“Bellingham’s Linda Allen Finds Her Passion in Song and Family” (click on the above link)
(from Whatcom Talk, August 8, 2021
“A true and delightful artist who poetically tells it all.”
Linda is now celebrating fifty years as a working musician: One with a passion for writing and singing songs that inform, transform and heal. Trained as an educator, a Clinical Musician, and an ordained interfaith minister, her work has included workshops, sermons, keynotes and retreats as well as performances in a wide variety of settings. She has just released her thirteenth recording, Emergence.
As a Certified Clinical Musician, she is currently employed by Hospice of the Northwest. This work has also led her to found two choirs, Bellingham’s Women with Wings and the Bellingham Threshold Singers. She has released two recordings and an accompanying songbook of songs for this work, songs to lift the heart and heal the spirit: Carry Us Through This Night and Into the Promise of Morning. She has facilitated retreats and training workshops on music in palliative care. In 2010, Linda was inducted into the Northwest Women’s Hall of Fame for her work with the choirs.
“Linda Allen is a peoples’ musician. People like her keep that idea from becoming a relic of the past. Linda hears a story, reads a headline, observes a confrontation, senses a broken heart and then turns it into song. When we hear it back, we are invited to stay human.”
Linda’s passion for history has led her to work with the Washington Women’s History Project, the Washington Centennial Commission (as Washington’s Resident Songwriter), the Washington Women’s History Consortium, the Inquiring Mind program of Humanities Washington, the Cultural Enrichment and Folklife Programs of the State Arts Commission and the Folklife in the Schools program. Her CD, Washington Notebook, is made up of original songs celebrating Washington, prepared for its Centennial. She also collected and edited the songs for two songbooks: The Rainy Day Songbook and Washington Songs and Lore. She traveled extensively to schools, museums and libraries with workshops and concerts on Washington's history.
Linda is currently offering her multi-media presentation, Here’s to the Women! in commemoration of both the state and national battle for the Nineteenth Amendment’s passage nationally in 2020. Both the silencing of women's experience and the empowering of women's voices are showcased, featuring songs, stories, readings and images. Her CD, Here’s to the Women! is based on the women and events that were pivotal in bringing women the vote and features songs from the presentation.
Linda has toured extensively throughout the US and beyond. She’s served on the national executive board of Local 1000 of the American Federation of Musicians, and helped establish two community folk centers. In 2006 she visited Israel and Palestine and later completed a recording of children's songs for use in the Peacebuilders program in Bethlehem. Linda prepared and presented a multi-media presentation based on her experience called Pilgrimage: Journey to the Heart of Israel and Palestine.
Linda received her Doctor of Ministry degree with a dissertation called, “The Bridge Between the Earth and Sky: The Spirituality of Voice”. Ordained as an interfaith minister in 2006, Linda has taught workshops and offers keynote addresses at conferences, seeking to empower others to find their physical and creative voices. Her multi-media presentation, Daughters of Lilith, is an exploration of women’s spirituality based on new interpretations of the stories of Biblical women. Linda is a long-time resident of Bellingham, Washington where she lives with her husband, Scott Slaba. She has three adult children, Jen and Kristin Allen-Zito, professional musicians, and Nathaniel Allen-Slaba, medical student (and closet guitar player).
