Ellen Robinson

Another year...another miracle!

2008-04-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

In 1980 I started The Anything Goes Chorus, a community chorus for men and women that was open to anyone who showed up. Over time singers have come and gone, but many have stayed...and for years. As they've kept coming back, their skills have improved and the music I introduce to the group now is more challenging and the level of the singing has developed way beyond where many of the singers started. These days they can sing jazz chords and do some fancy scat sections. They can move together in sync as they perform and also sing in different languages. They can touch people's hearts and move their audiences with the beauty of the sound they create and the emotion they bring to a song. The Anything Goes Chorus is no longer a singing group for just anyone.

Every year in the spring we put on a 90 minute concert at a major venue in the Bay Area. These are not professional singers by the way, and in a matter of months I teach them all their parts, motivate them to memorize ALL their music, clean up their diction, drill the rhythms till they are precise, work on vocal technique until everyone (mostly) is singing in tune, shape the dynamics so they are fluid, help them to get inside the lyrics until the words feel like their own, add a sprinkling of props and choreography...and on top of that, they learn to do all these things AND have a great time and many of them experience what may be one of the peak moments of their year. Whew! Do you have any idea what a HUGE undertaking that it?

And so, when I tell you that this year was yet another amazingly success show (the 27th Annual Concert) combining the San Francisco and Oakland Choruses to create a group of 40 confident singers performing with obvious glee for an enthusiastic audience of nearly 400---well, I hope you will understand how oh-so-very-pleased-and-proud I am.

Another year...another miracle!

2008-04-06T19:34:00.001-07:00

How I Got On The Front Page Of The San Francisco Chronicle

2008-01-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

As a performer I have always wanted to be on the front page of a major newspaper. I had envisioned a huge headline with my name in CAPS and a flashy action photo of me singing in front of a large audience. Well, I was wandering around downtown San Francisco with a friend two days before Christmas. We were both wearing reindeer antlers (her idea) and I must say we were feeling and looking quite festive. A reporter spotted us (and frankly, who hadn't?) and he asked if we wanted to have our picture taken for the SF Chronicle. But of course, we said yes! So there I was on Christmas morning in full color and with reindeer antlers smack dab on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. Not exactly as I had envisioned it...but you know, I'll take it anyway I can get it. This may be my best advertising campaign to date! The headline was "Bay Area Families Wish the Rest of the Bay Area Happy Holidays" and included photos of all kinds of family groupings. Hooray! to the SF Chronicle for their willingness to show the wonderful diversity of the Bay Area and show family life as it truly is--- in all its forms. Welcome to 2008.

A New Season of Music

2007-09-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

And so, I am back directing and teaching all six of my choral groups. Six you say!? Absolutely: The Anything Goes Chorus (one in Oakland and two in San Francisco), Swingshift Singers, Treble Makers and Girlfriendz. Oh yes, and then there's one more: a Master Class in Solo Singing that I offer a few times a year. That actually makes seven then. Every other choral director I mention this to looks at me like I must be out of my mind to take on such a Herculean task. I am, but I love what I do. Working with music and singing every day, and being the guide and cheer leader for singers to find their own voice and fill the planet with harmony---what could be better? Well, perhaps singing in my own performance. But the work I get to do IS indeed a blessing to me.

My own show is coming in October and I will move aside all the needs and questions and concerns and emails of my students to make time for myself and my own voice. Charts to write, lyrics to memorize, melodies to solidify, set lists to prepare, rehearsals to schedule - and then of course charts to rewrite...on and on and on. I can't wait.

I do love singing!

High Sierras again!

2007-08-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

Every year for the past 25 years I have taken time off in the summer to rest my ears and rejeuvenate my spirit. It helps me to stay fresh and sustains me so I am able to do the work I do all year long: leading, coaching, inspiring, directing, teaching, organizing, envisioning, composing, arranging, promoting, selling...and finally performing!

This year I went up in to the Minarettes from the Devil's Postpile trailhead near Mammouth, CA.

My idea of a vacation is to drive 6 hours to a trailhead, put 40 pounds on my back and hike in about 8 miles to the Sierra high country above 9,000 feet and spend 8 days in the awesome quiet majesty of the mountains. I am blessed to have a dear crazy friend who has also been willing to rearrange her entire life for the past nine years so she and I can take off for 10 days and totally get away. Mind you, not all of it is very glamorous: it's exhausting hauling the pack on the first day when it is at it's heaviest and climbing up what is inevitably some steep pass and all the while getting acclimated to the change in altitude. And by the end of 8 days I'm mighty dirty. "Ripe" we call it. Sleeping on the ground is not actually sleeping at all, but more like a fish flopping back and forth on dry land trying to get comfortable all night long. (Is it morning yet?) Basically, we don't really sleep at all. But my brain...ah, it is calm at last and my heart opens wide. My spirit is very turned on, my senses are very awake and I feel fully alive. So, I keep going back. I plan to continue to do so until my legs will no longer carry me. My friend and I talk every year about what we'll do when we can no longer carry our own packs: using mules to take in our belongings or get air lifted in by helicopter or other alternatives. But for now, I am blessedly healthy at 58 and glad of it!

What is so magical that I must return every year dispite the effort? Maybe it's because it is SO different from the rest of how I spend my year: I don't have to care about how I look or sell anything to anyone, there is no one telling me what to buy or trying to impress upon me their point of view---in fact, there is nothing but wide open space and beauty in every single thing I see. Not a billlboard or sign. Not the sound of one car. Not a cell phone or computer. No machinery at all.
The experience cleans out my head of all the noise, and I remember what is most important to me once again.

I take lots of gorgeous yummy pictures with my Contax point & shoot film camera. It's really the only time I take pictures at all. Still no need for digital since my camera takes killer pix and weighs hardly anything (besides I spent alot of money on it). I make a slide show on my computer in iPhoto and add wonderful music and watch it over and over and over...then I get to watch it over and over again as I share it with each of my friends.

I write music when I'm in the mountains and when I come home, I arrange the songs for my choral groups. This music is very different from the kind of songs I sing when I perform or the tunes I write for my jazz trio. It's written from a perspective I can only get in touch with when I am so very close to the clouds. When I go back to work with my six choral groups, I teach the songs to them and I get to hear the music sung back to me in four parts and it is glorious. What a kick!

And for a few months (if I'm lucky) after I return from the mountians, I can hang on to some of that feeling of openness and connection till the rhythm of the city pounds in my ears and I am filled with details and deadlines, once again.

Welcome

2007-06-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

This is a completely new venture for me. I am excited to be able to communicate with you about my upcoming performance dates and new musical ideas, as well as reflections on the progress of my music career and musings on life in general. May this be the beginning of many exchanges to be shared.

Today was a large and profound day for me. I sang at the memorial of a very dear high school friend. The song I sang is called "Guide Me." I learned it from Bonnie Barnett (creator of the nation wide "Tunnel Hum") when I first came to San Francisco in 1977. Since then this song has had a rich history for me--I've sung it on mountain tops at 11,000 feet in the High Sierras and at the memorial for my friend's mother as we scattered the ashes in the San Francisco Bay. I also wrote an a cappella arrangement and recorded it with Vocolot (on the "Heart Beat" CD) during the time I performed with this women's group. I sang it again at my own mother's funeral in 2003.

My friend Anne Moses had been battling lung cancer for the last eighteen months and finally died at the beginning of June of 07 in a hospital in Egypt (of all places!) while on her last vacation. When she first told me she was dying she had asked me to sing at her memorial...my breath stopped for a moment, and then I answered: "of course I will." We agreed the song would be "Guide Me." Eighteen months later I downloaded the Vocolot recording and sent it to her partner Gloria, who played it for Anne on a laptop the day before she died---I was able to sing to my friend right in her ear as she lay dying in the hospital in Egypt on the other side of the world. That was, and still is, utterly amazing to me.

And today was not a performance. It was a gift I gave to my dear friend, and I was so glad to do so. I wasn't sure if I could pull it off, but I discovered a calmness I did not know I could muster up in such a situation. Gratefully, it was an alcohol free gathering in honor of Anne's 24 years of sobriety. And so, everyone was very present, open, full and authentic. My task became easy...just be myself and do what I do best. And so I sang.

Goodbye my friend. I know you heard the song.
I will carry you in my heart.

You can hear a bit of the song. Just cut and paste this URL:
http://www.vocolot.com/heart_beat.html#GuideMe