Overtones: A Circle-Singing Journey with Onomé

Onomé presents Overtones: A Circle-Singing Journey, an audience-interactive performance that melds narrative vignettes with the vocal improvisational practice of circle-singing. With the audience as the chorus, she will improvise songs based on themes inspired by “overtones,” a music theory term for a series of subtle frequencies that shape the sound of the "fundamental" note–the sound that is readily recognized as your voice. This is an apt metaphor for all the invisible influences that shape the way we perceive the fundamentals of life: home, belonging, survival, connectedness, and what it means to be whole.

Overtones was born out of a desire to bridge the worlds of chorale, improvisation, musical theater, immersive theater, and relational aesthetics. Onomé loves to bring together people from all walks of life and levels of musical skill to sing. For over a decade, she has facilitated various types of singing gatherings, including traditional choirs, folk sing-alongs, improv jams, and hybrid forms. She has worked with professional singers, hobbyists, and people with limited musical background.

Onomé’s work as spoken word poet inspired her to bring a narrative structure to the participatory singing experience, and did her studies with Bobby McFerrin and witnessing his participatory concerts, her love of hip-hop freestyle ciphers, and her work in long-form vocal improvisation.

In my work, explains Onomé, “I explore the rich terrain of contradiction and multiple consciousness. I delve into what appears to be versus what is, what humans often say we want versus what our actions reveal about the complicated nature of our desires.”

This performance is made possible with the support of Arts Mid-Hudson.

Doors open at 6:30 PM - Interactive Performance at 7:00 PM

Onomé (aw naw MAY) leads experiences where voice, creativity, and mindfulness converge. She is a partner artist at Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute, where she contributes her performances and training across their vast educational programming spectrum.  

She has collaborated with numerous organizations as an artist-in-residence and instructor - including the United Nations, Juilliard, Música do Círculo in Brazil, and Bobby McFerrin's CircleSongs retreat at Omega Institute.