Our Extended Family
Connexion UMC (Our WTMA HQ!)
Connexion strives to build community by creating a welcoming, fully inclusive, just, and loving collaborative and worship space. We are so grateful for our collaboration with this considerate, unprejudiced, and socially devout community. In recent years, Connexion has been WTMA’s primary Somerville headquarters for lessons, performances, and other workshops.
Located near Sullivan Square, 149 Broadway, Somerville, MA.
Protest Choir Project
group voice lessons + social justice songs + slightly rowdy choir = Protest Choir Project
Protest Choir Project has welcomed individuals of all types and stripes to join Inclusive Choir Classes at community spaces like Connexion, Arts at the Armory, and Make Shift Boston. We invite this to be a safe space for those who identify as Queer, Trans, and/or BIPoC, and use this time as an opportunity to uplift marginalized voices with song. We’ll continue learning how to be loud and proud without hurting ourselves in the process. Classes have included Experiential Anatomy Workshops, Vocal Workouts, and uninterrupted singing of Social Justice Songs!
We are active periodically. Sliding scale rate of $5-$30/class.
Email us for more info – be sure to include “Protest Choir” in the subject line!
Instrument Petting Zoo
The Instrument Petting Zoo Project (IPZP) team is convinced that music is a powerful tool for personal as well as community development. Both solo and ensemble music-making as well as dance have the potential to enhance introspective efforts as an aid in emotional processing. Ensemble music and social dancing both have a special potential for bonding, allowing people to build trust whether they have just met or have had a long and complicated history together.
How incredible would it be if there were more spaces with less of a barrier of entry to playing instruments with other people, and more social ease in physically expressing the ways that it can inspire us to move our bodies?
Music has such potential for collaborative community engagement, harnessing both sound and movement. To this end, we are recreating in a visually dazzling manner a project that has existed in educational environments for decades; the Instrument Petting Zoo.
WholeTone Opera has strived to highlight female, femme, and non-binary composers and artists. We hope to join forces with other local opera companies in revitalizing Boston’s opera community, and seek to offer alternative productions with fresh, gripping performances. We have rehearsed and performed in Somerville. WTO was founded by WholeTone Music Academy’s Nora Maynard in 2015. Mariia Gorkun and Von Bringhurst, former WTMA teachers, also have worked for WTO. Check out WholeTone Opera here!
In a time when American ideals are epitomized by nationalism and aggression, VOICES 21C aligns itself with the great American voices of compassion, love, and non-violence. The musicians of VOICES 21C engage in an interdisciplinary artistic expression, including spoken word, creative movement and body imagery, traditional Western classical music, non-traditional world song, and improvisation.
Located in Waltham, Hawthorne Bows has made the finest artistic bows for violin, viola, and cello for many years. They provide many services, including advanced repair and restoration. For more information, please visit Hawthorne Bows on Facebook. Former WTMA teacher, Mariia Gorkun apprenticed there! (Her specialty is making Baroque bows.)