It’s low-stakes singing that comes with a high reward.

Every Sunday night for 90 minutes, Wes Sparkes directs a mishmash of singers from behind a piano at Ivywild School. Sometimes rehearsals are inside Bristol Brewing Co.; sometimes they’re in the barrel room. Other times, like this summer, they need a larger space, like the Ivywild gym, because 72 people were inspired to come trill their little hearts out in the Bristol Beer Choir.

This isn’t a group of rollicking drunks clinging to each other as they belt out tunes while lifting a beer-filled stein to the sky. This is a well-organized choir of melodic voices that get together for six-week cycles, during which they work on one specific piece of music that they perform at Ivywild at the end of the session.

“The overall goal of the group is to have people who are passionate about music and enjoy spending time with one another have a place to do that as adults,” said Sparkes, a beer tender at Bristol Brewing Co. “It doesn’t matter what their past formal training or classical experience is. The thing I’ve loved most about group is the people who show up are people who really take music seriously but don’t take themselves too seriously.”

Sparkes, a former Colorado Springs teacher, is no stranger to the power of music’s ability to bring people together. Over more than two dozen years, he’s conducted more than 15 community, church, youth and honor choirs, including a group that performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City. He’s also been an accompanist for the Colorado Springs Children’s Chorale since before the pandemic.

A trained pianist, Starkes began working at Bristol almost a year ago, but even before taking the job, he reached out to see if the owners would be interested in hosting a choir.

“It seemed to align with their values,” Starkes said. “It’s community-focused. It’s welcoming, low-commitment. They gave me the green light.”

The group started in October with 19 people, including some of his former students and former music teachers. Nobody is turned away from the non-auditioned group. It’s $50 per cycle and $35 for teachers and college students, which covers sheet music, planning costs and other odds and ends.

The summer session was Jordan Peterson’s first. A music student in college, she also performed in community theater in Florida, but nothing professional.

As a stay-at-home mom, she was looking to find a community and also to sing again.

“It was really daunting to put myself in a situation like this,” Peterson said. “It’s very vulnerable to sing around others sometimes. But it was so accessible and relaxed, unlike the rigidity of a college choir. There was something so inspiring about being with other adults who have other responsibilities — kids, jobs, hobbies — but they spend time on a Sunday hanging out because they love to sing.”

A six-week concert cycle allows people to come and go, depending on their schedules. The summer session, themed around “Rivers and Stars,” also saw the choir take a three-day field trip to Santa Fe, N.M., where they performed at a brewery, had a clinic with a choir director and attended shows, including the Santa Fe Opera. In May, the choir also performed with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic during its “Gershwin: Porgy and Bess” concert.

To commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary, the current, seventh cycle is undertaking the piece “A Vision Unfolding, by composer Kyle Pederson, which uses text from contemporary and historical American poets, such as Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, and reflects on the founding ideals of the U.S.

Later this year, the choir will work on music from the 2017 film “The Greatest Showman.”

“There’s something special about the honesty of getting to hear someone’s emotions through the human voice,” Sparkes said. “Any sort of music performance is a shared real-time experience whether it’s someone in the audience or enjoying time together rehearsing. That connection with one another and that awareness of each other’s humanity is something we need more of as things become more digital.”

DETAILS
Bristol Beer Choir, 6:30-8 p.m. Sundays, Ivywild School, 1604 S. Cascade Ave., $50 per cycle, $35 for teachers and college students; instagram.com/bristolbeerchoir, bristolbrewing.com