus on blending with other voices around you. I guess in gospel it doesn't work that way so much. Sure, you want to blend, but you want to blend by having EVERYONE sing as loudly as the emotion of a song is meant to convey. Carolyn said she tried to blend, but she just got so excited she could't help herself. All that mattered was singing out all the joy and light in our hearts and souls. THAT'S gospel.

It was fun to watch some of the altos cluster around Carolyn when they heard her. Carolyn has a big voice, and they looked to her as a leader in our section so they could make sure they had their notes right. Way to go, Carolyn! Sister Alice noticed, too. She kept looking over in our direction with a huge smile, and she said more than once, "Altos, when you're on, you're ON!" (Of course, that also meant sometimes we could really go south, but oh well! That'll happen when you learn a lot of songs in such a short time, and some of them were pretty complicated.) That was another thing I was struck by--how positive Sister Alice was about what we did. Every time each section got a part down, she'd have the rest of us give them a big hand. It makes all the difference. And when we veered off course, she'd shake her head and joke with us in a way that let us know how to do it better without feeling bad about making mistakes. I realized how important a good sense of humor is in a director. There's a lightness in her approach that I learned a lot from. I can still hear her saying, "Altos, I don't know what y'all were just singing, but it wasn't what I taught you," and then busting into laughter before singing the correct line loudly to us over and over until we got it right. She's a gifted teacher.

Since this post is getting really long, I'll write more later. I feel I've barely touched the surface of all I learned and want to share. I guess for now I'll end with the same way I started: Wow!