YOU ARE WELL HELD

Meet the Leadership Team

What started as one person's vision has grown into something none of us could have do alone, and that's kind of the whole point.

Missoula Sings is now held and stewarded by a leadership team — a small group of people who bring their own wisdom, care, and deep belief in what song can do for a community. Each of them came to this work through their own relationship with voice, belonging, and the particular magic of what happens when people sing together.

"Who are you going with?" - Aaron Johnson

Julia Malich

I sang in many children's choirs all the way through high school, and I loved it. But I got the message somewhere along the way that singing as an adult meant being phenomenal - having a voice that could win contests. I could hold a tune, but I didn't think I was good enough to pursue it as a career. So I stopped. Until Missoula Sings.

Singing together in community reminded me of something I hadn't realized I'd forgotten: it was never about sounding good on your own. Even in choir I remember loving trying to blend my voice with others, loving harmonizing and the beauty we can create together. Singing is a fantastic way to resonate with the people around you, connecting and being vulnerable, even with people you just met. I believe humans need group singing to feel connected and healthy, but in modern America we’ve mostly lost the tradition.

I'm honored to be on the leadership team of Missoula Sings - my favorite unofficial title is Minister of Welcome. I love leading songs, planning gatherings, and making sure everyone who walks through the door feels like they belong there. Because they do. It's a privilege to help steward something this quietly powerful.

I'm also a mom to two amazing kids, and I'm so glad they're growing up in a community where breaking into song is just normal. I’m thrilled they know and are happy to sing many songs, and that they are used to doing so within a multigenerational group. This is just what community looks like to my kids, and I love that.

When I'm not singing, I work as a Licensed Massage Therapist here in Missoula.

Kristina Dortch

My whole life I have loved music and singing, but I spent the first 30 years of my life in deep insecurity around my voice and feeling like I didn’t belong in the realm of song and music.

At the age of 32, I reached a tipping point where my soul was crying out for more connection and expression, and I have slowly, and often painfully, been learning how to engage with music and song as my birthright.

When I met Barron and saw the work he was up to with building Missoula Sings, it immediately resonated deeply with me — it was exactly in alignment with the path I was already on in reclaiming my voice. I joined the Missoula Sings leadership team because I believe deeply in our mission to use song as a tool to bring people together in a way that words cannot—and witnessing both my own, and others, healing and growth around voice in these spaces inspires me to help keep this vision going.

I want to nurture a world where humans singing together is normal. After all, all who have breath can sing.

I love Missoula Sings because our gatherings are not about individual glorification, but rather about the connection of the whole and the importance that each individual brings to the collective. I love the relationships that we are tending in our community, and I am looking towards the future with hope and joy.

Patrick Marsolek

I am newly reinvigorated with song and have been discovering a fresh meaningfulness to expression through the my voice, speaking from the heart, and expressing aspects of spirit in my life. Thanks to the wonderful folks thrumming at Missoula Sings activities for shared heartfelt stirring!

I grew up singing, sang a lot when younger, including performing, but never really sang my spirit and heart. After quite a few years of less of my own expression, I am feeling renewed interest in truly listening to what’s alive for me and sharing that through all the activities of my life, which include; Hynotherapy, Nonviolent Communication training and facilitation, mediation and community building and embodied expression through tango.

I also have a deep facination with transformation of consciousness and am curious to see how song and authentic expression inform my work with trance, intuitive practice and perception, sensing sacred landscapes and men’s work. I’m excited to be learning more and discovering exciting new innovators in consciousness (certainly song included!) and I am feeling ready to renew offering experiential field trips and workshops with transformational themes.