Pamela Blevins Hinkle

SUMMARY

I am a classically-trained flutist, multi-instrumentalist, singer, choral conductor, improviser, composer, arts administrator, and lover of chant and sacred song. My life, my work, my art, and my spirituality are deeply intertwined and informed by a passion for creating beauty, building community, and exploring intersections … intersections between creativity and s/Spirit, between disciplines, between places and people, and more. I am called to be a conductor in the purest sense, which, by dictionary definition, is to act as a medium for conveying or transmitting energy, light, sound, or heat. My work is to invite, to ignite, and to facilitate that divine creativity which connects individuals to their authentic selves, to each other, and to the Mystery.

MY APPROACH

I’m an “edgewalker.” I most enjoy working at the boundaries of seemingly disparate things where collaborative experimentation leads to deeper learning and expanded understanding. Such edges might blend disciplines, purposes, organizations, and ideas.

I’m an “enlivener.” Enliveners are trusted teachers and guides that bring the musical past and present together and build relatedness, with the goal of developing the community/congregation as the primary choir. I believe many people crave an embodied and interactive encounter with whatever they name as sacred and with the arts. The work I create or direct often seeks to liberate the creative spirit within that framework and frequently includes participatory experiences to liberate individual and collective creativity.

HOW DID IT COME TO THIS

Music can shape and transform individuals and communities. My own experiences-singing with family members around the piano, the formal church music of my Baptist upbringing (my pastor was a phenomenal viola player), performing the great choral masterworks at Butler University, serving as a church music director, conducting a community chorus with a social change mission, singing prayers in Lakota sweat lodges and ceremonies-have gifted me with profound experiences that demonstrate the power of shared sounding. Music, and especially singing, is, as Salman Rushdie noted, one of the mysteries that holds “the keys to the unseen.”

These experiences have inspired me to seek out and build experiences that help individuals discover and release their own sacred creativity; to understand and help communities connect through collaborative experiences and creative programming; to compose, create, and/or improvise in service to these aims; and in all, to create beauty and transformation.