Listen4life Foundation

People's Choir of Oakland (ListenForLife.org/PCO) : new, fiscally sponsored project of LFL, co-founded by opera legend Frederica von Stade and opera singer/film producer Nicolle Foland. Project mission is to provide choral training/singing experiences to unhoused people throughout the Oakland Bay Area (California). Scheduled 2021 group rehearsals and performances were all cancelled/postponed due to Covid restrictions in Bay Area. But much was accomplished in terms of creating the operations/artistic team, infrastructure, rehearsal locations, and establishing a reliable funding base (individual donors and grants).

Notes For Nourishment (ListenForLife.org/NFN): NFN concerts, co-founded by Erin Nolan and Donna Stoering, have occurred in one form or another around the world since approx 2012. Project mission is to create opportunities for musicians to perform concerts that raise funds for a cause/nonprofit that they care about and want to help. At NFN concerts (whether live venue or online/broadcast only) the professional performers donate their time/talents to nourish their listeners; the audience donates funds to the performers' chosen nonprofit that nourishes the hungry, hurting or homeless of their particular community or beyond. Some years, we have requests from musicians to organize many NFN concerts, and some years not so many. In 2021 we were primarily focused on other LFL projects and only did two NFN concerts, both broadcast live worldwide, featuring performers in Colorado, California, and Texas who raised funds for conservancy, music and education nonprofits operating in the USA and/or internationally.

Music For Medicine (ListenForLife.org/MFM): new project co-founded by LFL members Donna Stoering, Erin Nolan and Paul Andrews. Project mission is to generate intentionally-created, neurologically based "music for medical healing" tracks (as compiled CDs, or preloaded mp3 players, or digital downloads) which are then donated (provided for free, upon request) to all types of medical workers, specialists, caregivers, ICUs, hospitals, hospice centers, stroke recovery centers, PTSD counselors, rehab centers, and individual therapists, worldwide. Two different CDs of this special music were created by LFL during 2021; preloaded mp3 players were provided to 30+ individuals to test in pilot programs nationally and internationally, and >58 CDs were provided to ICU nurses, hospice caregivers, PTSD counselors, and patient families during 2021. LFL systems were created for vetting/training other musicians wanting to provide music for future MFM tracks; also online systems for organizing orders/distribution of requested MFM resources, and for training/communications between numerous new MFM project volunteers across USA and worldwide.

TravelsWithMusic (TravelsWithMusic.com): TWM is both an active project and award-winning educational production of LFL, first created/envisioned by LFL founder Donna Stoering in 2006 and updated every other year by an international LFL team of ethnomusicologists, sociologists, cross-cultural musicians, film and audio professionals, K-12 educators/curriculum developers, technology/IT professionals, and graphics/web designers. In 2021 we continued our TWM distribution and teacher/lesson plan partnerships with Teacher Sherpa.com, TeachersPayTeachers.com, and the Social Studies Scholastics Services. We commenced new relationships with additional audio/video/documentary film specialists willing to help plan for addition of new culture units to TWM in 2022 and beyond, and sought new LFL volunteers to help discover music masters of other cultures "hidden in plain sight" among their communities worldwide, so that we can eventually build an open source "wikipedia" for cross-cultural music. The mission of TWM is to help the music masters of all cultures around the globe to 1) preserve/enrich their traditions for future generations, and 2) to share their invaluable stories with the rest of the world.