You're invited to FEAST!

Do you like art in its various forms? (or just particularly supportive of hospice choirs)?
Do you really like food?   (or just need to eat from time to time)?

Then you'll like FEAST!  Pencil it on your calendar:  6-9 p.m. on Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at the Eagles' Club in South Minneapolis, (25th and 25th)

FEAST stands for ...

Funding
Emerging
Artists with
Sustainable
Tactics

and is a public dinner where attendees like you get to eat with a few artists while learning about their community art project du jour.  Before the night is over you get to vote for your favorite community art project from a field of ten.  The winner of the most votes takes home the admission proceeds (a pay what-you-can, suggested donation $10-20, though no one is turned away for lack o' funds structure) to apply to their project and returns to the next FEAST to give a report on how their funds were used.  Cool, huh?

Grace Notes, the Points of Lights Music project hospice choir in partnership with AseraCare Hospice, is one of the 11 community art projects slated for the March FEAST.  Come on out and support this hospice choir -- we need all the help we can to do well at this democractic event so feel free to extend the invite to co-workers, family and friends interested in the arts and/or sustainable programs. 

Points of Light Music awarded MRAC grant

[Apologies to all for the belatedness of this announcement...]

In December 2010, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, http://www.mrac.org/, awarded Points of Light Music a $5,000 Community Arts grant to run a hospice choir project between January and May 2011.  Points of Light Music is one of 63 organizations to recieve awards that demonstrate strong artistic quality and a response to community's needs. 

This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

More updates will be forthcoming about the project's progress.  To read about the call for singers, see http://pointsoflightmusic.blogspot.com/2010/12/invitation-to-join-hospice-choir.html. 

A quote for the New Year

This could be a poetic form for my resolutions this year. 

Sing songs that none have sung,

Think thoughts that ne’er in brain have rung,

Walk in paths that none have trod,

Weep tears as none have shed for God,

Give peace to all to whom none other gave,

Claim him your own who’s everywhere disclaimed.

Love all with love that none have felt, and brave

The battle of life with strength unchained.

⎯ Paramahansa Yogananda

Thanks Rochelle! 

Invitation to join a hospice choir

You are invited to join a hospice choir I am directing this spring. Please consider sharing your voice and heart in the rewarding work of singing at the bedside of someone in fragile physical and emotional condition.

Communicating love and care to someone who is struggling with life and death takes a heart full of compassion, attentive eyes, a kind face and a voice strong enough to be vulnerable. Doing this work brings meaningful life lessons – I hope you are ready to receive them.

If you are interested, please continue reading about orientation, rehearsals and bedside visits. If you know of someone who may be interested in this, please forward this to them.