Singing City
Jeffrey Brillhart, Music Director
presents
Voices of Remembrance: Victims of Violence
Saturday, May 7, 2005 ~ 7:30 p.m.
Pre-Concert Panel Discussion ~ 6:30 p.m.
"What is
our responsibility in the face of violence?"
Dr. Dan Gottlieb,
moderator
Irvine Auditorium, 34th and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia
"This will be our reply
to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than
ever before." Leonard Bernstein
Singing City
Choir will conclude its 57th season with Voices of Remembrance:
Victims of Violence on Saturday, May 7, 2005 at 7:30 PM, Irvine
Auditorium, 34th and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia. Under the direction of
Jeffrey Brillhart, the 110-voice chorus will perform music of remembrance and
healing, including John Taverner's Song for Athene, Aaron Rosenthal's
Voices of Terezin, David Conte's Elegy for Matthew and Morten
Lauridson's Lux Aeterna.
At 6:30 PM Dr. Dan
Gottlieb, Inquirer columnist, family therapist, and WHYY host of Voices
in the Family will lead a pre-concert panel discussion on the topic
"What is our responsibility in the face of violence?" Panelists
will include Dorothy Johnson Speight, whose son was murdered over a
parking space in 1999. She responded to her son's murder by reaching out
to her peer group, many of whom had lost children to violence, and founding
Mothers in Charge, whose goal is to stem violence among young
people. Also on the panel is Gert Novin, the child of Holocaust
survivors, who writes and lectures on the Holocaust, and David
Lakey, a Quaker who heads Training for Change, an organization
committed to working with young people around the world to retrain them from
being soldiers to being children. The fourth panelist will be Dan
Mechlin, a community activist who reads the names of everyone who has died
in Philadelphia each week during services at his church, so they will not just
be names printed in the paper and forgotten. The panel discussion and
following concert should provide a thought provoking opportunity for the
Philadelphia community.
Audience members will each receive a bookmark
detailing names, dates, and a short biography of people in our community lost to
violence. Community resources will be listed on the reverse side so that
the message of using community groups and resources to stem violence will go
home with the audience. It is hoped that by individualizing violence in this
manner it will have a more profound and personal impact on the
listeners.
Dr. Elaine Brown founded Singing City in Philadelphia in 1948
as an integrated choir. She wanted to do two things: to bring people of
diverse backgrounds together through choral music, and then to bring that music
to every segment of the community. In short, she wanted to make Philadelphia a
"singing city." Based on Dr. Brown's beliefs in equality and inclusiveness,
Singing City was one of the country's first integrated choirs in an era when
segregation was the norm. Throughout its history, Singing City has been
committed to bringing choral music not only to traditional audiences, but also
to the underserved. Performance venues have ranged from concert halls and
cathedrals to homeless shelters and nursing homes.
General admission $25; students, seniors, groups (10 or more)
$23. Tickets/info phone 215-569-9067, or visit
www.singingcity.org.
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