Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Calling all chorolocovores

Food shelves are having a tough go of it, at the moment. Demand is way up; locations are down. So, Minneapolitans, here's an opportunity for you to help.

InVocation, my choir, lives by Frederick Buechner's definition of vocation: where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. We're spending the first two weekends of May concertizing to raise money for Second Harvest Heartland. It's a great investment; for every $1 we raise, Second Harvest can distribute $9 worth of food.

It's a good deal, and it's an important time to help food shelves. So come on out to one of our concerts; we're doing some terrific music:
  • the world premiere of a new work entitled “Invocation,” written for us by Montana composer Thomas Keesecker, and based on a traditional Navajo prayer

  • psalm settings by Bobby McFerrin and Carol Barnett

  • a buoyant Hebrew peace prayer arranged by Alice Parker

  • Christian music from Hugo Distler and Francis Poulenc (four of St. Francis’ prayers, set for men’s voices)

  • settings of the poetry of Rumi and Rilke by local composer J. David Moore

  • Gustav Holst’s Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda (Hindu prayers arranged for women’s voices) with harpist Tonya Anderson

  • chants from the Brazilian rainforest, the Buddhist tradition, and a Japanese temple song
The program, "The Beauty We Love," is based on some of the writings of 13th-century Muslim mystic poet Rumi:

If you think that there’s an important difference
between a Muslim and a Jew
and a Christian and a Buddhist
and a Hindu and a Shamanist,
then you’re making a division
between your heart
— what you love with —
and your ability to act in the world.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

So, come on out to a concert if you can. Feed the hungry...and maybe get a little fed, yourself! Hope to see you there:

Saturday, May 2 @ 7 pm
St. Joseph’s Catholic Parish
13015 Rockford Rd
Plymouth
[ map ]

Sunday, May 3 @ 4 pm
Calvary Lutheran Church
3901 Chicago Avenue South
Minneapolis
[ map ]

Friday, May 8 @ 7:30 pm
Macalester Plymouth United Church
1658 Lincoln Ave
St. Paul
[ map ]

Saturday, May 9 @ 7 pm
Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church
12650 Johnny Cake Ridge Rd
Apple Valley
[ map ]

5 comments:

Jan said...

Wish I could attend!

Diane Vogel Ferri said...

That sounds like a brilliant and inspiring program - blessing on it.

Shalom said...

Boy, right now I sure wish I lived in Minneapolis - what a great program, and cause. Hope it all goes brilliantly.

Mary Beth said...

How AWESOME that sounds! How long would it take me to get there from Texas?!

Oh, really? Nevermind.

Is there somewhere we can donate online so that the $1/$9 goes thru?

And I will indeed go make a donation to my local food bank as well!

(ps: I first read that you were doing a psalm setting by Carol BURNETT. Whoa!)

Choralgrrl said...

Thanks, y'all. :-)

Mary Beth--just made their name link to their website; they've got a mechanism for donation on it. Blessings on yer head.

Oh, and there's been a great tugging of earlobes throughout the choir as we've worked on that piece. Bwa ha ha.