CONCERT PROGRAM 2026
Thank you, Central Coast!
We love singing with you.
Wholehearted Chorus was founded in 2014 by Artistic Director Lisa Littlebird and now has more than 260 singers between the two chapters, San Diego and Carmel, CA. Our mission is to create a more harmonious world by singing together. In our concerts, we wish to dissolve the barrier between singer and audience by sharing a real-time singing conversation, in the service of our mutual flourishing.
Humans of all ages and experience are wholeheartedly welcome here, and there is no audition. We do not use sheet music, instead learning the songs in the old way– by heart, through repetition. The songs tend to be contemporary and address inquiries of our time. We treat these songs as sacred, tranformational technologies that become allies for life.
We sing not just to perform, but to investigate and embody the lyrics– casting them as modern spells of healing and upliftment. Singers are invited to contemplate the songs and weave them into their lives, sharing them with their families and communities.
This season, Wholehearted offered a book club to deepen our work with the songs. Many members of the choir read The Book of Forgiving by Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho Tutu. We also have a podcast, called A Song for All of Us, where we share deeper conversations with the composers and other respected guests. Lisa had the honor of sharing an episode this season with Mpho Tutu van Furst about forgiveness - check it out.
Our 2027 Season begins in May, with registration opening in February. We’ve added you to our list so you’ll be the first to hear how to join. You may easily unsubscribe anytime.
If you want to see more of what we’re up to in the world, your support makes it possible! We are a fiscally-sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, working to establish our own nonprofit next year. We are raising $50k now for this next season of growth and organizational staffing, so we can keep singing for years to come.
Would you like to help us make the dream real?
Special Guest Songwriter
Lyndsey Scott
Hailing from Iowa, Lyndsey Scott is an artist, songleader, and ritualist who catches and carries Song as a force for radical trust, collective expression, & mutual liberation. She supports emergent ceremonial design as a leader with Earthkeeper Wisdom School. She composes and records mantra music with a beat for the national community singing movement with widely-released albums. She collaborated with incarcerated musician Tony Rhodd to write one of our songs this season, Over/Under, a potent anthem for deconstructing enemy images. Find out more and listen at www.lyndseyscott.earth. We shared three songs this season from her recently released EP, Work of Love.
Songs for Resourcing…
Servant of Love
by Brian “Yam” Dwyer
An utterly infectious, joyous ode to the heart of service itself.
As I Relax
by Lyndsey Scott
A sultry layer song for surrender, curiosity and emergence.
Conducted by: Maddie Hamann
Earth You Hold Us
by Lyndsey Scott
Lyndsey calls this “a circle opening song, a moment of rooting down, a moment of slowing to Source, so we can join with one another in ceremony from a place of embodied Wholeness.”
Soloist: Devavani Lawrence
Love is My Name
by Lyndsey Scott & Lisa Littlebird
Lyndsey and Lisa called this song in with friend and collaborator Alexis Davis for its public debut in this concert. A message from the heart of Love itself, beamed in just for you.
Soloist: Audrey Herrington
The Deepness Above
by JJ Jones
Songs for Listening & Receiving…
A lush and contemplative song of healing and gentle empowerment by Wholehearted member JJ Jones, arranged by Lisa G. Littlebird for this concert.
Decisively Defeated
by Ahlay Blakely
A song for falling apart, for breaking open, for shapeshifting into the unknown and remembering there is nothing to fix. To be “decisively defeated” is to yield to a greater mystery, a force that kneads and reshapes, that asks us to live in service to the wider web to which we all belong.
Soloist: Maddie Hamann
The Way Knows
by Lyndsey Scott
Our concert’s namesake is undoubtedly the most widely sung song of Lyndsey's to date. A song for trust falls and gentle decomposition of outdated scripts, it has touched hearts worldwide. Singers in Wholehearted have sung it at hospice bedsides this very season.
What is the Way whispering to you?
Songs for following instructions and interbeing…
A Way is Being Made
by Brian “Yam” Dwyer
Because what we’re doing here is too important to take too seriously.
Drive
by Incubus
An anthem from start of this millennium that still rings true. When we listen within and move from our own center, we find the antidote to future fear.
Soloist: Theo Niekras
Oh Kin!
by Lyndsey Scott
Oh Kin! Where ya been? I’m lonely without you… come on in. A hoedown hootenanny celebrating not doing it alone.
This is song is not yet publicly released.
Songs for forgiving…
Work of Love
by Lyndsey Scott
With words born from bell hooks and the last words of Renee Good “I’m not mad at you”, this song beckons us to reach for radical nonviolence in all of our relationships with self and Other, even in the face of what may feel impossible to face alone.
Over / Under
by Lyndsey Scott & Anthony Rhodd
This song was born in 2023 from Lyndsey’s collaboration with incarcerated musican Anthony Rhodd, which has since turned into a life-changing partnership. Lyndsey and Anthony offer this potent anthem in the service of dissolving enemy images, dreaming a love that can reach over and under every obstacle that obscures our shared humanity.
All the Colors
by Lyndsey Scott
Beginning with a line from a Shel Siverstein poem, “all the colors I am have not been invented yet”, this song is a healing, unifying, cry for love. May it reach all beings who feel unworthy… including every banished and forgotten part of ourselves.
What is ours to do?
Through Your Hands
by John Hiatt
“So don’t ask what you are not doing, because your voice cannot command. In time, we will move mountains, and it will come through our hands.”
Underdog
by Alica Keys
When we know what’s ours to do, may it restore balance. Here’s a bright beam to all those that Love hasn’t lifted yet.