Heartland Harmony
Heartland Harmony
ember folk choir is a community choir in Viroqua, Wisconsin directed by Anni Zylstra. We sing traditional polyphonic folk music, with a primary focus in regions such as the Celtic Isles, Georgia, the Balkans, and Ukraine. We are a mixed-voice, queer-friendly, a-capella choir that sings for joy and to uplift the eclectic historical musical traditions we study. We learn primarily through oral tradition style call-and-response aided by lyric sheets and sheet music. To learn more, you can read our choir FAQ or read this 2023 article written about our group. To be notified when future semesters open for registration, get on our mailing list at the form below.
Fall Semester
12 Weeks
Thursdays, 6:30-8:30 PM
September 24 - December 17
Welcome new and returning members! We are planning for a very lively fall semester of polyphonic folk singing in a brand new venue in Viroqua town! Before signing up, please read over the following term details carefully whether you are a new or returning member.
Location
Our fall semester is taking place in Viroqua town proper, at the historical St Mary's Catholic Church on Broadway St. We are collaborating with the Vernon County Historical Society to make use of and breathe life into this wonderful community historical site, and are very excited to have this initial run of choir there!
schedule
Rehearsals take place 6:30 - 8:30 PM Thursdays.
Fall semester begins September 24 and will finish with a recital of our music in collaboration with the historical society on Thursday December 17.
The season will culminate with an all-choir Supra celebration - a traditional Georgian style community feast with toasting, singing, and dancing - on Saturday December 12.
Please add all the above dates and times to your calendar upon registration, and refrain from scheduling other events or activities over them.
attendance policy
(In-person members only)
We ask that our members attend every rehearsal they are able, and aim to not miss more than 3 rehearsals (1/4 of total rehearsals) in a 12-week term. We abide by the principle that choir is a collective endeavor: your presence matters, and your absences are felt.
We ask that members schedule around choir rehearsals and special events, and carefully consider their availability & ability to commit. This includes what pre-planned conflicts may already be in the calendar, how unplanned absences may interact with attendance limits, your individual ability to keep up with difficult repertoire if you miss multiple rehearsals, and your availability to make up classes with our online materials if you need to break the 3-miss policy. To help you consider, we find that on average members will unexpectedly miss 3 rehearsals each term due to illness, weather, and other unanticipated events.
This policy is a request, and we ultimately leave attendance to individual members to manage for themselves, and do not keep track of or police attendance in any way. We do not offer dues refunds for attendance related issues.
Virtual choir
We are once again offering a hybrid in-person and virtual edition of choir, with a few changes to how this will work going forward. Traditionally, we welcome members from around the region and country who participate virtually, using our online materials to learn songs and follow along with our term. Similarly, in-person members join virtually when travel or illness interfere with their rehearsal schedule.
This semester, we will offer exactly the same virtual options, with the exception of live-streamed Zoom classes on Thursday nights. This is due to quality issues and low turnout for the live streams, and the fact that most virtual members utilize just the pre-recorded online materials to learn, or review the class recordings at other times of the week.
Every Thursday night class will be recorded with video and audio and uploaded to the Google Drive on Fridays, same as when we had a live-streamed course option.
auditions
If you are a lower range voice looking to join our in-person choir for the first time, we will reach out about a brief audition prior to joining. This is primarily a note for AMAB or traditional male voice parts such as lower octave tenor and bass. Treble voices, including AFAB voices in tenor, alto, and soprano need not audition.
To learn more about our repertoire, group culture, policies, and more, continue on and review our choir FAQ.
Registration & Dues
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12 Week Season Basic: $180
12 Week Season Enhanced: $240
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To register: Fill out the form below and send your dues on Venmo f&f to @anniezylstra.
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Basic dues breakdown to $15 per 2-hour weekly class.
Enhanced dues cover our weekly class, plus one private 45 minute voice lesson to be scheduled during the semester. Enhanced registration is open to both in-person and virtual members.
Your choir dues cover: All class time hours, access to home practice materials, individual part recordings and source recordings, any guest instructor and ethnomusicology collaborator fees, various web and payment platform fees, song licensing fees, space rentals, and organizing time for weekly rehearsals and special events.
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Space in this group is limited and spots will be considered reserved when registration is complete and dues are submitted. You will be notified upon registration completion and also if registration is full and you are added to our membership waitlist (in-person members only).
FAQ
Q: What kind of music do you sing?
A: We primarily sing music from polyphonic folk traditions around Europe as well as contemporary and historic English folk music, including short songs and rounds. We strive for a diverse repertoire that is sharp, enriching, and fun to sing. We primarily sing foreign language songs within styles like Balkan style drone and melody songs, Corsican paghjellas, Lithuanian Sutartines, Eastern Orthodox liturgical music, Georgian polyphony, and more.
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Q: Who is this group for?
A: Ember is a choir for both novice and seasoned singers seeking a welcoming and inclusive community music experience. It's for folks interested in improving and honing their singing craft, gaining cultural understanding through the study of traditional repertoire, and who are committed to shared values of community building, humility in our study, and generosity with one another. Our choir is queer and trans inclusive, and does not utilize traditional gendered choral language. For blending purposes, new AMAB and lower voice singers must be vetted / auditioned.
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Q: What if I have little to no singing experience?
A: Our choir is suitable for treble singers of all levels and skilled bass-range singers. The songs are taught by ear, and while we work with challenging material, there is abundant opportunity for vocal growth both in rehearsals and at home via the practice materials provided. That said, we strive to polish and hone songs into the best versions of themselves, and new singers should have a shared goal of growing and improving their singing practice during their time in the group.
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Q: Does the group perform?
A: While we are an experience-over-performance focused group, there are times we host special events and work on a set of repertoire to sing for our wider community in a concert or other performance format. The larger choir often has a smaller performance-oriented offshoot ensemble that is occasionally open for auditions.
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Q: Do you sing religious music?
A: We are a secular choir that sings music from a wide range of traditions, including repertoire that is religious or considered sacred in its culture of origin. We approach sacred repertoire as we do our folkloric repertoire: as students and visitors within a tradition, exploring and honoring it with an appropriate degree separation from ourselves if it is not a part of our own personal tradition or belief systems. We sing repertoire in its original form and do not liberalize or alter the texts of our music, (i.e. language stemming from Christianity in a Shapenote song.)
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Q: What is the group's sickness policy?
A: As a group that meets during cold & flu season, we commit to doing what we can to keep our community safe and healthy. We recognize the ongoing risk many chronically ill and disabled members of our community face with covid-19 and other seasonal illnesses, and therefore ask any sick participants to stay home and join in with the live streamed online version of class for the week.
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Q: Is there be an online participation option?
A: Yes! To keep our choir safe and accessible, we will continue to have our remote participation option available, which means this course is open to anyone worldwide! Online participants are invited to join in the fun and learn with the course practice materials in the online portal and via the recorded live classes. Classes are filmed from a chair seated with the rest of the group, so participants feel like they are one the choir, singing in harmony with the rest from home.
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Q: What if I have a schedule conflict or can't make the live classes?
A: In-Person Participants: Our attendance policy varies per term, but one can usually expect 3 allowed absences in a given semester. Joining online or making up a rehearsal with virtual materials may count toward attendances. Please reference the particular attendance policy for a term in the term details above.
A: Online Participants: The exclusively online version of Ember is designed to be taken as a self-paced course. All classes are recorded and uploaded to a shared Google Drive folder, and the bulk of the value of this course lies within the practice materials shared via the portal. Participants are welcome to partake in the recorded classes if and when they like, and access to the portal learning materials is permanent.
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Q: What is the class refund policy?
A: Refunds are available up until participants receive the links to our class materials - approximately one week before a term start date. Because course access is permanent and every course can be taken at home on a participant's own time, I do not offer refunds after a course has begun. Once you join, attendance is up to you, and we cannot be financially responsible for individual member attendance lapses.
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