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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