Genesis at the Crossroads’ SOUNDS OF HEALING is collaborating with Focus Fairies Mentoring in Chicago

Genesis’ Sounds of Healing, showcased throughout Chicagoland and around the US/world over the last three years, uses music as a vehicle to delve into our shared humanity as we engage audiences to explore conversations for and about healing ourselves, our communities, and our physical planet.  Sounds of Healing is a collaboration between Saffron Caravan, Genesis’ professional world music ensemble and graduates of our Genesis Academy Summer Institute, a leadership and peacebuilding education program for exceptional youth from areas of conflict. This program brings together artists from the US (Chicago) with others from Morocco, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Europe, Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela who worked together to create the lyrics and score. (More than half the artists come from communities of color.)

Genesis is proud to be working with Focus Fairies Mentoring for our upcoming Sounds of Healing artist-in-residency program with three cohorts of their girls ages 11-18 over the course of 2024.  As Focus Fairies Mentoring’s mission is to empower at-risk girls from Chicago’s challenged SW sides, we found this organization an ideal fit. Their Sounds of Healing program includes multiple performances, small group roundtables of an intimate, interactive nature on peacebuilding and healing with adjunct educational programs including some on music scoring and lyric writing. Together, we can help harness the power of young girls to have agency in shaping their Chicago communities into more peaceful ones as they find and refine their individual voices for healing.

Sounds of Healing was presented virtually during the beginning of the pandemic reaching people in more than 37 countries. It transitioned to its live, in-person phase with the world premiere at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium in 2022. In June 2023 we performed for the US Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington DC with subsequent performances for over 200 refugees and at-risk youth from Chicago’s SW sides.  Sounds of Healing extended artist-in-residency programs will continue to tour across the US to Africa (S. Africa, Ghana, & Mauritius), Berlin, and Normandy, (the latter for 80^th anniversary D-Day celebrations), Morocco, and Brazil.