about milly

milly is a musician, facilitator, outdoor educator, designing experiences that help people love it here. Lately, when she’s not landscaping, milly is most often organizing and leading community singing led by the question “What is the music this room of voices wants to make?” Her main musical homes are Boston Area Singing Circles—an intergenerational community she founded four years ago—and Dedham Music School, where she teaches voice, piano, and guitar and leads weekly community singing.

Over the past two years, she has been saying “yes” to a growing number of invitations into spaces where people are already gathered— university classrooms, protests and rallies, festivals, weddings, and senior centers—bringing music in as a way to deepen connection, collective power, and a sense of belonging.

milly is a Berklee-trained Community Health Musician, and a certified Música do Círculo Facilitator, a method from Brazil for group music making. Her Songleading weaves together oral-tradition folk singing and accessible approaches to vocal improvisation and body percussion. Her facilitation is marked by both a playful and prayerful presence.

Before stepping more fully into community arts leadership, Milly spent over a decade in outdoor education—as a camp director, wilderness guide, and environmental educator. The pillars of this lineage, have become integral to her current work, including the experiential learning spiral, challenge-by-choice, trauma-informed care, learning from natural systems and an unwavering AWE of being alive on Earth. She went on to get her M.Ed from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Leadership and Arts Education, and has since been leaning into her favorite art form, experience design – crafting brave containers that channel the creative life force.

Looking ahead to this summer, she is launching her first season of Wilderness Retreats, guiding small groups through multi-day journeys of song, deep nature connection, and building strong communities. At the heart of her work is a simple prayer - may we remember how to love it here, together.

honoring the influences

I honor the Non-Human teachers

of the California Redwoods, Connecticut Pines, Sierra Granite and Glacial New England hills.

the Vocal Improv teachers

Pedro Consorte, Ronaldo Crispim, and Zuza Gonçalves who created Música do Círculo , Bobby McFerrin and Christiane Karan of CircleSinging, and the vibrant and growing improv community in Boston that has carried my simple melodies to new places.

the Community Singing Movement in California

the women of Pescadero Valley, CA, Songleaders that have shaped my style, MaMuse, Heather Houston, Lydia Violet, to name a few.

the many methods of Movement Research

Gaga Movement, teachers of Free Skewl through the Pandemic, Contact Improv, and Margit Galanter my mentor and cousin, who opened a world of embodied ecology, influenced by her work with Lisa Nelson and Tuning Scores.

the Dhamma

I have received through teachers of Shambhala, Vipassana, Kadampa and Insight Meditation.

Nature Awareness teachers

Garth Harwood and Steve Van Zandt, and indirectly Jon Young who opened my eyes to the world of small.

the writers whose words shape my work

To name a few: Robin Wall Kimmerer, adrienne maree brown, Clarissa Pinole Estés, Julia Cameron, Joanna Macy, Paolo Freire. Thank you for helping us see with new & ancient eyes.

r í o a b a j o r í o

“The creative force [río abajo río, the river beneath the river] flows over the terrain of our psyches looking for the natural hollows, the arroyos, the channels that exist in us. We become it's tributaries, its basins; we are its pools, ponds, streams, and sanctuaries. The wild creative force flows into whatever beds we have for it, those we are born with as well as those we dig with our own hands. We don’t have to fill them, we only have to build them.”

Pg. 323. Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

MY MANIFESTO[in response]

It is an act of resistance - the most powerful I have come to believe - to build our creative power. This source, a river that feeds and connects all that is, can feel dammed from the wounds of colonization, an oppressive education system, capitalism, to name a few. I have seen a damaging over emphasis on self-help for adults in this work — but this basin-building work isn’t meant to be done alone, in our living room. We need to be held. [literally, yes]. And also held accountable, listening for each other’s creative brave edge, and pushing each other to live there, together. Leaning on each other - as facilitator, guide, spine. I have committed to the work of building communities and basins that give way to this creative force, connection, and wildness.