|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
||
Hymn Festival “Songs For The Journey”
Takes Place At Finney
Chapel September 29
Event Features More than 700 Voices — Choral Ensembles from the Oberlin
Conservatory of Music and Nearly 50 Church and Community Choirs from Northern
Ohio
By Marci Janas ’91
“Songs for the Journey,” a hymn festival conceived and conducted by organist and choral director John Ferguson, a 1963 graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College and a professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, will take place at Finney Chapel on Sunday, September 29, 2002, at 4 p.m.
The
free, public event features the Oberlin
College Choir and Musical
Union (prepared by Hugh
Floyd, assistant professor of choral conducting at Oberlin) and some
50 church and community choirs from Northern Ohio lifting their voices
in hymns both familiar (“Amazing Grace,” “Shall We Gather
at the River”) and rare (the Native American hymn “Many and
Great”). This magnificent ensemble of more than 700 voices will nearly
fill Finney Chapel, which seats approximately 1,000 people. Individuals
who are not members of a choir are not only welcome, but desired as participants
and members of the general audience. Doors will open to the public at
3:30 p.m.
The program will be ASL interpreted for the hearing impaired and additional accommodations are available for individuals with disabilities.
Ferguson will lead and accompany the hymns, performing on Oberlin’s Kay Africa Memorial Organ, the Opus 116, inaugurated in September 2001 to great acclaim. The Oberlin organ will be honored as a finalist in this year’s Northern Ohio Live Awards of Achievement on Monday, September 23, at a gala reception to be held at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio.
Sponsors for the “Songs for the Journey” hymn festival are the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin College’s Office of Chaplains, and the Oberlin Alumni Association. Planning for the event was organized by Professor of Organ David Boe, Executive Director of Oberlin’s Office of Alumni Affairs Midge Brittingham, Assistant Professor of Choral Conducting Hugh Floyd, Oberlin College Protestant Chaplain Manfred Lassen, Music Director of Choral Spectrum Carol Longsworth, organ performance major Timothy Spelbring, and Mary Louise VanDyke, affiliate scholar at Oberlin College and librarian of the Dictionary of American Hymnology, a project sponsored by the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and the Oberlin College Library.
“This festival celebrates the human spirit in song,” says Lassen. “It also acknowledges the organ’s special role as song leader, and Oberlin as a premiere training ground for organists and choral conductors in this country.
“We are honored that John Ferguson — whose name, it’s been said, is almost synonymous with the words ‘hymn festival’ — is returning to his alma mater to conduct this event. He is a respected and expert teacher, performer, improviser, and leader of congregational song. Anyone attending one of his festivals is assured of an experience that is never dull; the assembly is enveloped and whisked away into a unique experience of song.”
Ferguson, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, is the Elliot and Klara Stockdal Johnson Professor of Organ and Church Music and Minister of Music to the student congregation at St. Olaf College, where he directs the church music and organ program, teaches organ, and conducts the St. Olaf Cantorei.
Church and community choirs from as far as Painesville to the east and Mansfield to the south are scheduled to participate — 25 communities across northern Ohio in all. They comprise nine faith denominations (American Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Lutheran, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist), and include several African American churches and a multicultural church.
|
|
