Edmund Schweppe

Back from my big concert debut, Karl Jennings' The Peacemakers at Mechanics Hall in Worcester.

That was fun. Tiring, but fun.

I hadn't realized how much stamina it was going to take to get through a seventeen-movement, seventy-two minute work standing up and holding a hundred-twenty-plus page score, and I suspect I'll be feeling it for a day or two. That was certainly the largest audience I've ever been in front of. OTOH, it was also the largest chorus I've ever been part of, with over a hundred adult choristers and fifty youth.
( Plus it was an excuse to get all spiffed up )

The Master Singers of Worcester and the American Guild of Organists Worcester Chapter present The Peacemakers: A Musical Celebration of Peace by Karl Jenkins, for one performance only on Sunday, March 30 at 4:00 PM at Mechanics Hall in downtown Worcester, Massachusetts.

The 72-minute work is based entirely on the theme of peace, utilizing a wide range of texts from a variety of languages, religions, and authors including texts by Rumi, Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, Shelley, Terry Waite, Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer, Nelson Mandela, Anne Frank, Bahá’u'lláh and St. Seraphim of Sarov, as well as quotations from the Qur’an, the Bible and the Ordinary of the Mass.

This concert will be the New England premier of this work, and is part of a series of events celebrating the 150th anniversary of Mechanics Hall's 3,504-pipe Hook Organ. Performers will include the Master Singers of Worcester, the Worcester Children’s Chorus, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Orchestra, and the massed choirs of many area churches, including First Unitarian Church of Worcester, First Congregational Church of Shrewsbury, Wesley United Methodist Church, Trinity Church of Northboro, First Parish Church of Berlin, St. John’s Episcopal Church of Sutton ...

and the choir of the First Parish Church of Stow and Acton.

Including me, singing baritone.

(eep!)

In all seriousness, this is an impressive piece of work. And Mechanics Hall is a fantastic venue, originally built by the Worcester Mechanics Society before the Civil War. And I promise not to suck badly. So if you're interested in choral works, or in peacemaking, or in awesome concert halls, or even in hearing me singing as part of a massed choir, check it out. Tickets are $25 ($20 for seniors/students), and available online at http://www.mechanicshall.org/tickets/concertdetail/peace03302014.html