The Tune our Lips to Sing Quartet

The Project

On Thursday, September 14, the Tune our Lips to Sing Quartet conducted two singing tours of Brooklyn, beginning and ending at the McCaig-Welles Gallery. The quartet followed an undetermined route around the city singing songs from the Sacred Harp on pages corresponding with the numbers that members of the quartet saw as they walked.

Quartet member Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg leading a song at Liberty Baptist Church Sacred Harp music is a form of participatory unaccompanied group singing dating back to the mid-1800s that is presently experiencing a revival across the United States. New York City features four active singing groups, including one in Brooklyn.

The music features raw harmony, driving rhythms, and full-throated, full-volume, enthusiastic singing. At its core is the Sacred Harp, a tunebook first published in Georgia in 1844.

At a Sacred Harp singing, participants sit facing inward in a hollow square formation and take turns selecting songs, announcing their choice by calling out a page number from the Sacred Harp. Many singers remember songs by their page number. Over time, these songs again become a part of the landscape. Highway markers, gas prices, and street numbers recall a melody, a text, and a whole host of occasions on which the song was sung.

The Tune our Lips to Sing Quartet renders these hidden associations audible for a general public. The quartet walked around Brooklyn, pausing whenever a street number, license plate, or other number triggers a singer’s memory of a song, to sing that song from the Sacred Harp.

About Jesse

Tune our Lips to Sing Quartet founder, Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, is a sound artist and shape note singer whose work explores the intersections of personal narrative, communication networks, and history as embedded in place. His work encompasses installation, music for live performance, tunebooks, web design, audio tours, and works for radio. His current work investigates the history and practice of American shape note singing and the social and religious movements of nineteenth-century upstate New York.

Visit Jesse’s art portfolio or his shape note music web site for more information.

Who Are We

The Quartet is Greg Mulkern, Treble;
Allison Schofield, Alto; Aldo Ceresa, Tenor; and Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, Bass.

Conflux 2006

The Quartet performed twice on Thursday, September 14, on the opening day of the Conflux Festival. At noon our Quartet (minus Greg, who has a real job) braved the rain and cris-crossed Williamsburg for two hours, singing up and down Metropolitan, Bedford, Roebling, and Driggs.

At 6 PM, the full Quartet sang until the sun went down, starting on Roebling and singing our way to Havemeyer, then along North 6th back to Bedford.

We took a group picture at each stop and recorded each song. Check this site early next week for a record of our two singing tours.

Sacred Harp Resources

Learn more about Sacred Harp singing at Fasola.org or find singings in and around New York City.

Visit the Tune our Lips to Sing Quartet page on the Conflux Festival web site.
- The Project
- About Jesse

The Tune our Lips to Sing Quartet

The Project

About Jesse

Who Are We

Conflux 2006

Sacred Harp Resources