Local Threshold Choirs Sing to Heal, Comfort and Love

There is a power in music that Nancy Feld can’t explain.

“Just the sound by itself I think is something,” Feld said. “In my experience it touches inside like words don’t, and whether there’s a scientific explanation for it, I don’t know. I don’t really care, because it’s just very powerful.”

The Circle Singers. Photo by Len Villano.

Feld is a member of the Circle Singers, a threshold choir from Hope Church in Sturgeon Bay. They traditionally don’t sing on stage, but seek an audience in occasions most people avoid. Threshold choirs sing, use that intangible power of music, to comfort people with serious illness, or those near death.

Threshold choirs began when founder Kate Munger sang for a comatose friend as he was dying of AIDS. Years later on a road trip, Munger decided to sing for every animal she saw that had been killed on the road. Those two events inspired her to create a threshold choir.

Now, there are 100 official Threshold Choir chapters, including the Circle Singers in Sturgeon Bay. Affiliated threshold choirs sing original songs, many of which were written by Munger.

The Circle Singers began eight years ago when a member of Hope Church was struggling with cancer. She, herself an excellent singer, stood up in church and invited people to meet and sing with her. Twenty-four women volunteered.

“We didn’t want to give it up,” Feld said. “It’s just wonderful.”

Now, the Circle Singers meet on Mondays in the church library where they sit in a circle amid shelves of Bibles, Spanish-English dictionaries, and framed cross-stitch patterns. They trickle in for the afternoon practice, and chat until choir leader Helen-Jane Anschutz starts a song. Then, the group is focused, tapping toes, patting knees and smiling at each other as they break into rounds and three-part harmonies.

“We try to sing as one voice,” Anschutz said. “We try to listen to each other. There are no soloists here.”

The choir sings from a special list of songs, all original music written specifically for threshold choirs. The songs have messages that are often needed in tough times. Some songs are meant to bring hope, comfort or peace and others are meant to let people know it’s OK to let go. A capella music,” said singer Courtie Demarest. “The intention with which we sing comes through our voices and the quality of our voices.”

The Circle Singers are often called to private homes, hospitals or nursing homes to sing to someone who is sick or dying. They get their name from the formation they take in the room – a circle around the person most in need of comfort.

“There is a power in music,” Feld said. “I think people feel that, especially when they’re surrounded. There’s something better about being in the center of all that focus, all that sound.”

There must be something about being a part of the circle, too, something that keeps the singers strong enough to want to put themselves in the middle of such emotional situations.

“The songs we sing bring peace to those we sing for, but they also bring peace to us,” said singer Jan Phannenstiel. “It’s a good feeling when you leave.”

The Circle Singers occasionally sing in venues outside the realm of traditional threshold choirs. They’ve sung at church services and for audiences at nursing and retirement homes. Sometimes they even end with a sing-along of popular oldies.

During one such performance, the Circle Singers inspired someone in Northern Door to start a similar choir.

Cari Lewis heard the Circle Singers perform during a service about music as a healing, comforting, spiritual practice at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Ephraim.

“They stood at the back of the congregation and Joan [Shiels] had the congregation imagine they were facing death or serious illness, and had the group of women sing for the congregation. It just surrounded the entire fellowship and I had one of those chills in the back of your neck moments. Since that time I’ve felt like it would be good for Northern Door to have its own group.”

Lewis already believed in healing and the power of music, and hearing the Circle Singers enforced that belief. Now, Lewis has reached out to other women singers to start a threshold choir, and the group has begun to practice classic songs such as “Love Call Me Home,” “Amazing Grace,” “Morning Has Broken” and “Spirit of Life.” She hopes the group will be ready to respond to calls by mid- to late-June.

Because music, and all its power, should be shared.

“It really is quite a gift, and it’s a gift you give to others,” Feld said. “The feeling, the emotion you have is what you’re wrapping around these people, so it doesn’t have to be the quality of your voice so much as the love in your heart.”