Resources:
Gaia Music Collective Link Tree
Bio:
Matt Goldstein (he/him) is an award-winning vocal arranger, facilitator, singer/songwriter, and educator who is dedicated to building community through collaborative musical creation. After earning acclaim for the emotive, innovative arrangements he crafted for The Vassar Devils and Hyannis Sound, Matt has gone on to craft over 200 custom vocal arrangements for ensembles around the world. Most recently, Matt founded Gaia Music Collective, a community arts organization and performance collective that emerged in New York City in 2021.
Transcript:
Will: Matt, thank you so much for joining me!
Matt: It’s such a treat to be here!
Will: Could you tell us how the Gaia Music Collective started, where is it now, and where do you see it going in the future?
Matt: This project was born in 2021 out of the emergence of the COVID vaccine, and the first thing that I wanted to do was sing with people. That was how I felt most connected, and I was feeling pretty lonely. I started hosting these improvisational jams in my living room with friends. We came together and we would share what was real in our lives because I was finding that I could be with friends, but we weren’t really understanding what was going on in each other’s lives. So we would have a few check-in questions and then just sing for two hours. We would play different singing games and vocal improvisations. It was such an electric and collective space to be in. We started meeting every Thursday, six people, then ten people, fifteen people. Eventually we put a little house show on in our apartment and put some videos of that online. All of a sudden, everyone was commenting on these videos, like “how can I get in this room?” That’s when we realized that there were more people who were hungry for that connection.
So we started to rent different studio spaces around New York and experiment with different offerings. It grew kind of like wildfire, and now we have a team of six core facilitators, six administrative people, and we are hosting over twenty events a month. I’ve started doing pop-ups around the country and around the world (which is crazy to say!). Our mission is to create connective and accessible music spaces where people for low cost and low commitment can be in collaborative, playful, spontaneous music connecting with themselves, with each other, and with the world. We have all kinds of different offerings including improvisational circle singing, open mic nights, songwriting circles, folk song series, and this one day choir series which has become this viral sensation. We get people together for three hours to sing any given piece of music. We send out sheet music and part tapes ahead of time so they can learn in whatever way feels good to them. Then we spend three hours diving in and connecting to each other through music. It has been such a wild ride and a treat to collaborate with such talented artists in these community spaces.
Will: As a choral director watching these viral videos, I’m so curious at the process of these one day choirs. I definitely want to get back to the improvisation and circle singing because that’s a passion of mine, but for the one day choirs, what do those three hours look like? What does a culminating experience for those participants look like without a performance at the end?
Matt: Yeah, we’ve actually come to a flow or structure to these events that is pretty replicable. A lot of it was inspired by these different practices that I come from. I’m hugely inspired by JD Frizzell and his approach to rehearsing a capella and choirs, and also circle singing and the traditions of Bobby McFerrin and Rhiannon and Música do Círculo in Brazil.
These are all kind of woven into this flow. The facilitation of any event starts in what people’s first taste of this is. This could be in the first video that they see on Instagram, or the email they receive, or the event description on the page. In all of these, we want to communicate what we value. We don’t value perfection, we’re here for the process and for the “play.” We want to release the fears that people might have, especially those who have been traumatized in music making spaces in different ways. From the beginning, we hope that people feel comfortable showing up in whatever way they are able. From there, we send out these part tapes. The featured part in the left ear, and all of the other parts in the right ear. That way, people can listen to it on the subway, on their commute, or wherever they need to learn it.
When we enter the space, we look for a way to wake up the music-making muscles. Often it’s a call and response from a facilitator in the middle of the circle. We always rehearse in a circle so we can see each other and connect with each other. The facilitator is demonstrating different ways to not take ourselves too seriously. They might demonstrate a voice crack, or singing something out of tune. After our voices and bodies are warmed up, we might speak a little and lay down some of the ground rules. Most importantly, everything we do is consent based, so if there is anything that they want to sit out they are welcome to. This gives people a permission slip to not “have” to do something and gives them the freedom to opt out of an activity.
After the play and “check-in,” we’ll find our way to our voice parts and sections. One of our facilitators gives each section a note, and everyone wanders around and listens to find the same people singing your note. Within those sections, we will have a check-in to get to know the other people around you, and some kind of prompting question like, “what’s alive for you today?” or maybe “what’s something you’re celebrating this week or something you’re navigating this week?” I’ve found this is a way to make people feel less like they are in a room of complete strangers and more like we’re on a team. We’re coming from our complex lives with just a little bit more understanding of all the beauty and the stories that are in this room.
Before we start the piece, we’ll have one more grounding singing exercise, maybe building out a chord progression. Within that chord progression, I’ll invite people to share answers to those prompting questions earlier, so people may shout out “I got a new job this week!” to celebrate something. From there, I invite people to close their eyes and find a new melody within that chord progression, and this is a really easy way to tip ourselves into improvisation. I deeply believe in the power of improvisation to unlock presence, authenticity, and bravery. This exercise also helps to massage out people’s nervousness.
Then we’ll do a “messy run” just to see where we are. Maybe some people have practiced a lot, maybe others haven’t. We’re here just to wake up the piece, so sing something strong and wrong. I remind people that if you hear people around you singing something confidently, remember that it’s not a competition and they’re not a threat to us. They are our collaborators. No one should feel embarrassed.
After the messy run, we’ll sing it again but this time in “pods,” or smaller sections. So we’ll sing it again, but this time you’re in a circle with your voice part. That way you can isolate your sections, and we’ll spend about 10-15 minutes in mini-sectionals. This is people’s opportunity to ask questions and clarify anything, like, “what’s happening at this transition?” or “can someone help me find this one?” Within these pods, sometimes we ask for leaders to be a “lighthouse” and stand in the middle of the circle to help guide the other people in the section.
Before we break things down phrase by phrase, we’ll take a pause and come back together to read through the lyrics as a group. I’ll ask for volunteers to read slowly and loudly. After we read it, I’ll ask for people to share what they noticed or anything that stood out to them or stories that it reminds of them. This is a really beautiful moment to hear people’s connection to this music. Sometimes we’ll do this after we workshop the piece, but I really like to do it before since it will guide a lot of our music making decisions.
For the next hour or so, it might be a typical rehearsal process that people are familiar with. We’ll work through and massage any trouble spots, or work on confidence in specific sections. The purpose of this is to empower people to release their voices and feel confident in what they are singing, rather than trying to find the perfect vowel or cut-off, because those things are just not going to stick in an hour long rehearsal. The focus is making people feel comfortable and confident with the parts to unlock expression.
After that, we’ll have some final runs either in sections or mixed up. Sometimes I offer people a “part buddy” to travel with if they would feel more comfortable before we mix up. Sometimes if we have time, we’ll even activate movement in the space so they can hear the changing parts around them. This was inspired by A Cappella Academy where we have “movement day” and we find different configurations and notice different parts going on around us. And then we’re done! It takes about three hours, so it’s a tight shift! That’s the flow we’ve figured out so far.
Will: As a high school director thinking about recruitment, I’m always looking for ways to bring younger kids into our community to show them the strong culture that we have. I think this could be a really cool recruitment strategy. What have you learned as a facilitator that’s really important in this work?
Matt: I could probably write a book about all of this. I’ve learned so much from watching so many other fabulous facilitators. I think my practice as an improviser has really informed my ability to lead in other settings. Just building confidence and trust in myself and my ability to flow from moment to moment and stay grounded. I think a huge part of facilitating is being able to read a room and adjust. Tuning into people’s body language and voices and changing strategy. I think whoever is facilitating is modeling energetically what needs to be happening in the room and for the people showing up. As long as the facilitator maintains a sense of calm and presence. I think as soon as they get tense about the music not sounding a certain way, that starts to seep into the ensemble and so I’m really conscious about modeling playfulness and vulnerability. Both taking it seriously and not taking it seriously at all. I’ve also just found that the music is better that way too. If the altos were singing out of tune for example, what if we invite them in and have them turn and face each other and sing to find the intonation. There are so many sneaky roundabout “jedi” ways to get the music unlocked without people feeling criticized. There is definitely a place for that in rigorous music making, but in these accessible community offerings the more freedom we can unlock in the singers the more joy people will have and the better the music will sound.
Will: I think this ties back to what you said earlier about how so many people come into these spaces with singing trauma. I think activities like singing through voice cracks with improvisation and laughing about it are so important.
Matt: We did a session on Wednesday night with Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” and after our first messy run I asked, “raise your hand if you made a mistake,” and 95% of the hands went up. It’s ok to name those mistakes, and it’s one of the only ways that we will grow.
Will: What ideas do you have for high school directors to get more improvisation ideas into our classroom to only build community but to include more creation into our craft?
Matt: Another thing I could write a book about! Improvisation is such an amazing tool, and it can sound so scary to people at times. Our bodies have so much music in them more than our heads think they do. I love call and response, it’s so simple and most of us can come up with short little phrases. It can be playful and open the doors of different sounds we can make together.
An exercise I love is called “see you on the other side,” and it’s adapted from Rhiannon’s Vocal River (a book and a deck of exercise cards). This game where people close their eyes or lower their gaze. One person offers one note and we all meet them on that note, and then everyone lets out a new note on each breath (one long note per breath). Committing to one note on each breath, no melody or rhythm. This shows that all notes are welcome, it could be discordious or harmonious, it can lean into the crunch and dissonance but committing to that one long note each time. Then, we find an ending and try to find one final note together. I’ve done this with middle schoolers and with the HR team at Google. I then open it up for people to share their experience and hear people’s fear about singing a wrong note, and then trusting that it will be ok. I think it’s a great improvisation exercise. I’m also hoping that Gaia can offer facilitation training in the future.
Will: Going off of that, what improvisation skills are important for choral directors to instill in their students?
Matt: So many of these skills like harmonizing or morphing into our sense of rhythm and lyric. I think that this stuff is way closer to us than we think. I used to be so scared of improvisation, like getting thrown in the deep end. But it honestly felt like walking in warm shallows and then later I was swimming in deep waters. I hope that leaders in the music world are open to encouraging vulnerability and trusting that singers can see their leaders making a mistake and that naming that they make a mistake.
Will: What do you hope for Gaia in the future?
Matt: We are experimenting with what global connections look like. What does it look like for Gaia to live in different cities? We’re hoping to build some kind of summer camp. We’re planning a 24 hour circle singing event for the summer solstice. And like I said, we’re planning facilitator training because it would be so useful in schools, prisons, companies, and honestly everywhere. More singing, more connection everywhere, please.
Will Gunn serves ACDA East as the High School Choirs R & R Co-Chair.