COME AND SING with the Toronto Shape Note Group. We sing from The Sacred Harp songbook (2025 edition) on the third Wednesday of every month at Friends House in central Toronto and various weekend dates at the Tranzac. Check our calendar for up-to-date information. Experienced and not-so-experienced singers are welcome, and loaner books are available.
The Sacred Harp was first published in 1844, and people have gathered to sing from this book ever since. The book was newly revised in 2025. Singings happened largely in the southern United States until the 1980s, when the tradition began to spread north, and eventually all over the world. The Toronto Shape Note group formed in 2000, and we’ve been singing at least monthly ever since.
During the pandemic, we gathered online weekly to sing using Zoom. These singings had singers join us from other regions around the world. We also held outdoor distanced singings in Fred Hamilton Playground Park on Saturday afternoons.
Since emerging from pandemic restrictions, we sing monthly at Friends House (60 Lowther Avenue, Toronto) and at the Tranzac (292 Brunswick Avenue, Toronto). We also have house singings using books besides the Sacred Harp, including Shenandoah Harmony, Northern Harmony, and Christian Harmony. Join our mailing list to keep informed. You can request to join our email list for notifications of upcoming singings at singing@torontoshapenote.org.
Also, you can join our Facebook group to keep up-to-date on many other shape-note singing events of interest.
We have connections with many other Ontario Shape Note groups, and we’ve all gathered together in August for the Central Ontario All-Day Singings over the years (with dinner on the grounds, of course!). The annual gathering changed to a two-day Convention in 2018, but sadly, the 2020 convention was postponed. Happily, we started the annual singing tradition again in August 2022.
There are many Shape Note groups in Canada, the US and other countries. Singers from these communities travel to all-day singings and conventions to sing together in a harmonious fashion.