Music

Our repertoire is chosen to respond to musical taste, spiritual direction and physical capacity, including rounds, chants, lullabies, hymns, spirituals and classical choral music.

The Choirs have produced two CDs:

Listening at the Threshold, 2004

After singing together at bedside vigils for four years, the Threshold Choirs are happy and proud to produce our first CD of 34 original songs written by members. As the CD title implies, a lot of what we do at bedsides is listen: to breath, for relaxation, to each other, to our own hearts. These songs are among the most treasured of our repertoire and have been deep medicine for the composers as well as for the singers. We offer them to you in the hope that, regardless of singing experience, you will feel empowered to make these songs your own, to sing them to those you love, and to invite them to sing back to you.

Recorded live in the Tunnel at the Headlands, Marin County, and the Chapel, Dominican Hospital, Santa Cruz.

Download printable copy of liner notes and lyrics . (You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader software to read this .pdf file. If you do not have it, you can download this free software before you download the liner notes.)

Tenderly Rain, 2006

We join the family of Jane H. Saline, honoring the Loving Memory of their mother, wife and singer, 1925 - 2002. Her generosity, grace and love of harmony live on. Her family's support of this CD has made it possible.

Singing at bedsides is a calling that invites us to be sacred instruments and empowers our voices to be kind, courageous and creative, to feel spirit moving in us and sometimes to be galvanized into songs.

We are grateful to Friends of the Choir, Allaudin, Nina, Jack, Marilyn, Becky, Patricia, Dan and Terry for their generosity with their songs and their poetry.
And we are especially proud of our Choir members's songs. Some are the result of a long night's vigil at a bedside, some in memory of a loving friend or an inmate waiting on Death Row; one arrived in the shower on Thanksgiving morning. All are precious to us. We love singing our sisters' songs.

We honor all the Hospice Workers and Nurses and Caregivers who give so deeply of their their precious time and their apparently never-ending supply of kindness to comfort the ailing and tend lovingly to the dying. You are our heroes.

We also acknowledge the many women across the country who, from miles away, have felt this calling, have felt the shiver down their backs when they hear about our work. Many of these women have started Threshold Choirs in their communities and we are grateful to have such collegial sharing and artful cross-pollination with them. If, after listening to our CD, you too feel called to sing at bedsides, please contact us. We will help you to be (or to find) the hub of your local wheel of singers. Currently there are 30 choirs in 8 states.

I want to thank each choir member for your unique gift to this on-going project. Each one of you has enriched my road immeasurably.

In Gratitude, Kate

Tenderly Rain was recorded at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, CA and the Chapel at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, CA, and the Church Space at the Dance Palace, Point Reyes Station, all acoustical wonders.

Download printable copy of the dedication and lyrics.

To purchase the Listening at the Threshold or Tenderly Rain CD, please send a check for $18/CD payable to Kate Munger (includes shipping and handling.)