Migration - Choral Arts Society

Music and prose will highlight the trials and rewards of leaving one’s homeland with hope for better tomorrows. Join CAS for this historical, yet timely exploration of migration. The sixty voice chorus, an Irish band, a chamber ensemble, soloists, and narrators will perform a variety of beautiful music. A pre-concert Underground Railroad tour will begin at 6 p.m. (space limited). A post-concert panel talk-back will immediately follow the performance. Then, a reception will provide an opportunity for enjoying friendly discussion and light refreshments.

Much of this diverse program is by living composers. Letters from Ireland by Mark Brymer uses letters from the 1700s to 1800s woven with traditional Celtic music. The Golden Door by Ronald Perera presents stories from interviews with late 19th/early 20th century immigrants who came through New York. “What do you mean?” based on touching accounts by Black Sea Germans forced from their homes in the midst of World War II, by CAS’s Karel Suchy, will be premiered. “Malala, Pakistani Girl” is a tribute to Nobel Prize laureate and education advocate Malala Yousafzai. Irving Berlin’s “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor” with words from Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” is an audience favorite.

First Presbyterian Church is an ideal venue, due to its role in the Underground Railroad as well as its new seat cushions, and excellent acoustics. The church was an active “migration” refuge for fleeing slaves. Its quilt exhibit, which shows the secret “quilt code” used to aid safe passage for escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad, will be on display.