PORT TOWNSEND — An on-the-spot musical community will form in downtown Port Townsend as the PT Songlines choir hosts its winter participatory concert Saturday night.
So believes Gretchen Sleicher, co-director of Songlines, which will start the singing at 7 p.m. at the Cotton Building, 607 Water St.
Admission to the gathering is a suggested $12 donation, with proceeds to benefit the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble of Port Townsend.
Attendees can plan on hearing the choir sing songs from people and traditions around the world.
Sleicher, alongside fellow director and Songlines co-founder Laurence Cole, will lead everyone in easy-to-learn rhythms and simple, layered harmonies, all to weave “a rich tapestry of beauty, meaning and connection,” as she writes in her invitation.
Along with the PT Songlines ensemble, folk singer and songwriter Ben Bochner of Eugene, Ore., will appear as a guest artist, with Port Townsend duo Aimee Ringle and Aimee Kelly accompanying him.
Making music together is “how we become a people,” Cole said.
“Group singing has always been a primal technology of belonging,” he said, “lifting us up into the heights of caring, inclusive aliveness, so critical in this time of so much division.”
For more information about PT Songlines, email gsleicher@igc.org or phone 360-643-1595, and to find out more about the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble, visit its umbrella organization, the Mandala Center for Change of Port Townsend, at www.mandalaforchange.com.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
