Opera Philadelphia lifts voices at Broad Street Love

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Every day for the past four years James Cole has been coming to Broad Street Love — formerly Broad Street Ministry — for free meals and support counseling.

Since August, he has had another reason to come: singing.

“It brings out things I didn’t know I had in my mind and my body,” Cole said before a weekly choir rehearsal with two dozen other regulars at the former church on South Broad.

“It makes me feel like I’m at home and we’re knowing one another for a long time,” he said. “I’m 74, and it brings the best out of me.”

Cole is a participant in Harmonious Communities, a program spearheaded by Opera Philadelphia that formed a choir at this center for people experiencing homelessness and poverty.

The choir will perform its first public concert at Broad Street Love on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 5:30 p.m. The program curated by the singers themselves will include popular songs like Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” “Seasons of Love” from the musical “Rent,” “Beautiful City” from the musical “Godspell” and Christmas carols.

BSL practices what it calls “radical hospitality,” providing people with food, clothing, mail service and medical attention. Director of Development Larry Downey said singing is an important element of those services.

“Our approach of radical hospitality is really nourishing somebody’s whole person. The baseline of that is food and it’s clothing and hygiene,” he said. “But to really engage somebody in a whole way we need to tap in that creativity, tap into that artistic side.”

Choir participants are paid $10 every time they come to the weekly rehearsals, with incremental bonuses to those who show up regularly.

The BSL choir is the first Harmonious Communities program, a pilot effort by Opera Philadelphia. The group’s vice president of community initiatives, Veronica Chapman-Smith, describes it as an experimental trial run that does not yet have dedicated funding, leveraging vocal training for “engagement, empathy building and community building.”

“This is our first pancake year,” said Chapman-Smith, referring to the idea that the first pancake on the griddle is never perfect. “It’s been a glorious pancake.”

The voices are imperfect, some frayed by time and hard living, and they’re not always in time. But they become uncannily poignant when they hit lines like “they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness/ But it’s better than drinking alone,” from “Piano Man.”

“We all need connection,” said Downey. “There’s a lot of isolation that comes with being unhoused. A lot of isolation that comes with living in deep poverty. To be able to build those connections really supports health at its base.”

The Dec. 18 concert concludes the fall choir program. Both Opera Philadelphia and BSL hope to bring it back next year.