What are the Rising Song Residency’s goals?

We aim to:

  1. Gather: Bring together a cohort of talented musical leaders.

  2. Sing and Study: Provide an opportunity for deep musical study and creative work.

  3. Build Community: Support and lead singing communities in Philadelphia.

  4. Explore Spirit: Create a holistic balance between musical work, communal work, and spiritual work.

  5. Affect World: Create a core network of ba’alei negina (musical-spiritual leaders) who will fan out and become change agents in building Jewish musical community worldwide.

What does the Rising Song Residency value?

Hadar’s Rising Song Institute strives to operate according to the following values:


  1. ARTISTIC AND COMMUNAL: We emphasize the intricate interdependence between the work of advanced musical-spiritual artists and the powerful grassroots energy of people gathered in community to sing.

  2. ROOTED AND RADICAL: Our music is deeply rooted in ancient Jewish traditions, but we will also invent entirely new musical modalities.

  3. PLURALISTIC AND PARTICULAR : Our singing includes many different styles of music, and our particular synthesis of these styles will find wide applications that transcend established genres and denominations.

  4. INCLUSIVE AND EGALITARIAN: Our music gathers people close together and facilitates careful listening, transcending dogmatic social categories. People of all gender identities and expressions, and from all cultural backgrounds and streams of Judaism, are invited to participate and lead.

  5. JOYOUS AND TEARFUL: Our music unlocks heavy hearts and encourages therapeutic expressions of a wide emotional spectrum.

  6. PRAYERFUL AND TORAH-CENTERED: Music is a form of prayer, a language for opening up people’s largest questions. Music speaks most powerfully when it reflects our collective ancient-new wisdom (“Torah”).

  7. BEAUTIFUL AND IMAGINATIVE: Music reminds us of humankind’s capacity for beauty and curiosity.

Who should apply?

The Rising Song Residency will be a gathering space for self-starting, creatively grounded artists and spiritual leaders who wish to dedicate nine focused months to their musical-spiritual craft and practice. Artist-residents will develop their toolbox of skills from the Jewish musical tradition, such as leading traditional prayer and nigunim (melodies), and also spend considerable time each day practicing, rehearsing, and developing their own musical-spiritual offerings in collaboration with others.

The ideal artist-resident would bring

  • advanced experience as a musician and/or musical prayer leader,

  • a love of singing with other people,

  • familiarity with traditional Jewish prayer and/or Jewish text study, and

  • curiosity and commitment to musical-spiritual creation.

We recognize that many artist-residents will arrive with more advanced skills in some of these areas and will require more skill development in other areas. We hope to build a diverse but complementary group of participants who are eager to learn with and from one another. Over the course of nine months, each artist-resident will develop skills and expand their individual capacity for musical-spiritual artistry and leadership.