Learn About the Show
A Breath of Song is a weekly song practice and a living archive for the global songleading community. Each episode introduces a song that helps us navigate life with compassionate insight, taught so it's easy to sing along. Periodically, intimate conversations with songleaders and song catchers deepen our relationships with each other and the songs. Over time, the podcast is becoming a thoughtfully tagged, searchable library: a trusted resource of companion songs for ourselves and our communities.
The team
Patricia Norton, Founder & Host
Learning to love my voice has been a central part of my growth and unfolding, and I am delighted to share that pleasure with you. I tend this community in many ways -- the website, getting the word out, the weekly email -- and especially, I hunt through songs for the ones that help me heal, adapt, and navigate life. I work with songleaders to prepare for their episodes, so the song is shared in a way that is faithful to them. I record in our basement music space, doing the breath work to settle and ground myself. Later, I edit anything that I think will make it difficult for you to sing the song. (Like me singing out of tune, which can happen! 😊)
I share a home with my beloved husband of 30+ years, close to where the Winooski River joins Lake Champlain, on the unceded land of the Abenaki in what is now called Vermont. We're delighted to be near our daughter's family and not TOO far from our son.
I share a home with my beloved husband of 30+ years, close to where the Winooski River joins Lake Champlain, on the unceded land of the Abenaki in what is now called Vermont. We're delighted to be near our daughter's family and not TOO far from our son.
Patty piotrowski, Artist
I have grown into making art, mostly watercolor, in the second half of my life. It started years ago with my young family and has evolved into my own devotional practice. As I search for what has heart and meaning, art has become a portal to healing and growing my creative resilience. I look to the natural world and my community of family and friends for inspiration. Songs, a breath of songs, has allowed my spirit to soar on the winds of shared expression. I live in a cozy neighborhood in a small Vermont town.
Rebecca csuy, Episode Prep & Social Media
Hello listeners! I'm Rebecca - some of you might remember me as Patricia's daughter and occasional guest singer. In previous chapters of my life I've taught swim lessons, sold fancy chocolates, written software, and danced in ballroom competitions. Now I'm excited to join the A Breath of Song team for a few hours a week while my daughter is in school, to help with the everyday logistics of creating this podcast. My goal is to make things run super smoothly so as many people as possible can discover the joy of singing!
Tom Norton, Administrative Support
I love to support the amazing team that produces this wonderful podcast. As Managing Director of Juneberry Music, I take care of the financial, legal and administrative needs of the team. I also participate in daily planning conversations with Patricia, often while walking together in beautiful places in and around Burlington, VT. When not working on the podcast, I may be found playing clarinet, playing with our granddaughter, gardening, cooking, surveying populations of rare plants for the Native Plant Trust, or helping people to identify plants they have observed on iNaturalist.
More about Patricia, founder & Host
My own vocal history:
The negative things you've said to yourself about your voice? Chances are I've said it to myself, too. "I can't sing well enough." "I shouldn't sing." "My voice is ugly to listen to." "I can't sing in tune." "I can't hold a tune." I spent years believing I could play piano, but I couldn't sing.
And there was a kind of truth in some of that -- I didn't know how to sing -- I was tense about singing, because I didn't like what I heard -- so much judgment, so little knowledge. So I tightened my throat and my tongue and my jaw -- and then my pitch was wonky, and I tensed even more, and thought about how much I hated my voice -- and it sounded even more squeezed and it was harder to be in the center of the note! It turns out that singing is a natural physical movement -- and we can build up all kinds of protective physical and mental habits that prevent our voices from being able to appear as they really are.
All along, I've loved music and word -- the combination moves me deeply -- and so when a generous choral director and singing teacher offered to work with me (I was accompanying her choir), I began to study with Jennifer Yocom in 1999 at age 32, and the vocal world began to slowly open for me. Slowly! My partner, Tom Norton, taught me over and over again with gentleness, stability, and love, that it's okay to care for oneself. Taking a position where I became a church musician, which included directing the choir, I began to pay more attention to what makes the voice work. Eventually, I became convinced that singing is a learnable skill -- sure, some people learn it more easily than others, like any skill -- but it can be learned. I am still learning how to listen to my own voice and use it effectively. What joy!
So I started a choral singing school in 2012, to help people "get out of the shower and into the choir". In 2015, that led to a week of circlesinging with Bobby McFerrin and the faculty gathered around him at Omega Institute, which opened my voice and life in an extraordinary way. I've had the thrill of working with hundreds of singers in my Juneberry Choral Program at UVMC -- these brave, funny, and generous people have taught me and challenged me to grow. Vocal improvisation, further studies with Judi Vinar and others, the example of clarity and joy set by Lisa Littlebird, so many friends and colleagues who encourage me and remind me to trust myself, and hours upon hours of singing to myself -- I am deeply, deeply grateful for what following my voice has brought into my life.
p.s. -- How did I write all this without thanking my first piano teacher in Chautauqua County, New York? Connie Pingitore, who was a WIZARD, and my parents, who bought a piano, made it easy to isolate time to practice, paid for lessons, let us take turns choosing albums for "dinner music" -- and then my mother singing with delight as I played, and teaching us all to dance with delight. Childhood music matters...
The negative things you've said to yourself about your voice? Chances are I've said it to myself, too. "I can't sing well enough." "I shouldn't sing." "My voice is ugly to listen to." "I can't sing in tune." "I can't hold a tune." I spent years believing I could play piano, but I couldn't sing.
And there was a kind of truth in some of that -- I didn't know how to sing -- I was tense about singing, because I didn't like what I heard -- so much judgment, so little knowledge. So I tightened my throat and my tongue and my jaw -- and then my pitch was wonky, and I tensed even more, and thought about how much I hated my voice -- and it sounded even more squeezed and it was harder to be in the center of the note! It turns out that singing is a natural physical movement -- and we can build up all kinds of protective physical and mental habits that prevent our voices from being able to appear as they really are.
All along, I've loved music and word -- the combination moves me deeply -- and so when a generous choral director and singing teacher offered to work with me (I was accompanying her choir), I began to study with Jennifer Yocom in 1999 at age 32, and the vocal world began to slowly open for me. Slowly! My partner, Tom Norton, taught me over and over again with gentleness, stability, and love, that it's okay to care for oneself. Taking a position where I became a church musician, which included directing the choir, I began to pay more attention to what makes the voice work. Eventually, I became convinced that singing is a learnable skill -- sure, some people learn it more easily than others, like any skill -- but it can be learned. I am still learning how to listen to my own voice and use it effectively. What joy!
So I started a choral singing school in 2012, to help people "get out of the shower and into the choir". In 2015, that led to a week of circlesinging with Bobby McFerrin and the faculty gathered around him at Omega Institute, which opened my voice and life in an extraordinary way. I've had the thrill of working with hundreds of singers in my Juneberry Choral Program at UVMC -- these brave, funny, and generous people have taught me and challenged me to grow. Vocal improvisation, further studies with Judi Vinar and others, the example of clarity and joy set by Lisa Littlebird, so many friends and colleagues who encourage me and remind me to trust myself, and hours upon hours of singing to myself -- I am deeply, deeply grateful for what following my voice has brought into my life.
p.s. -- How did I write all this without thanking my first piano teacher in Chautauqua County, New York? Connie Pingitore, who was a WIZARD, and my parents, who bought a piano, made it easy to isolate time to practice, paid for lessons, let us take turns choosing albums for "dinner music" -- and then my mother singing with delight as I played, and teaching us all to dance with delight. Childhood music matters...