News

New Classic Singers concert to spread a message for peace

Posted March 08, 2009 11:00 pm

By Kathy Slovik Daily Herald Columnist

New Classic Singers will continue its 27th concert season this weekend with "Circles of Peace," a hopeful and joyous concert with a peaceful message.

The celebration of music on Sunday, March 15, will be conducted by chorus founder and music director Lee R. Kesselman, with accompaniment by William Buhr on the keyboard. The concert also will feature renowned Zen painter and peace activist Kazuaki Tanahashi, who will create unique works of art as the music is performed.

"He is quite amazing in many different ways," Kesselman said. "He's a foremost Zen scholar and translator of Zen Buddhism, a teacher of the old style calligraphy, and he's a very famous painter.

"He'll be painting in real time. That style of Zen painting uses very few strokes."

The art will be for sale after the concert, with proceeds going to A World Without Armies, a charity that seeks demilitarization of nations with a focus on peacemaking.

Kesselman said the art will be priced to sell.

"Compared to his other works of art, these will be a steal," he said. "We're going to make this happen in a way that we will have no paintings left."

The tie-in of peace is a timely one, Kesselman said, and a recurrent one for the New Classic Singers.

"It is always the right time to talk about peace," he said. "But especially now, with our country fighting two wars."

Begun in 1982, the New Classic Singers is a choral ensemble that boasts some of the best choral talent from all over the Chicago area. Members include soloists, educators and conductors. The programs often have a peace theme and have attracted a loyal following.

"Circles of Peace" will include music from such composers as Alice Parker, Herbert Howells and Kirke Mechem. Also performed will be music on Buddhist themes, Japanese folk music, music about circles and Japanese composer Hirayoshi Takekuni's piece, "When the Skies Lost Small Birds."

The concert also will feature the premiere of "Sensoo," composed by Kesselman after he visited Hiroshima in 2005. The words of Pope John Paul II provided the creative catalyst to write the piece.

Kesselman had traveled to Kyoto, Japan, in 2005 to attend the World Symposium of Choral Music. His trip coincided with the 60th anniversary of the bomb blast and he decided to visit Hiroshima, he said.

He described an atmosphere that belied the grim history at Peace Park, the epicenter of the bomb blast.

"People had gathered from all around the world. There was a sense of rebirth," he recalled. "People were there to talk about peace in a place where so many people had died."

Just as doves were released, commemorating the moment of the bomb blast, Kesselman saw the words of the pontiff, an excerpt of one of his 1981 speeches, written in English before him on the program:" War is the work of human beings. War is the destruction of human life. War is death."

"It's an anti-war message," Kesselman said. "I was there and inspired to write."

Sensoo is a setting of a Japanese translation of those words.

"Circles of Peace" begins at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 15, at McAninch Arts Center at College of DuPage, 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn.

For ticket information, visit atthemac.org or call (630) 942-4000. Tickets are available at the arts center ticket office. To view the art and works of Zen painter Kazuaki Tanahashi, visit brushmind.net.

• Kathy Slovick writes about Glen Ellyn.

If you go What: New Classic Singers perform "Circle of Peace" When: 4 p.m. Sunday, March 15 Where: College of DuPage's McAninch Arts Center, 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn Details: Painter Kazuaki Tanahashi will create art on stage while the music is performed Tickets: $22 for adults, $20 for seniors, $12 for children Info: (630) 942-4000 or <a href="mailto:atthemac.org">atthemac.org</a>

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