One Day Choir

The benefits of music and singing have long been explored with various research finding it has positive effects on mental and physical health. A study by the University of Oxford says choir singing improves health, happiness and is the perfect icebreaker. Creating connections, community and joy is the idea behind the One Day Choir in Bend.

Kira Seto leads the One Day Choir which welcomes all voices. Credit: Kira Seto

Kira Seto is the leader of the event on Thursday, Sept. 25, entitled “Better Together.” She describes the experience as an inclusive, supportive space for people to come together to heal and connect using voices, through joyful, wholehearted singing in community. It’s for the simple pleasure of singing as a group, not as a performance.

“A lot of folks are coming in, carrying some kind of story around their voice, around deficiency, unworthiness. I can’t sing. You don’t want to hear my voice. I’m not a singer,” Seto says. “So I really encourage people to make mistakes. We’re not here for perfection. We’re here for connection. Try on parts, see what feels comfortable in your body.”

The community choir experience highlights the power of voice, without musical instruments or recordings. Seto will begin the evening with simple, opening songs and playful warmups to ease any nerves or self-doubt. She will then lead the group through a set list of specifically curated songs, usually with an uplifting message or sometimes playful and silly. She’ll break a song down chunk by chunk through a call and repeat style, weaving a tapestry of sound. Seto stresses the event is a safe space where all voices matter.

“It’s really an experience that revolves around singing together. It seems so simple, but it’s a deep, meaningful thing.”

Seto says she’s part of a movement that has brought a renaissance of oral tradition and group folk singing within the past couple of decades. “There’s a whole network that keeps growing around our country and beyond, of people who are leading singing in this tradition,” she says. “I experienced it back in 2015 coming from a place [where] I didn’t think my voice was great. I was really timid about sharing my voice and through discovering it, I found the joy of singing in my voice. And then it just led me to learning how to facilitate it more and more.”

Seto was part of another community singing group in Bend in 2020, then left to start her own group, Voices Rising Community Choir, in the fall of 2023. She takes a break in the summers which is when she offers the One Day Choirs. Her most recent one in August brought together about 75 people. Anyone can participate, including families with children. No experience needed.

Seto says she often hears people express a deficiency or unworthiness about the sound of their voice. “Most of them end up staying and singing and discovering that how they sound doesn’t matter and that it’s just incredibly fun and life-giving to sing together,” she says. “It becomes way more of a benefit to stay than to miss out and feed this old story. So I just want to really name that, because so many people are like, that’s, that’s so sweet that you’re doing that, but you wouldn’t want to hear me singing. I’ll sit this one out. It’s heartbreakingly so common.”

The One Day Choir is being held at Heritage Hall at the First Presbyterian Church in NE Bend. She’s asking for donations to help cover costs.

Seto describes singing as a birthright.

“On a deeper level, these songs are tools that help create this intentional space for us to be together as a species, beyond what our usual left brain thinking allows us to be able to do, to be able to just reach towards each other’s humanity and find depth and find belonging with each other.”