Meg Eckhardt — ‘Music binds everyone together’

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.”

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