Singing dates

We generally sing the fourth Sunday of every month except August. Monthly attendence is typically between 12 and 20 singers. New singers and visitors are always welcome.

Dates in 2008-2009

Events take place at Montclair Friends Meetinghouse unless otherwise noted. Monthly singings 2:00 to 5:30 pm; times for other events as indicated.  We sing with as many or as few as can come on any given date, and we make every effort not to change or cancel any announced singing date, but it would of course be prudent to check this page for last-minute changes or to contact us by phone or e-mail before traveling a long distance to sing.

• September 7, 2008 - mini-singing school at Howell Living History Farm.
• September 28, 2008
• October 26, 2008
• November 23, 2008
• December 28, 2008
• NO SINGING IN JANUARY 2009
• February 22, 2008
• March 22, 2009
• April 26 2009
• May 24, 2009
• June 28, 2009
• JULY AND AUGUST TBA

The Details

Located 14 miles due west of midtown Manhattan, the Montclair Friends Meeting House is just a hop, skip, and jump from the Garden State Parkway; a mere 30 minutes from NYC's Port Authority Terminal by bus; convenient to local public transportation. Its lath-and-plaster interior with vaulted ceiling provides excellent acoustics for singing.

We sing from the 1991 revsion of The Sacred Harp, copies of which are available for loan or for purchase (at cost).

SacredHarp music is sung a cappella--that is, by voices alone in harmony without instrumental support or accompaniment. We sing in the traditional way, facing each other in a hollow square, taking turns leading the singing from a tunebook that has been in continuous publication with periodic revisions since 1844. The music consists of hymns, fuging tunes, anthems, and other songs of a Christian devotional or (less often) an American patriotic nature. Composers and poets represented include European and American men and women from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The music is powerful, the sound distinctive: modal, open chords, octave doubling, original and unusual harmonies. A system of "shape notes" in our tunebook supplements ordinary musical notation with a system of shaped noteheads that indicate the notes and intervals of the musical scale, making it easier to learn to read the music.

All are welcome. No particular religious, ethnic, or musical background is supposed, and current Sacred Harpers are a proudly diverse lot with respect to all of these.

Travel Directions to Montclair Friends Meetinghouse

For travel directions (by car and by public transportation), please see our directions page.

Call or write us!

Please get in touch if you would like to know more about the Garden State Sacred Harp singings or to be added to our mailing list. Call 973 779-8290 or send e-mail to gssh.singings@verizon.net

Links

For more information about our own past and upcoming events:

• Sixteenth Garden State Sacred Harp Singing Convention May 2008
• Fifteenth Garden State Sacred Harp Singing Convention May 2007
• Fourteenth Garden State Sacred Harp Singing Convention May 2006
• Thirteenth Garden State Sacred Harp Singing Convention May  2005
• Twelfth Garden State Sacred Harp Singing Convention and Eighth Unconventional Sunday May 14-16, 2004
• Previous conventions and other past events.

If you are looking for additional nearby places to sing Sacred Harp, the web site  of our friends at the Manhattan Sacred Harp Sing  lists the schedules of the THREE monthly singings in New York City: their own (fourth Sundays), the Lower East Side Sing (first Saturdays), and the Joe Beasley Sacred Harp Singing (Brooklyn, second Sundays).

There is a new singing organizing in the Princeton, New Jersey, area. Please get in touch with us for more information about the Princeton singing.

Further afield, the Manhatan Sacred Harp Sing also maintains a page of information on singings throughout the Northeast.

For more information about Sacred Harp singing in general and pointers to the abundant Sacred Harp resources on the Internet and singings throughout the USA and abroad, we recommend starting with Warren Steel's Sacred Harp page at the University of Mississippi. Another fine meta-resource is the fasola.org page, which includes links to recent press and media coverage, including a number of radio features that you can listen to online. The meta-resource of all meta-resources in this area is Steven Sabols's Sacred Harp Resource Guide.