CW: pregnancy loss

Description: It’s Women’s History Month, and while women are worth celebrating each and every day of the year, this is also a lovely time to lift up one incredible music maker who lives a life surrounded by the melodies of the story-telling that has reverberated in the uniqueness of human bodies and human experiences, those long studied and those whose experiences have been coded or sidelined. Hilary’s nuance of language around identity and proximity to power structure lays a firm foundation on which we might dream ourselves into honoring whatever comes next. A gift of vulnerable conversation between two women draws a through-line between treasured stories of scripture and current contexts that allows for meaning-making and hope to shine in even the darkest corners of life.

Bio:

Hilary Seraph Donaldson is a church musician and researcher based in Toronto, Canada. She holds a Master of Sacred Music in Choral Conducting from Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX) and a PhD in Musicology from the University of Toronto. Her research interests are centered on the intersection of English musical modernism and the sacred in the music of Benjamin Britten, music since 1900, the BBC, intersections in music and theology, and hymnology and congregational singing. Hilary serves as Director of Music at St. Andrew's United Church in downtown Toronto. She is passionate about expanding the singing repertoire of congregations and fostering practices of learning, vulnerability, and praying through the music of the global ecumenical movement in worship. She shares resources on enlivening congregational song through her website and web video series Break into Song. She is Immediate Past President of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.

Song: I Know God Holds You, Text: Hannah C. Brown, Music: Kate Williams