The 2025 Lullaby Project: Creating Personal Lullabies to Express Hopes and Dreams for the Future

PORTLAND, OR, April 9, 2025 – Music has always had the power to heal and transform lives. In a creative partnership with Path Home and some of Portland’s most influential singer-songwriters (including Bre Gregg, Stephanie Schneiderman, and Edna Vazquez), The Oregon Symphony is proud to present the Lullaby Project, coming to the Alberta Rose Theatre for one night only on Tuesday, May 13, 2025 at 6:30 PM. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased online through the Oregon Symphony website.

About the Lullaby Project

Conceived by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, the Lullaby Project uses the creative process of songwriting to improve well-being and childhood bonds with parents experiencing housing insecurity and other challenging life situations. This project originally came to Portland in 2018 as a partnership with Path Home, a non-profit helping empower families experiencing homelessness to get back into stable, long-term housing. Together with musicians from the Oregon Symphony and local singer-songwriters, parents and parents-to-be create personal lullabies or love songs for their children through this project, expressing their hopes and dreams for the future. This creative collaboration harnesses the transformative joy of music, utilizing it to strengthen the bonds between parent and child, and connecting community through the power of the performing arts.

Kicking off the process in March 2025, the lullabies for this project are being written in a close, collaborative process between the families at Path Home and the local singer-songwriters. During early creative sessions, the songwriters have been working one-on-one with participants to capture each family’s personal story, hopes, and dreams for the future with their child. The lullabies are then arranged and professionally recorded before being performed live at the Alberta Rose Theatre in a one-night-only moving musical event.

Featured Oregon Symphony musicians include:

• Peter Frajola, Violin
• Zach Galatis, Flute
• Amanda Grimm, Viola
• Marilyn de Oliveira, Cello
• Jason Schooler, Double Bass
• Inés Voglar Belgique, Violin

Portland singer-songwriters for the event include:

• Marianna Thielen (Arranger and Artistic Director)
• Naomi LaViolette
• Bre Gregg
• Beth Wood
• Stephanie Schneiderman
• Marilyn Keller
• Amenta Abioto (Yawa)
• Anna Tivel
• Sarah Clarke
• Coty Raven Morris
• Edna Vazquez

“At the Oregon Symphony, we believe in the profound impact of music as a tool for healing and creating community connections,” says Isaac Thompson, President and CEO of the Oregon Symphony. “We’re proud to be part of the Lullaby Project, which offers an intimate way for families experiencing homelessness and skilled singer-songwriters to discover how music has the ability to transcend barriers to create moments of beauty and human connection.”

“The lullabies that are co-created by the musicians and families who are experiencing homelessness are deep, heartfelt, and joyful,” said Brandi Tuck, Executive Director of Path Home. “These songs are a true display of how sharing one’s story can help individuals move closer towards healing from trauma.”

To learn more about the Lullaby Project and to hear past lullaby collections, visit https://www.orsymphony.org/lullaby-project.

New Partnership with the Family Preservation Project of the YWCA

For years, the Symphony has been hoping to bring the Lullaby Project into Coffee Creek Correctional Facility (CCCF) to work with incarcerated mothers and mothers-to-be who are away from their children for extended periods of time. The entire goal of this project is to help parents bond with their children, supporting parental health and childhood development, and thanks to the support from our partners at the Family Preservation Project (FPP) of YWCA of Greater Portland, we are thrilled to share we have been able to bring the Lullaby Project into CCCF for the very first time in 2025.

YWCA’s FPP has been providing direct services inside CCCF for more than 20 years, strengthening families and communities by assisting incarcerated women as they become rooted in their identities as mothers, promoting the rights of children of incarcerated parents, and providing trauma-informed services designed specifically for each parent’s unique needs. By partnering with them, the Symphony is able to bring three Teaching Artists (Stephanie Schneiderman, Bre Gregg, and Anna Tivel) who are working with three moms/moms-to-be at CCCF to write three lullabies for the children that they hold dear. We’ll also bring our recording engineer from Hallowed Halls, Justin Phelps, to CCCF to record the vocals of any mothers who would like to be on the professionally produced final recording, adding their voices to the melodies of the full ensemble.

Especially when a mother is incarcerated and separated from her children, these lullabies provide an exceptionally powerful opportunity for these women to connect with a child that they may not be able to visit with frequency, or in the case of mothers-to-be who will deliver while incarcerated, the songs these women create may serve as tools to help them bond with children they may not physically be able to see or hold. And while recording in an unconventional environment is not without its challenges (for example, how to record in an environment that doesn’t allow cell phones), the benefits from this rewarding project make every moment worthwhile. FPP is thrilled to be able to invite the families of the CCCF moms to the final concert on May 13 and will share the final recordings with the mothers at CCCF, who will be able to access these lullabies on a computer in a communal classroom/office space.

The Lullaby Project on Live Wire Radio

On Thursday, May 1st from 7:30 – 9:30 PM, catch the Lullaby Project on Live Wire Radio for their live recording at Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, OR! On this episode of Live Wire, the Oregon Symphony will perform a selection of the lullabies that were written this season. We hope to feature two lullabies, one from Portland singer-songwriter Stephanie Schneiderman and a pregnant mom-to-be at Coffee Creek, with the second number currently TBD. This episode will feature three to six Symphony musicians in each lullaby, which will be recorded in front of a live audience and then edited for broadcast. As this show is released nationwide, this Live Wire performance is a fantastic opportunity to get this amazing project on the radio waves, sharing these pivotal pieces of transformational music with a greater audience.

About Path Home

Path Home is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending family homelessness in Oregon through trauma-informed, evidence-based programming. With a focus on long-term housing stability and systemic change, Path Home provides a range of services—including homelessness prevention, emergency shelter services, rapid re-housing and housing retention programs—tailored to the needs of vulnerable families. By empowering families with resources, education and support, Path Home aims to create lasting, positive change for Oregon’s most at-risk families. For more information, please visit www.path-home.org.

About YWCA's Family Preservation Project at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility

YWCA’s approach is person-centered, trauma-informed, and strengths-based. Their vision is that all women and their families can achieve their full potential in a world without discrimination. They believe that to empower women and eliminate racism, they must meet their clients where they are most vulnerable and provide the compassion and services that place them on a path to self-sufficiency and prosperity. They are fierce advocates for Survivors of domestic and sexual violence, seniors living on low fixed incomes, and incarcerated moms and their kids. They fight for policies that protect survivors and advocate for racial equality from the local to the state level. The YWCA educates people in positions of power and members of the interested public about the challenges faced by the most vulnerable members of their community and provides services that meet the community’s evolving needs. Learn more at www.ywcapdx.org.

About the Oregon Symphony

The multi-GRAMMY Award-nominated Oregon Symphony, led by Jean Vollum Music Director David Danzmayr, serves more than 500,000 people annually through live concerts and education and community engagement programs. Through innovative initiatives such as the Creative Alliance, the Oregon Symphony engages cultural thought-leaders to bring a diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and inspiring musical experiences to our community that go beyond the concert hall and support the Symphony’s mission to move music forward. Online programming and syndicated broadcasts extend the Oregon Symphony’s reach to tens of millions more children and adults around the world. The Oregon Symphony has delighted audiences for more than 125 years and is the oldest orchestra in the Western United States. For more information, visit www.orsymphony.org. Follow Oregon Symphony on Instagram and Facebook.

Media Contact: Laurel Wilde, Director of Communications, lwilde@orsymphony.org

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