Sunday, March 15, at 4 p.m. at the MacAninch Arts Center, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL.

Join New Classic Singers as we merge the choral and visual arts to present a concert experience unlike any other. Japanese painter, calligrapher and peace activist Kazuaki Tanahashi will create spontaneous paintings in response to music performed by the chorus.

Tanahashi, born and trained in Japan, has been active in the United States since 1977. He has had solo exhibitions of his calligraphic paintings throughout the world, has illustrated numerous books and is sought after as a teacher of East Asian calligraphy and lettering arts. Tanahashi is also a well-known peace and environmental activist and a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. New Classic Singers is excited to be able to bring this extraordinary artist and world citizen to the McAninch Arts Center.

Music Director Kesselman will conduct music on themes of Peace, Circles, Buddhism and Japanese folk songs. Hauntingly beautiful or sparkling with wit and musical energy, numerous pieces by Japanese composers will be included as well as the premiere of a new piece by Kesselman, Sensoo, based on words spoken by John Paul II at the 60th anniversary of the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

Our last peace-themed concert also used visual arts to stunning effect. Leave winter behind and join New Classic Singers for an extraordinary afternoon of music and art.

From the Music Director

We continue our 27th season!  A New Beginning in Song.

Circles of Peace.  Choral music, by its very nature, blends the arts. Poetry, philosophy, history combine with music to create an art form which always is much more than just music. Add the theatre of a group of people singing directly to the audience, and you have art operating on numerous levels.

But in today’s concert, we add a remarkable layer, as artist Kazuaki Tanahashi lends his unique skill and vision to using the music as a jumping off point for painting. We, along with you, look forward to “seeing” our music in color and visual image.

The themes on today’s concert include Circles, Japan and Peace. The first paintings that I encountered by our guest artist were Zen Circles — limited strokes creating a whole image symbolizing, for me, the Unity of Life and Existence. Meeting Kazuaki Tanahashi a product of Japan and a peace activist, and journeying to Hiroshima in August of 2005, brought together these three themes in a way that could only culminate in this concert.

We, on this planet, are One. When we recognize that Unity, and when we remember the tragedies of War (Gettysburg, Nanking, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Saigon, Sarajevo, Beirut, Darfur, Baghdad, …the list is endless), we will strive even harder for Peace.

Since our first year in 1982, New Classic Singers has tried to create concerts which stretch — stretch us as musicians, stretch you as the audience, and stretch the boundaries of what we call choral music. We sing historical classics, contemporary works, music from throughout the world, and arrangements of traditional songs which create a certain kind of whole on each concert, a totality that reshapes the way we think, hear and feel. But we’ve always tried to bring you great music, beautifully sung, as we celebrate the song in all of us with all of you.

As always, thanks for being a part of our audience. We sing for you.

Sincerely,

Lee R. Kesselman
Founder and Music Director
New Classic Singers

PROGRAM

I

Gate Gate (1992) — Brian Tate (b. 1954)

The Sanskrit Heart Sutra has many possible translations, among them:

• Going, going, going on beyond, always going on beyond, always becoming Buddha.
• Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. Oh what an awakening! All hail!
• Gone, gone, gone beyond altogether beyond, Awakening, fulfilled!
• Gone, gone, gone to the Other Shore, attained the Other Shore having never left.
• Gone, gone, totally gone, totally completely gone, enlightened, so be it.
• Gone, gone, gone, all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svaha!
• Oh, you have done! You have done! You have completely crossed the margin. This is Enlightenment! Congratulations!
  

II

O, Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem — Herbert Howells (1892-1983)

Pray for Peace — Alice Parker (b. 1925)

A Prayer for Peace (2008) — Paula Tillen (b. 1958)

Dona nobis pacem for triple choir (2005) — Ko Matsushita (b. 1962)

Grant us peace.

III

When the Skies Lost Small Birds (in Japanese) — Takekuni Hirayoshi (1936-1998)

Poetry: Shuntarō Tanikawa

1. When the Skies Lost Small Birds

2. A Lone Naked Child

3. Our Native Star

Translation by Hidezo Nakanishi

INTERMISSION

IV

SENSOO (Premiere) — Lee R. Kesselman

For mixed chorus and crotales

— Pope John Paul II, speaking to the world in 1981from the Cenotaph for the Atomic Bomb in Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan

V  Japanese Folk Songs

Kuroda Bushi — arr. Francis Baxter

Hiraita, Hiraita — arr. Ken Hakoda

Hotaru Koi — arr. Ro Ogura

Sakura, Sakura — arr. Chen Yi

Kompira Fune Fune — arr. Francis Baxter

VI

Island in Space — Kirke Mechem (b. 1925)

But up there you go around every hour and a half, time after time after time. You look down; you can't imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross, and you don't even see them. The earth is a whole – so beautiful, so small, and so fragile.

You realize that on that small spot is everything that means anything to you: all history, all poetry, all music, all art, death, birth, love, tears, all games, all joy – all on that small spot.

And there’s not a sound – only a silence the depth of which you’ve never known.

— Russell Schweickart, the first astronaut to make an unattached spacewalk.

— Archibald Macleish

VII

We Shall Walk Through the Valley of Peace — arr. Moses Hogan

Circle Chant — Linda Hirschhorn

Will the Circle be Unbroken — Ada R. Habershon

PROGRAM NOTES

I

The Sanskrit text of Gate Gate is generally regarded as the essence of Buddhist teaching. Vancouver composer Brian Tate is currently on the faculty of Studio 58, Langara College's professional theatre school, as well as the Banff Centre for Leadership Development, where he uses music and theatre as tools for organizational training. Tate directed Vancouver's 80-voice multi-faith Universal Gospel Choir for eight seasons. His diverse career includes orchestral and choral conducting and performing, West African drumming, jazz vocals, musical theatre, and composing music for film, television, stage and the concert hall.

II

Herbert Howells was an English composer, organist, and teacher. He is particularly known for his large output of Anglican church music, including a complete Service for King's College, Cambridge and settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for the choirs of St John's College, Cambridge, Choir of New College, Oxford, Westminster Abbey, Worcester, St Paul's, and Gloucester cathedrals. The motet Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing, written shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is dedicated to Kennedy's memory, and is considered by many to be perhaps his finest a cappella anthem. Two other anthems, Like as the Hart and Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem are similar in style and rhapsodic beauty and enjoy a firm and deserved place in the Anglican choral repertoire.

Composer, conductor and teacher Alice Parker was born in Boston, MA. She graduated from Smith College with a major in music performance and composition, then receiving her master's degree from the Juilliard School where she studied choral conducting with Robert Shaw.Her life-work has been in choral and vocal music, combining composing, conducting and teaching in a creative balance. Her arrangements with Robert Shaw of folksongs, hymns and spirituals form an enduring repertoire for choruses all around the world. She continues composing in many forms, from operas to cantata, sacred anthems to secular dances, song cycles to string quartets.

Paula Foley Tillen has been a professional musician in the Milwaukee area for the past thirty years. Paula is an adjunct faculty member at Milwaukee Pius XI High School, where she is director of the women’s chamber choir, staff accompanist, and piano instructor. In addition, she is director of choirs at Mount Zion Lutheran Church in Wauwatosa, WI and remains much in demand as a pianist, vocal coach, and accompanist. Paula is a founding member and composer-in-residence of the only professional women’s vocal ensemble in the Midwest, the Milwaukee Choral Artists.

“This prayer was used throughout South Vietnam in 1965 in the “Don’t Shoot Your Own Brother” campaign to rouse the willngness to work for peace. During meetings of young people, we chanted this poem, uniting our hearts and our efforts to continue to work for peace. Most of us were Buddhists. This chant aims at reconciliation and stopping the war. It was a very powerful way of working for communication. This is something we can share with our Western friends.”  — Thich Nhat Hanh

Tokyo- born Ko Matsushita is both a conductor and one of Japan’s leading choral composer. A Lecturer at Kunitachi College of Music; he is currently permanent conductor or a music director for 10 choral groups.

III

Takekuni Hirayoshi studied composition at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (Geidai) and graduated there in 1967. In 1962 he was a winner of 1st prize of the 31st NHK Mainichi Music Competition and in 1969 he was with the distinguished Music Prize-Odaka.He was successively professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, then a professor at the Toho Conservatory and later at the College of Arts Prefecture Okinawa.

Shuntarō Tanikawa (b. 1931) is a Japanese poet and translator. He is one of the most widely read and highly regarded of living Japanese poets, both in Japan and abroad, and a frequent subject of speculations regarding the Nobel Prize in Literature. Several of his collections, including his selected works, have been translated into English, and his Floating the River in Melancholy, translated by William I. Eliot and Kazuo Kawamura, won the American Book Award in 1989. Tanikawa has written more than sixty books of poetry in addition to translating Charles Schulz's Peanuts and the Mother Goose rhymes into Japanese. Tanikawa also co-wrote Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad and wrote the lyrics to the theme song of Howl's Moving Castle. He has been nominated for the 2008 Hans Christian Anderson Award for his contributions to children's literature.

V

These five Japanese folksongs paint a vivid picture of life in the traditional island kingdom. Kuroda bushi is a banquet drinking song which dates from around 1600. In the first stanza, a general and a samurai have a drinking contest in which the prize is the general’s lance. In the second verse, from the 13th century, a samurai rescues court lady Kogo and returns her from the forest to the Emperor. Hiraita, hiraita is a traditional children’s song, portraying the wondrous and simple moment, when a lotus flower blossoms and then closes. At a deeper level, the song speaks of the eternal cycle of nature. Hotaru Koi, sung by the women, is a children’s song that imitates the quick darting flight of the firefly. Sakura might be the most famous of all Japanese songs and depicts the brief, fleeting time when cherry blossoms bloom. Kompira Fune Fune is a 19th century banquet song that tells the tale of the Kompira Shrine, dedicated to the god of the sea, protector of sailors and tourists.

VI

Kirke Mechem is a prolific American composer. His first opera, Tartuffe, with more that 350 performances in six countries, has become one of the most popular operas ever written by an American. He has written more than 250 works in almost every genre. He is often called the “dean of American choral music.” In 2002, ASCAP registered performances of his music in 42 countries.  Island in Space reminds us, through the eyes of astronaut Russell Schweickart and the words of poet Archibald MacLeish, that our all-important Earth is indeed a small jewel floating in the cosmos.

Guest Artist

Kazuaki Tanahashi is a painter, writer and peace worker. He was born in Japan in 1933 and has been living in California since 1977. Tanahashi has had solo exhibitions of his paintings worldwide and has published more than 20 books, including Brush Mind. A number of his peace poems have been set to music. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and founding director of A World Without Armies.

Media Attention

The Daily Herald published a write-up of this concert on March 9th.