About
Newton Family Singers started with a library and a hunch. Monique Byrne and Andy Rogovin enjoyed a concert of the Family Folk Chorale in Arlington and decided to bring the concept closer to home: a chorus where kids and parents sang traditional folk music side by side. When the Waban Library Center was rethinking how to use its space as a community center, Monique saw their chance. With fellow FFC fan Stephanie Cogen, the founding trio gathered a group of like-minded families and put on a show.
That first concert was in May 2010 at Mason-Rice Elementary, with Joel Sindelar directing. In 2012 Chris Eastburn, founder of the Family Folk Chorale, joined as artistic director, and he's built our setlists and arranged most of our songs ever since.
Sixteen years and thirty shows later, we're still rehearsing at the Waban Library every Sunday. We've sung Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Carole King and Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Bob Marley, U2, James Taylor, Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac, Sting and Peter Gabriel, Springsteen, Brandi Carlile, CCR, Lilith Fair, the Traveling Wilburys, a disco show, and R.E.M. with the Indigo Girls, plus original songs by Andy Rogovin. The kids keep growing up and leaving home, and every year more singers join for the challenge, the music, and the friendship.
Artistic Director: Chris Eastburn
Chris Eastburn is a classically trained composer and a self-taught choral director. Inspired by the intersection of folk, contemporary, classical, and popular idioms, his music has won an international composers' competition and been performed from New York's Carnegie Hall to the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Chris wrote the orchestrations for Piano Men: The Music of Billy Joel and Elton John, the highest-selling Pops show in Portland Symphony history, which has played with professional orchestras around the country since 2011. Conductor Robert Moody described Chris's orchestrations as "about the finest I have ever seen." His arrangements are published by Hal Leonard and Galaxy. Chris has written over 600 choral arrangements. He also directs the Family Folk Chorale and is music director at the historic Follen Church in Lexington, and has collaborated with Grammy winner John Carter Cash, saxophonist Glenn DaCosta (of Bob Marley and the Wailers), Dar Williams, Martin Sexton, Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem and May Erlewine.
Board of Directors
Our volunteer board keeps the chorus running between rehearsals and concerts.
- Debbie Bing, Treasurer
- Monique Byrne, Membership & Registration
- Jack Cheng, Band
- Stephanie Cogen, Communication
- Jenne Colasacco, Chair
- Anthony Deighton, Technology
- Emily Prenner, Assistant Musical Director
- Kim Shaknis, Production
Where we've sung
Waban Village Day, the Waban Lights tree lighting, Jamaica Plain's Wake Up the Earth Festival, Newton's Festival of the Arts, the Mayor's New Year Open House, a collaboration with New Philharmonia Orchestra and Boston Ballet, Newton's Martin Luther King Jr. Community Celebration (2020), and senior residences including Maplewood in Weston, the Scandinavian Living Center and Golda Meir House.