Ellen Robinson

Jefferson Awards

2012-01-13T17:41:00.000-08:00

Last year I had the honor of being a 2011 winner of the Jefferson Award for my service to the Bay Area. I have been directing The Anything Goes Chorus for over 30 years and have brought singing to thousands of people, both students and audiences. The Jefferson Awards are a prestigious national recognition system honoring community and public service in America. They began in 1972 to create a Nobel Prize for public service and are presented on two levels: national and local.

http://www.jeffersonawards.org

Last night I attended the Jefferson Awards Ceremony at Herbst Theater in San Francisco. The octet that I direct, Girlfriendz, sang in the lobby as people arrived and added lovely a cappella singing to the evening. Among the presenters in the ceremony were Kate Kelly and Sharon Chin from CBS Channel 5 and one of the founders, Sam Beard. It was truly an exceptional event. There were movies about the winners and also personal presentations by several of them. Hearing the stories of these wonderful people and seeing them in person was incredibly moving. It was a thrill for me be on the stage with all 52 of the Bay Area winners (one for each week of the year). I had no idea I would get a medal, and such a lovely one. For me to be in the company of so many ordinary people doing extraordinary things was both humbling and uplifting. It was a wonderful night and it brought a much needed hopeful message to all who attended, and more than compensated for our daily onslaught of dismal news.

So to all my students: I hope you understand that each one of you is actually making a difference in our community by sharing your voice. Making music, sharing it with each other and bringing it to people---these are powerful and positive forces for good. Thank you for being my students and for letting me lead you in song. I feel blessed that I have this gift to share. I could not do my work without you.

CD News!

2011-12-23T23:05:00.000-08:00

I've always wanted to fly and here I am doing just that.

OK, so I'm only a few feet off the ground. But it counts!

Speaking of flying...

CD NEWS!

This year I performed at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley

with my very talented quartet:

Murray Low, Sam Bevan, Kristen Strom and Dan Foltz.

We recorded the show and I just finished mixing and mastering.

The new live recording is called "Don't Wait Too Long"

and will be released in 2012.

Stay tuned...I'm very excited!

What a year...what a life!

2011-06-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

It's been an incredible year for me professionally!

I celebrated 30 years as founder and director of

the Anything Goes Chorus(San Francisco & Oakland)

with a gala concert in March,

which included three women's ensembles I direct:

Girlfriendz, Swingshift Singers and Treblemakers.

At this concert I was presented with commendations

from Senator Barbara Lee

and also from the City of Oakland.

Then to top it off---in June I was given a Jefferson Award!

Watch it here:

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/06/01/jefferson-awards-delivering-the-healing-power-of-music/

It is such an honor to be recognized in these significant ways

for doing this work I love.

I started teaching at the Jazzschool in Berkeley last fall:

a Jazz Singing class and also a Chart Talk workshop

for vocalists to learn how to prepare music for their band or pianist.

In the area of performing, I am thrilled to have found

some fine new venues

where I can sing with my quartet:

the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland

and the brand new Freight and Salvage in Berkeley.

(Now I have performed at all three locations.)

The show at the Freight was recorded live

and I started mixing yesterday.

Very exciting! This is my third project

and will definitely be my best so far.

I plan to release this CD in 2012.

I am looking forward to a well deserved

and much needed vacation in August

to hike in the Eastern Sierras and visit friends back East,

to have some time to relax in nature and be in the quiet,

and also enjoy the space to just chill out on my own.

Ah.....

2010-05-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

It has been a jam packed Spring filled with music, music, music!

The Anything Goes Chorus performed the 29th Annual Spring Concert combining SF and Oakland choruses at the First Congregational Church in Oakland.

I returned for the second year to Yoshi's Jazz Club in Oakland with my quartet and sang my heart out for an enthusiastic audience that filled the house once again.

Girlfriendz had two concerts in one weekend in San Leandro Library Theater and the nonet delighted the crowd both nights with their vocals and choreography.

Treble Makers had a triumphant concert at Avonova in Oakland singing for family and friends and the quartet put on a full evening of entertainment.

Coming up next month will be a production of West Side Story by the Stagebridge seniors at the Ashby theater in Berkeley, and later in June a recital by my jazz vocal students at the Jazzschool.

Whew!

Then I will take a well deserved vacation this summer and spend some time in my beloved Eastern Sierra mountains. This will be followed by a trip back east to Cape Cod to visit old college friends, hang out at the Atlantic Ocean, soak up some sun and rest up for the fall and more music, music, music!

View from 2010

2010-01-23T20:51:00.000-08:00

Communicating in mere words is incredibly difficult and often just plain inadequate. A quote from Paula Underwood Spencer, an American Indian writer, offers a possible method for dealing with the challenge: "If you want to be truly understood, you need to say everything three times, in three different ways. Once for each ear and once for the heart. The right ear represents the ability to apprehend the nature of the Whole, the wholeness of the circumstance, the forest. The left ear represents the ability to select a sequential path. And the heart represents a balance between the two."

This is why I'm a musician. I aim for both ears and the heart---all at once.

Ellen Robinson at Yoshi's

2009-09-05T03:51:00.001-07:00

Here are some wonderful live photos from my sold out gig at Yoshi's taken by my friend and fabulous photographer Anna Kuperberg. It was such a blast...enjoy! Yoshi's, 5/12/2009

A lucky so & so...

2009-08-23T17:55:00.000-07:00

I am a lucky woman! I get to do the thing I love and make my living at it. This fall 2009 I am starting my 29th year directing the Anything Goes Chorus, 11th year with Girfriendz, 8th year with Swingshift Singers, 7th year with Treble Makers, and finally my 2nd year with Stagebridge. In an economy that is struggling and floundering and laying off people right and left, my students and all those people who are hooked on singing understand the power of lifting your voice and your spirit in song with other like minded vocalists. It is magical alchemy that enables you to become more than just yourself---the harmony morphs you in to an integral part of a musical tapestry that only exists in that moment. Those who have experienced it just don't want to live without it in their lives. Bodies vibrating together in vocal ecstasy...OK, maybe that is a bit much, but we all do get high from singing, legally. It's just pretty great. Period.

In addition to that, I am so excited to continue to make fabulous music with my dream band consisting of Murray Low on piano, Sam Bevan on bass, Bud Spangler on drums, and Kristen Strom on sax. We have a new venue coming up in November: an intimate house concert setting that will bring the audience up close and personal---just the way I like it!

And last but hardly least, what literally gets me high is backpacking at 11,000+ feet surrounded by 13,000+ foot mountains. Yes, it's true: for my 60th birthday this summer I was able to hike up in to the Eastern Sierra again. Truly another blessing to be fit and strong and have good knees that will take me up...and down again. It nourishes my soul, renews my energy and shows me that anything is possible, so I can come back and lead hundreds of singers for yet another year.

And so it is.

Is it really January 2009?

2009-01-17T11:42:00.000-08:00

OK. It's time.
A new year, a new President, new hope and a new perspective.
Time to start envisioning what we really desire,
what resources we need,
what we're willing to do to get there,
and who we can count as partners and collaborators
to go there with us.
Come with me.

In the midst of this current global economic nightmare,
banks failing and more & more people out of work,
and how many billions in bailouts?
and the ongoing and never-seeming-to-end
military retaliation and ancient antagonism between peoples
resulting in bloodshed and devastation,
as well as the environmental crises challenging this earth
and our ability to continue to thrive on this planet...
I see possibilities. I feel upbeat.
I see people opening their minds to new ways
of thinking and new ways of looking at situations.
Am I nuts?

It's clear - we have to try something new:
If we keep doing what we've been doing,
we'll keep getting what we've been getting.

I am thrilled to be starting off this year by singing at a new venue
with a truly outstanding band in the beautiful Julia Morgan Chapel
of the Chimes. The Chapel provides a wonderful visual backdrop
and acoustic listening venue for live music in a setting like no other.

It is Martin Luther King weekend.
It is two days before the inauguration of Barack Obama.
What a great way to come together in community and celebrate!

Read this Interview I did with my friend,
writer and musician Deborah Crooks.
It's about my upcoming show and prospects for 2009:
http://deborahcrooks.blogspot.com/2009/01/ellen-robinson-chapel-of-chimes

Let's go.
See you on the journey....please smile back.
(I'm the one on the right with the yellow and red pack.)

The Fullness of Fall

2008-09-03T03:15:00.000-07:00

It's September and vacation is over. I had another awesomely beautiful backpacking trip in the Sierras hiking out of Mineral King. This year we based camped at Little Five Lakes overlooking the magnificent Kaweah Mountain range. I literally spent hours watching the change of color on these mountains as it went from a clear gold in the early morning to an intense rose by the end of the day at sunset. Still... I'm glad to be back doing the work I love: music. Too much time alone and I crave human interaction and I miss being the center of attention once again - performing and leading my flock of singers & students. Arranging, composing, rehearsing, teaching, directing, planning, emailing, returning phone calls, booking gigs, multi tasking and generally just being a musician again. New choral arrangements have been chosen for the six (six!?) groups I regularly direct. And in addition to the usual six, I have also taken on two more new groups this fall. Yes, I know...I am completely nuts.

#1 The Berkeley Broadway Singers, a mixed community chorus of 70 singers (while Ellen Hoffman takes a well deserved sabbatical). I will teach the music, prep the singers for their four concerts, and conduct them in the November shows.
#2 Stagebridge, a senior theater company. I will be teaching songs from "Guys and Dolls" and collaborating with the drama and dance instructors. This 12 week workshop will culminate in a performance for the public of several scenes from the musical.

So, copies of all the music have been made and organized. Piles of music are all over and everywhere in my studio. Voice parts have been reviewed, tricky spots noted, piano accompaniment practiced...and I am ready to go.

In between all this, I am excited to have a new venue in Sacramento called Savanna's where I will be performing and then in December I will be back at Anna's Jazz island in Berkeley.

What a life! I have a full fall.

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.

Listen to a bit of the song:
http://www.vocolot.com/music/heart_beat/guide_me.html

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.