Meg Eckhardt has a soothing alto voice.

“Music speaks to a person’s heart,” she says in this week’s podcast.

Eckhardt, who lives in Guilderland now, grew up listening to her English mother sing everything from folk songs to bar songs as she bustled about the house, doing chores. “There was music in the house all the time,” she said.

Eckhardt did the same, raising her own children. Singing, she says, gives her a sense of freedom. “You don’t have to explain yourself,” she said.

A registered nurse, Eckhardt became a massage therapist and used to work with hospice patients. She found that playing music from an era that mattered to her patients could comfort and uplift them as well as their families.

She has sung in church choirs since she was 7. And now she also is a member of the Octavo Singers. “We primarily sing masses,” she said of the group of men and women, 100 strong. Every year, the group performs Handel’s “Messiah” and Eckherdt has heard regular concert-goers say, “That is Christmas to me.”

The singers are considering having a community sing-in for part of the “Messiah” this Christmas, where audience members would be invited to bring along their own scores.

Anyone who is vaccinated against COVID-19 and is willing to practice weekly — Monday nights, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Zion Lutheran Church on Nott Terrace in Schenectady — is welcome to join the Octavo Singers; there are no tryouts.

“We work toward making people feel welcome …,” said Eckhardt. “We’re not afraid of challenging pieces.”

“Our purpose is to serve both our audience and our membership by learning and performing great music,” says the group’s mission statement.

The Octavo Singers, directed by Curtis Funk since 2011, has its roots in the Great Depression when Works Project Administration funds promoted low-cost recreation, including choral groups that met at several community schools and sang for fun. 

Eckhardt says that, at a time when people were stressed, perhaps out of work and isolated, “What’s the one thing that will lift people out of that?”

She answers herself, “Music binds everyone together.”

— Melissa Hale-Spencer