Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. For more than 200 years an American style of folk-hymn singing using shape-notes has been kept alive in ...

Standing inside the Laurelhurst Club in Southeast Portland, Karen Willard said some of her family members believe she’s in a cult. It’s not hard to see why. She and hundreds of others have arrived to ...

Area singers find meaningful sounds in shapes Paul Waterman might not recommend sitting in a church pew for exercise -- unless you want to join him for a session of shape-note singing. Last week, ...

Shape note singing is based on a notational system developed in New England by early Colonial immigrants. At that point few people had music reading or ear training skills that allowed them to follow ...

PITTSBURGH – Alexa Kay is a Quaker, a denomination which has embraced simplicity and shunned more extravagant forms of worship, even singing. Nevertheless, Kay likes to sing, and that’s what led her ...

Shape note singing, which took root in America by the early 19th Century, employs either four (fasola) or seven note (doremi) styles. “We do the seven-shape,” Wiley said. The Old Fields Singers will ...

From left, Zack Allen and Maggie Lauterer pose with MHU students Mikayla Ledford, Taylor Zima, Denise Benson, Megan Walters, Darian Smathers and Caleb Colclasure, as well as June Smathers Jolley and ...