DeReau K. Farrar, Director of Music at Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica, invites you and your church choir** to participate in their 4th annual collaborative MLK choral music festival for Unitarian Universalist communities in the Greater Los Angeles area! This festival will take place in the meeting space of Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church on Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 6pm, in observation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday!
The theme this year is “Break Silence”. They ask that each choir prepare two pieces to perform. These works should be congruent with the theme and do not necessarily need to be spirituals or music from the civil rights era. It may also be wise to have a backup plan, in the event another group has the same idea first.
Additionally, they ask that each choir prepares an additional piece that all choirs will perform together at the end, as one mass choir, under the direction of Beth Syverson from Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church. Sheet music will be provided so all choirs can prepare separately, then come together for a brief rehearsal at 4pm, immediately prior to the event’s start.
It would be wonderful to have your congregation and choir be a part of this. If you are interested, please click this link (http://goo.gl/SmXsUH) to fill out a brief form by no later than Sunday, November 15, 2015. It’s that easy! Please contact DeReau with any questions or concerns you have, or if you find that you need a little more time. Thank you!
“A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us… The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy… Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.“
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York, New York – April 4, 1967)
**If your church does not have a regular choir but has some other representative music-making ensemble that would like to participate, Please contact DeReau directly at music@uusm.org.
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