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‘The Storm Is Passing Over’

In the two decades that Angela Clemmons has been running Shoreline Soul, she has learned to plan the concert first, picking songs she thinks will resonate both with the choir members and those attending the concert. She’s in the process of assembling this year’s choir and picking songs for this year’s concert, back after a three-year pandemic hiatus. As she has in past years, she has been thinking about how she’d like people, both audience and choir members, to feel when they walk out of the concert.

“In my mind and in my heart, I’m feeling a sense of urgency and excitement,” she says. “I’m feeling a sense of gratitude for getting through all we have been through, an overwhelming sense of gratitude. There’s also a sense of, you know, that all of these things we’ve been going through, that they aren’t completely behind us yet. Not just COVID, but also the climate in this country. There are still challenges. So I think part of that sense of urgency is to help create an atmosphere where people can feel encouraged and inspired to keep pressing on and for them to know they are not alone. And that when we unite, we are stronger, we are better.”

That made her think of one of the choir members’ favorite songs from years past: “The Storm Is Passing Over, Hallelujah.” She plans to open the concert with that song.

“That just kind of speaks to the times, and the choir members want that song back, and so we are bringing that back,” she says. “Yes, we are in a storm, and it is passing over.”

Fun, Upbeat, User-Friendly

The concert will be Sunday, June 4, at 3 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, on the town green in Madison at 26 Meetinghouse Lane. All adults are welcome to join the choir. While it’s mostly for adults, youth who are able to follow a lyric sheet are welcome to participate as well. There are no auditions. There are five Monday practice sessions: April 2, 17, and May 1, 15, and 22 from 6:45 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. The registration fee is $95 with a discount of $10 for registrations received and paid for by March 20. To find out more, call 203-619-1415 or e-mail shorelinesoul@comcast.net.

This year marks Shoreline Soul’s 20-year anniversary. After debuting in 2001, it has touched the lives of thousands of people living in Connecticut and beyond. Clemmons keeps the practice sessions “fun, upbeat, and user-friendly.” She teaches the songs by ear, and participants are provided with vocal recordings that they can practice between sessions. She says there are enough professional-level singers participating to help the “shower singers” who can follow along until they learn the music.

It’s all about the music and lifting spirits, says Clemmons, and so it’s not a church service. That being the case, the choir attracts singers of all faiths, she said, “even the faith-less.”

In the 20 years since Shoreline Soul’s debut, Clemmons says she has been touched by the unexpected experiences it’s provided.

“Certainly, one of the most heartening experiences I’ve had as Shoreline Soul’s director was being invited, twice, to do a Gospel Shabbat service at Congregation B’nai Jacob in Woodbridge,” she says.

Shoreline Soul, “including some of our gospel-singing Jewish singers,” says Clemmons, and singers from the temple’s choir rehearsed jointly at B’nai.

“When we told Temple Beth Tikvah in Madison what we were doing, they opened their doors for us to rehearse there as well. That feeling of unity was amazing! Singing gospel, including a very upbeat, contemporary, highly-gospelized arrangement of “We Shall Overcome,” in a Jewish synagogue, with our Jewish sisters and brothers, experiencing their service, their way of worship, and then the synagogue hosting a beautiful meal for us all to share immediately after was truly powerful for all of us,” she says. “I floated for days after. There was an immediate decision to make it an annual event, but COVID got in the way after our second Shabbat. We look forward to resuming.”

Shoreline Soul has also expanded beyond this immediate area. “Valley Soul was born when Griffin Hospital’s president, Patrick Charmel, attended a Shoreline Soul concert and invited me to help create and direct a Griffin Hospital-sponsored Valley Soul Choir as a gift (from them) to the community. There have been three Valley Soul Holiday Concerts in Ansonia.”

‘Their Eyes Would Just Light Up’

During the three-year pandemic break, Clemmons has remained busy with her vocal work, which she does commercially as well. A professional singer for more than 40 years, she’s worked with Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Elton John, Justin Timberlake, Steely Dan, Roberta Flack, Cyndi Lauper, David Crosby, the Rascals, among many others.

She’s also appeared on television shows, including the Tony Awards, The View, Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Saturday Night Live. If you’ve heard radio and television jingles for the likes of Walmart, Burger King, Coke, and many more products, you also likely have heard her sing. During the pandemic, when her ability to travel was limited, she finally set herself up with a home studio so that she could continue to do her background vocal work. She’s currently on her way to Norway to do work there.

But for Clemmons, a mother of two who used to live in Madison and now lives in Westbrook with her husband Michael Morin, Shoreline Soul is a special labor of love.

She got the idea for the community choir in the kindergarten pick-up line when she was waiting for her children after school. She’d make conversation with the other moms, and Clemmons, a preacher’s kid, or a PK, as she puts it, would sometimes mention gospel music, which was an integral part of her upbringing in her church.

“So it would come up, and whenever I would mention it, whenever I would say ‘gospel,’ I noticed this reaction,” she said. “Their eyes would just light up.”

One day she had gotten up early in the morning to meditate. “And I remember being on the floor of my living room in Madison, and then just the idea of Shoreline Soul, that name came to me like it kind of dropped into my spirit. I wasn’t reaching for it. I wasn’t trying to plan anything. It just fell into my spirit: Shoreline Soul.”

‘I Have A Team Now’

In the days that followed, whenever she would drive by the First Congregational Church in Madison, she would dream of one day having a concert there. But at the beginning, she started to start smaller, and so she made the rounds at five, six other locations, and each time would be daunted by the rules, regulations, insurance, fees. She wondered if her dream would ever be realized.

On her way home one day, she was driving past the First Congregational Church. “And at the last second, I just went in, you know, walked into the office.” She started talking with the office manager about what was required, and of course, it included rules, regulations, insurance, and fees. Clemmons had been recently divorced, and it was a time in her life when “everything just felt so hard.”

Then a woman who had been standing at the coffee machine turned around. Shari Lucas, who was the music director at the time, had overheard Clemmons talking.

“She said, ‘hi, I’m Shari Lucas, and we have this program called Music at the Meeting House, and we actually look for people like you,’” Clemmons says. And that program took care of all of the insurance and all of the hurdles. “They were just wiped out. Completely gone. I left that place feeling like, ‘I have a team now.’”

Then she contacted her local news organizations, thinking she might be able to get an announcement included.

“And they said, ‘you know what, this is a story,’ And so it went from there,” she says.

It Never Fails

Over the many years of its existence, Shoreline Soul has evolved as gospel music has evolved. There is traditional gospel music and more contemporary gospel music. “And these days, some gospel music is as dance-able as anything you would get in any club,” says Clemmons. “So there has been sort of a mash-up with some of what we are hearing as popular music evolving from gospel music. You hear R &B and other music, and you can say, ‘oh, that came from the church.’”

In Shoreline Soul, Clemmons likes to use both traditional gospel and some of the more contemporary works as well. She says some of the songs are what you might hear in a church, and some of them you might have heard in a movie. “So we do a combination.”

In addition to seeing Shoreline Soul grow and include other congregations and faiths, Clemmons says she is touched by the outpouring of gratitude she receives once the concert is over.

“Literally, after every concert, I get notes and emails and people stopping me in the produce section of the grocery store. Just saying to me with tears in their eyes, that ‘you have no idea what I’ve been going through,’ and it might be a health thing or a divorce or whatever, but they describe it, and they say, ‘you have no idea how much the songs helped me and helped me get through.’ It never fails.”

She is looking forward to working with her new choir and starting the concert with “A Storm Is Passing Over.”

“We are bringing that song back, and it just makes sense to encourage people. We have been through a storm, and it is passing; it will pass, hallelujah.”