Sanctuary Studios began as a music school taught from a home studio in 2020, and grew, gathering by gathering, into ceremonies, immersions and workshops held in chapels, salt caves, yoga halls, universities and by the sea. Ten years, told in eras: the large entries are gatherings Hope led, and the small ones are the path that shaped her. Click any photo to open the set.
A lifelong artist: Hope grew up in dance and theater, sang her way through folk, classical and experimental music, and has worked in recording studios since she was sixteen. She has composed for choirs, chamber ensembles, ballet, opera and film, and led choirs and ensembles of her own.
Choirs, records and a practice of the body.
Every week, a room of volunteer singers becomes one voice. Leading a church choir is where Hope learned the kind of leadership Sanctuary runs on: musical, communal, patient, and built around the people who are actually in the room.
Pritam would later guide the breath at the first Chamber Meditations.
Sanctuary Studios begins, in a home studio, during the shutdown.
A response to the pandemic shutdown: when every venue closed, Hope began teaching people to build their own home studios and make records from home. Courses, cohorts and a community grew around it: Muse (music production for women and gender-expansive artists), the Songwriter Intensive, the EP Bootcamp, the Songwriters Lab, and more. Students played on one another's records.
The dissertation studies ceremony, ritual and music as spiritual technology.
A ceremony series, iterated and expanded.
Breathwork and live improvised music in Princeton University Chapel, with Pritam Siri guiding the breath. Free and open to all. The first of the series.
About 500 miles across northern Spain to the coast at Finisterre.
The form grows: Kundalini breathwork with seven musicians, from viola da gamba and Indian flute to harp and electronics.
All Saints' Day. Shamanic breathwork, drumming and an ancestor altar, with Eleonora Berenyi and a circle of percussionists, harp and bandola.
The series leaves Princeton University for the first time: sound healing and guided meditation in the salt cave at Sault Haus, Hopewell, with Nancy Perez and Cleek Schrey.
Back in the chapel, and bigger: an immersive choral meditation in which the audience moved, breathed and hummed with the choir. With Sadia Bruce and Marcus Broderick Montgomery.
Breathwork with A.J. Alvarez, crystal bowls, tap and viola da gamba in the chapel.
Hope brought together a full ensemble of musicians who had never worked together before, and in one week they created, recorded and performed a brand-new album in the barn. It was a turning point: proof of what a group can make in a week, in the right place, and a big part of what moved Sanctuary forward. Avaloch itself, a beautiful artist residency, is one of Sanctuary's models.
The ceremonies come to New York City: live music meditation, tea ceremony, movement and somatic practice, by donation.
Immersions with ensembles in Mexico and the Baltics.
Vocal and creative immersions with the ensemble Aliento y Latido: breath and lying-down listening, guided movement and trust work, group improvisation, and songs shared in the round.
Six days of "wonder as method": shared meals, writing by the sea, cut-up lyric games, and a candlelit song share. Song as self-authorship.
Sessions with Baltic musicians, from kanklės (the Lithuanian zither) in the park and the rehearsal room, to a night with the NOJO Airlines Orchestra in Vilnius, under a glass tent with brass, strings and a choir, Hope singing out front. In Riga, songwriting sessions around a shared table in an attic studio.
Finishing the PhD, and bringing the work home.
To finish the PhD, integrate what the travels taught, and write the thesis, and to bring the work back to Princeton.
Music, mantra and deep rest at Gratitude Yoga, the studio across the street from the university's front gates where Hope practices every day.
A candlelit circle to cross the threshold of the year: meditation, sound healing, journaling and individual readings, for ten people.
At an ashram beside a Kali temple: a month of deep training that expanded Hope's work on ceremony, ritual and music, and sharpened the thesis.
Creative immersions with singers and school choirs in South India: working with young choirs in their festival dress, speaking to a full assembly hall, and an award from the school community.
Multi-day immersions, and the work put into practice.
The first multi-day immersion in New Jersey: two days at Sault Haus of salt cave meditation, sound healing, voice activation, journaling and a self-authoring ceremony around a bonfire.
Traveling again: a class at the Academy of Arts and Creative Technology in Kota Kinabalu, Borneo, hosted by Dr. Lee Chie Tsang Isaiah, on lineage, inheritance and the listening self. Students drew the lineages that shaped their ear, then listened for what they found there.
Back in Chicago, putting the work into practice: ceremonies across the city, each with a different musical collaborator. Soft Power (with Brittany Loewen), The Sacred Sound of Self-Embrace (with Marcus Broderick Montgomery), Songs in the Round (the Hope Littwin Ensemble), and Pauri of Infinity (with Juliann Wang).
Sanctuary Music Studios: a place of its own.