Every Choir

Doors: 1:45 PM

Event: 2 - 3:30 PM

All Ages Welcome

No Refunds or Exchanges

eTown is launching a new monthly community event series that we are calling Every Choir. This is an opportunity to sing in a choir for an afternoon. Singing together helps to build community, releases stress, and creates hope and resilience. This is an opportunity to make some new friends and raise our diverse voices together as one. There are no auditions and no previous training is necessary. Come unlock your voice in a supportive environment and experience the joy of creating something bigger than ourselves through song.

Each month we will host a new choir leader. For the month of January, we welcome Emma Kieran Schaefer. Emma is a Colorado-based singer-songwriter who is inspired by artists such as Anaïs Mitchell, Nanci Griffith, Jewel, Kacey Musgraves, John Denver and Joni Mitchell. She writes about the people and places she encounters among her travels and hopes you’ll find a piece of yourself within her songs.

What to expect:

We will work on different songs that will be taught by ear and sung acapella. During the 90 minutes together we will:

• Begin with vocal warm ups and move around the space to get into our bodies.
• Be taught new songs by call and repeat. Lyrics will be projected on screen.
• As we gain confidence in the songs, we will expand with harmonies.

Whether you're a choir veteran or have never sung in a group before, every voice is welcome.

This experience will be seated and standing.

About Emma Kieran Schaefer:

Upon returning from a year of traveling the world exploring the healing power of music within the climate crisis, Emma Kieran Schaeferwill lead January's Every Choir. Like the Colorado Rocky Mountains she calls home, Emma’s musical storytelling brings listeners to new perspectives, showing them an expansive hopefulness and a strength rooted in our connection to one another and the Earth.

Growing up listening to Nanci Griffith, John Denver, and numerous bluegrass bands, Emma weaves these musical influences with contemporary folk inspirations such as Anaïs Mitchell, Joy Oladokun, Sarah Jarosz, and Noah Kahan. She has been writing, recording, and performing for over 10 years, and was recognized early in her career in 2016 by eTown’s Handmade Songs Competition, where she was selected as a winner for her original song, "Rearranged," by a panel of judges including Gregory Alan Isakov. An advocate for environmental, climate, and social justice, Emma’s music looks to nature to help us understand our complex human experience and remind us that we, too, are nature. In May 2023, she released an album about Iowa ecosystems as part of her senior thesis at Grinnell College titled Sowing Songs.

As a 2023-24 recipient of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Emma returns in August 2024 after traveling the world for a year on a journey of independent research across many continents and cultures, learning from musicians, educators, artists, Indigenous traditions, and activists about the role of music to help address the climate crisis. She has also performed at many venues and festivals along the way.

Host or Publisher eTown