2009 Choir tour: Choir begins tour with 'Pops' in Cincinnati
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(To view additional photos from Thursday's choir activities, click here.)
(Read Gerry Avant's blog as she accompanies the Choir on their 2009 tour.)
CINCINNATI
The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra opened its concert Thursday with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir by playing “Celebration Fanfare.”
There was plenty to celebrate on the first stop of the choir’s 13-day tour.
The Cincinnati concert was part of a series celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Riverbend Music Center, located on the north bank of the Ohio River. And it included an appearance by former astronaut Neil Armstrong, who 40 years ago next month became the first man to walk on the moon.
Armstrong was brought on stage to narrate Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” which was performed to mark the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.
The greater cause for celebration, however, was the joyful reunion of maestro Erich Kunzel with “his” choir from Salt Lake City.
This is the third time Kunzel, hailed by the Chicago Tribune as “The Prince of Pops,” has directed the choir in concert. The first collaboration came when the choir performed at Riverbend during its 2007 tour. Last fall, he directed the choir and Utah Symphony in Salt Lake City.
Kunzel’s association with the choir dates to 2005, when his pops orchestra recorded the musical score in Cincinnati and the choir did the vocal overlay in Salt Lake City for an album of three choral suites by Miklos Rozsa, including “Ben Hur,” “Quo Vadis” and "King of Kings.”
“The Tabernacle Choir is mine,” he told the Church News as the orchestra and choir came together for a two-hour rehearsal Thursday afternoon. “I love them. That’s why they’re here.”
Choir members have expressed concern for the maestro, recently diagnosed with cancer in his colon, pancreas and liver. In the final weeks of preparation for the concert, Kunzel vowed that he would be at Riverbend to welcome the choir as it began its summer tour. He kept his word.
As the choir’s caravan of buses pulled into the center’s parking lot during a light rain Thursday, the maestro was waiting to greet them.
The choir will perform with the Orchestra at Temple Square during the remainder of the tour.
The concert series continues with performances in St. Louis (Scott Trade Center, June 20); Des Moines, Iowa (Iowa Events Center, June 22); Omaha, Neb. (Holland Performing Arts, June 23); Kansas City, Mo. (Sprint Center); Norman, Okla., (University of Oklahoma campus, June 27); and Denver (Red Rocks Amphitheater, June 29).
More details about the choir and orchestra and their tour may be found at:
Aaron Copland: "A Lincoln Portrait"
(In 1942, shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, conductor Andre Kostelanetz commissioned Aaron Copland to compose a work to fortify and comfort people during that time of national distress. Lincoln Portrait is scored for a speaker and an orchestra. The first performance was by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on May 14, 1942, with William Adams as the narrator.)
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history."
That is what he said. That is what Abraham Lincoln said.
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility." [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]
He was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and lived in Illinois. And this is what he said. This is what Abe Lincoln said.
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country." [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]
When standing erect he was six feet four inches tall, and this is what he said.
He said: "It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says 'you toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle." [Lincoln-Douglas debates, 15 October 1858]
Lincoln was a quiet man. Abe Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man. But when he spoke of democracy, this is what he said.
He said: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."
Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of these United States, is everlasting in the memory of his countrymen. For on the battleground at Gettysburg, this is what he said:
He said: "That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
