Residencies & Songleading

Are you looking to inspire and engage your congregation to think in new ways about music, liturgy, and prayer?

With a strong background in transformative and creative prayer experiences, as well as extensive work with both professional and lay teams, Cantor Will’s approach is to support and strengthen existing goals, and invite new questions and reflection to better position your community to deepen engagement in worship and relationship building. Her gift is to create opportunities for deep learning and sustainable growth that will have an impact well beyond her visit.

Rosalie is well-known as someone who brings innovative ideas to worship while honoring the minhagim--traditions of the place. She will work collaboratively to discover where your musical and worship traditions can be a gateway to exploring how to deepen prayer experiences.

Residency Weekend

Rosalie travels regularly into communities for weekend residencies, building programming that supports the goals and vision of the professional and lay leadership. Either as a stand alone weekend full of song, teaching, coaching and performing, or as the culmination of distance consulting or coaching support, Rosalie's diverse skills can provide learning and joyful singing for everyone.

Options for weekends include:

Leading Friday night worship, sharing some new repertoire blended with the familiar, and offering teachings to open the congregation to the diversity and Jewish prayer and melodic experiences
Preparing with a choir or musicians for co-leadership
Teaching a Shabbat morning or lunch adult study on Jewish Music, Trends in Worship, Changes to our Prayerbook and Jewish Music, Inclusion (accessibility, special needs, diversity) in Worship and Congregational life, or other topics that can be developed collaboratively
On-site coaching or masterclasses with clergy, soloists, lay worship leaders
Campfire/Story-Song programs
Family concerts in religious school
Congregational or wider regional songleader training and pipeline support
Worship team or Board of Trustees sessions to think about congregational prayer and sacred time in new ways

Songleading

Rosalie is also an expert teacher of songleading for teens, young adults, and adults in the areas of religious school, worship, and communal events. She is the author of Songleading: A Work of Art, a trade book and resource for all stages of songleader experience.

She also leads dynamic moments of group singing for conferences, meetings, convenings and sacred occasions, bringing her expertise and unique ability to listen to a group and be present to its needs, build moments and yet be flexible when the realities call for different choices. Rosalie travels around the country creating sacred communal singing moments.

Rosalie has visited many congregations, including:

Temple Beth Am, Seattle, WA

Congregation Beth Tikvah, Columbus, OH

Temple B’nai Israel, Little Rock, AR

Congregation Beth Israel, Houston, TX

Beth David Reform Congregation, Gladwyn, PA

Beth El Hebrew Congregation, Alexandria VA

Jewish Center of the Hamptons, East Hampton, NY

Congregation Beth Israel, West Hartford, CT

Temple Sinai, Oakland, CA

Temple Anshe Hesed, Erie, PA

Rosalie also has led prayer, teaching, and song for:

WRJ of Temple Kol Emeth, Marietta, GA

Temple Micah, Washington, DC - Wise Aging Retreat

Glastonbury Abbey, Boston MA - Listening to Other Voices Series

Poor People’s Campaign Moral March on Washington

The RAC’s Consultation on Conscience

Cantor Rosalie Will is an amazing guest. We had an extraordinary weekend with her, at a time when our congregation was working through a significant change in our worship music. Rosalie helped our volunteer musicians, our lay leadership, my professional colleague, and me to think through these changes and how best to utilize the incoming student cantor in our particular situation.

I highly recommend that you bring her to your congregation, particularly if you’re eager to think through worship transformation and/or inclusion, another area of her vast expertise.

Rabbi Barry Block, Congregation B’nai Israel, Little Rock, AR

We had the pleasure of welcoming Cantor Rosalie Will as our Artist-in-Residence for an entire weekend, beautifully integrated into various aspects of our community - Family Shabbat, Adult PrayerLab, and Religious School Camp Day.

Our clergy team really appreciated, and continues to talk about, the probing questions that Cantor Will posed to us during the planning sessions leading up to her visit, challenging us to really consider the purpose of worship and the people we seek to serve. When the big weekend finally arrived, Cantor Will’s grace and passion permeated in everything that she did, spreading her knowledge and creativity to all.

Cantor Lauren Goodlev, Beth David Reform Congregation, Gladwyn, PA