The Villager Voice
Last weekend was a busy one for me. It included a memorial service for neighbor Dick Sperry, a service of installation for my colleague Rev. Amy Hollis at First Baptist in Essex, a going away fête for one of the charter members of the Chester Community Partnership, as well as a couple other community events. (One of our Chester neighbors commented on Dick’s service, “The church never looked lovelier, more welcoming or more terrific” – thank you to all who made it so!)
Among the other events was a delightful chamber concert last Saturday afternoon at St Mark’s Church in Mystic. The theme was “Harmony, Not Hate,” and it was a fundraiser for the Southern Poverty Law Center. It featured the Mystic String Quartet, made up of principals from the Southeast Connecticut Community Orchestra (SECCO), of which I am a member. The program was a varied one, with music written by Anton Arensky, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, Rhiannon Giddens, John Newton and Kevin Lowther, aka Big Lux, a local composer and violinist who also performed that afternoon. But it was united in its theme, which utilized music as a way of standing up to oppression and hate. The music took on ideas of slavery and freedom, harmony and dissonance, and the lives and witness of folks like John Lewis and George Floyd. The afternoon reminded me of something Leonard Bernstein once said, that “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” The Mystic String Quartet certainly bore witness to this commitment on that glorious sunny afternoon at St. Mark’s.
And I would be remiss were I not to invite you to SECCO’s next performance Saturday November 2 at Connecticut College’s Evans Hall at 7:30 pm. It would be lovely to see you in the audience!
Here are the links to Sunday’s service and bulletin: