Inspired by feminist anthem, Beacon Rising marches on
Lisa Andretta loves singing in the car but never figured she could be a real vocalist. After joining the Beacon Rising Choir, she found her voice.
“When I went to my first rehearsal, I instantly fell in love,” she says. “I had no idea something like this existed.”
The chorus, which started in 2017 with 13 members, now has 70, says founder Gina Samardge. Its next concert is May 18 at Beacon High School.
Beacon Rising is a “resistance choir,” Samardge says, open to women and nonbinary singers. A feminist anthem from the 2017 women’s march in Washington, D.C., “Quiet,” by Milck, inspired the choir’s formation. The song includes the lyric, “I can’t keep quiet for anyone anymore. … Let it out now.”
Cellphone videos of flash mobs performing to the song went viral and Samardge responded. “I needed to sing it with other women,” she says.
Her activist roots are reflected in the choir’s repertoire, with songs that preach love, acceptance and a fight-the-power attitude such as “The Hymn of Acxiom,” by Vienna Teng; “Refugee,” by Moira Smiley; “On Children,” by Ysaye Barnwell (with lyrics by Khalil Gibran); and “People Have the Power,” by Patti Smith.
“The 2016 election spawned a lot of choirs,” Samardge says. “Singers always tell me that this is a healing force in their lives.”
A trained music educator and curious musician who lights up when speaking about playing clawhammer banjo, Samardge conducts the choir and arranges some songs. She came to Beacon in 2010 after getting priced out of Brooklyn.
“I grew up in a small town in Ohio [Marion] and there is such a stronger community feeling here,” she says. Samardge and her husband, musician Andy Reinhardt, who assembles the band that accompanies the choir, are childless by choice.
Yet she’s touched the lives of many youngsters in Beacon and beyond through Compass Arts, a grassroots organization she founded that runs programs in the schools and from the First Presbyterian Church on Liberty Street.
Compass Arts initially rented a 1,000-square-foot space at Beacon Music Factory, then expanded to the church’s Fellowship Hall, which features a stage, kitchen and new flooring installed by the nonprofit.
In 2023, when the Beacon City School District called with an arts emergency — the middle school drama club had no teacher — she arranged for three visiting artists to structure a 10-week afterschool program teaching dance and choreography, improv and theater games and a glee club-style singing and movement class.
“I remember being 18 years old and saying to my mother, ‘I only want grandchildren,’ and she said, ‘Well, that’s not how it works,’” Samardge says. “But I was at an event and some teenagers waved to me, and it turned out that they had attended a bunch of [Compass Arts] programs. I realized that somehow, someway, I got my wish. These kids are my temporary grandchildren.”
Beacon High School is located at 101 Matteawan Road. Tickets to the May 18 concert start at $20 ($10 seniors, teens; $5 ages 6-12; free ages 5 and younger); see compassarts.org/beacon-rising. The doors open at 1 p.m. for a free event with community organizations, a raffle and bake sale, followed by the concert at 2 p.m.
