What is RSI?
The Rising Song Institute aims to cultivate the grassroots musical-spiritual creativity of the Jewish people. A holistic nexus point of creative musicians, prayer leaders, and raw collective song, this musical Institute hopes to help reinvent the future of music as a communal Jewish spiritual practice.
Rooted in the vision of Hadar, the Rising Song Institute emphasizes the intricate interdependence of advanced musical-spiritual artists and the powerful energy of people gathered in community to sing. As such, we’ve started by creating a Philadelphia-based song gathering (The Rising Song Gathering meets on the first Saturday night of the month in the Turell Skyspace in the Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting”), launching a national-scope artist fellowship (“The Rising Song Fellowship,” launched February 2018), and finally working towards creating a full-time study program to open in Sept. 2019 (“The Rising Song Residency”).
Led by internationally recognized musician, composer, and teacher Joey Weisenberg, the author of Building Singing Communities (2011) and award-winning The Torah of Music (2017), the Rising Song Institute empowers its national fellows and local communal collaborators to deepen their connections with traditional Jewish melodies and ancient spiritual modalities while concurrently bringing their full creative selves to the process of composing new music for the Jewish community and beyond.
The Institute has three project areas: community-wide singing for all, immersive training for emerging musical-spiritual leaders, and professional content development.
Faculty
Jewish Music Residency
The Rising Song Jewish Music Residency is an exclusive program for fostering the next generation of Jewish community songleaders. Based in Philadelphia, it is currently in its pilot year. You can learn more about the residents here.
Rising Song Fellowship
The Rising Song Fellowship The Rising Song Fellowship is a three-year program to raise the musical-spiritual creativity of Jewish culture by developing music that both connects to the energy of the Jewish community and is artistically inspiring. You can learn more about the first cohort of fellows here.
Hadar's Rising Song Intensive
HRSI (formerly the Singing Communities Intensive) is an immersive event held each December for the wider Rising Song community to come together and learn about Jewish music and song-leading. You can learn more about it and sign up here.
Rising Song Records
Our network of musicians has many albums between them, and you can stream or purchase them here.
