VOCAL WILDS
The Art of Embodied Improvisation
Supper & Sing Community Jam
A monthly feast of vocal improvisation, nourishment, and connection.
Founded in 2018 by TatiAnah Thunberg and Mary Fithian, Supper & Sing has become a beloved gathering place—like rivers meeting the sea—where we bring our voices, our presence, and our gifts to a shared table.
From September through May, we nourish one another with wholesome food, warm laughter, and the music that rises when voices meet in spontaneous creation. These evenings weave community, play, and artistry in service of strengthening our joy, resilience, and belonging.
🥗 Supper — 6:30 pm
We open the evening with a four-course whole-foods feast, prepared with love by members of our circle.
If you have time, bring something from your kitchen—a vibrant appetizer, hearty main, fresh side, or sweet ending—to delight our senses and nourish the community.
If life is full, bring something simple and effortless. Just come.
🎶 Sing — 7:30 pm
After the meal, we turn toward singing—a two hour open-hearted vocal improvisation jam where all levels of experience are welcome.
Each month, a different facilitator from our community guides the jam, inviting us into:
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deep listening
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playful risk-taking
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embodied expression
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collaborative music-making
No performance. No pressure.
Just voices meeting in the wild, spontaneous moment.
Each month, a different vocal improv artist in our collective circle, we affectionately call the songha, opens their home to our community jam to host and facilitate the jam.
Supper & Sing Hosts
MARY
FITHIAN
Mary Fithian moves through the world with a song at the ready and a fearless sense of adventure guiding her voice. Trained in vocal performance at Eastern Michigan University, she soon traded opera for the open sky—busking in New Orleans, writing songs, and following the call of Spirit wherever it led. Over the years she has sung alongside Laz Slomovits, collaborated with her husband Eric in their joyful duo Mary and the Huz Band, served as a wedding soloist, and now uplifts her community as the music director for Greenwood Sanctuary at First United Methodist Church of Ann Arbor. Whether in ceremony, on stage, or in a circle of friends, Mary treats music as communion—an act of weaving hearts together—and she continues to blossom as a radiant leader in the sacred, spontaneous world of vocal improvisation.
Tatianah
Thunberg
TatiAnah Thunberg, LMSW (she/hers) is the founder of Spirit Moves LLC, and the co-founder of Vocal Wilds and Supper & Sing Community Jam. Event producer, experiential facilitator, song leader and vocal improv artist, she draws from over three decades of experience leading expressive and healing arts classes, groups, programs, playshops, and retreats that awaken the body, soften the armor of protection, and invite connection and creativity to reemerge. Her work draws from a rich tapestry of influences, all centered in the spontaneous intelligence of play.
Irene Soléa Antonellis
Irene Soléa Antonellis, MA, LPC, LMHC, CIRT (she/hers) is a music therapist, psychotherapist, life coach, vocalist, and recording artist with a lifelong career in the healing and expressive arts. She holds an M.A. in Counseling Psychology and Music Therapy from Lesley University and has led contemplative music concerts, workshops and retreats throughout the U.S. and in South America, Europe, and Asia. Nine years ago, she planted roots in Ann Arbor, MI, where she now lives with her husband and two daughters. Irene draws musical inspiration from sacred sounds around the world and Latin folk music traditions. With a musical inheritance that includes Peruvian folk and huayno (her grandfather was Peruvian composer Manuel León), Irene blends musical traditions, the old and the new, and is known for her directness, equanimity, warmth, and humor.
Andrea
Hill
Music was a formative language for me. I began young as a classical violinist and pianist, then shifted into jazz piano and singing in high school. From the start, music was a compass—how my brain organized itself, how I learned to see patterns, how I felt most connected to others, and how I found a way to express what I was too young to put into words. I practiced diligently, hoping to become a professional musician, which brought me skill and wonderful experiences. But in my early twenties, perfectionism, performance, competition—the internalized pressure to be a “good” musician eclipsed my joy. I lost the play, the exploration, the heart of it all. I needed to step away. Since then, in my personal and professional lives, with individuals and groups, I’ve focused on physical and emotional healing work. This has given me a new way to come back to music. What a relief it is not to have to shine to belong. Each time I show up to sing, I’m claiming permission to be authentic and divinely unprepared in music. Practicing vocal improv—with Tatianah’s invitation to “dare to suck” and Kath’s reminder of “pleasure not pressure”—is the best kind of challenge and a deeply satisfying experiment. I’m excited to come together with you to find creative flow, release the impulse to impress, and savor the perfectly imperfect process of bringing our voices together. With no end product to strive for, we can PLAY.
TANYA
Shaffer
Tanya Shaffer is a playwright, author, writing workshop leader and joyful singer living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is the writer of the musical The Fourth Messenger, with composer Vienna Teng, as well as many other plays, and the author of the travel memoir Somebody’s Heart is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa. She currently writes a regular Substack called Tanya Shaffer’s Off-Leash Chronicles, where she publishes personal essays on a wide range of topics. She teaches a range of writing workshops through her business, Off-Leash Writing, and works with individual writers as an editor and coach, helping them realize their creative visions. Tanya was a professional regional theatre actor in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years before moving to Ann Arbor in 2017. She performed in all types of theatre, from new plays to Shakespeare to musicals. Over the last few years, she has been singing less for performance and more for the sheer joy of blending her voice with others. Through the Vocal Lab with Kath Weider, she developed a profound love for vocal improv. This love continues to grow and unfold as she deepens her appreciation for the power of improvised vocal music to open the hearts of singers and listeners alike.
Carisa
Wilder
