The Rochester Oratorio Society has received a $4,000 grant from the Rochester Area Community Foundation. These funds will support their production of “The Peacemakers,” a 73-minute multi-media world music masterpiece by contemporary Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, CBE.
The ensemble, led by Maestro Eric Townell, Artistic Director, will close their 2018-19 season with this performance on April 5 at 7:30 p.m. at Hochstein Performance Hall. The Nazareth College Choir, the Genesee Valley Children’s Choir and the Oratorio Society chorus will sing words by the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, Terry Waits, Rumi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and others accompanied by the multi-instrumentalists of the RITA Collective. A Seneca Nation representative will open and close the evening with the traditional Great Thanksgiving ceremony. This performance is part of the Oratorio Society’s fourth annual collaboration with the University of Rochester Humanities Center, and is the culmination of a community-wide commemoration along with the Rochester Public Library, Thomas Warfield and PeaceArt, NTID and Writers & Books celebrating national poetry month.
“‘The Peacemakers’ is the next in a series of culturally and historically responsive, collaborative, multi-cultural productions mounted annually by the Rochester Oratorio Society since 2009,” said Marc Smith, President of the Rochester Oratorio Society Board of Directors. “These have included musical commemorations of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial; the 150th anniversary of the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation; the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage in NY and the Bicentennial of Frederick Douglass.”
These productions engage the community through talks, presentations, historical exhibits, guest artists and ensembles, dance, visual projections, commissions and creation of new work, solo performances, narrations and re-enactments and youth involvement; they culminate in well-attended choral performances. The Rochester Oratorio Society created the first community collaboration with the University of Rochester Humanities Center in 2016. This annual event, in which a series of talks and presentations at the Humanities Center, all free and open to the public, continues with “The Peacemakers.”
In addition to the $4,000 grant for “The Peacemakers,” the Rochester Oratorio Society was also awarded $1,100 from the John F. Wegman Fund at the Rochester Area Community Foundation to support Resonanz, the travelling ensemble in presenting “Tubman to Today: A Legacy of Leadership” to public schools in the Rochester area, furthering the organization’s mission of supporting music education and exposure in the community.
The Rochester Area Community Foundation awards annual grants through a competitive application and review process. The Arts and Culture Action Area supports the foundation’s goal to strengthen regional vitality by encouraging vibrant and diverse arts and cultural offerings and improving the capacity of local arts organizations.
Tickets are available at https://ROSsings.org or at 743-2234.
Provided information
