May 20—On Sunday, May 17, the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus held an enormously successful concert on New York City’s Upper West Side, with the title “America’s 250th in Music & Lore.” It was opened by opera legend soprano Elvira Green, who read an excerpt from Langston Hughes’ poem:

O, let America be America again—

The land that has never been yet—

And yet must be…

Ms. Green delivered historical narratives, including the “Massachusetts Petition,” and alternated with master storyteller Jonathan Kruk, who delivered anti-slavery speeches by John Quincy Adams and Gouverneur Morris. All of this was interwoven with spirituals sung by a chorus of 70 people.

After the singing of Chester, America’s first national anthem, the narration shifted to the “course of human events,” and the Declaration of American Independence, which introduced a series of “river songs”: The Boatman’s Dance, Zion’s Walls, and Shenandoah, all sung by tenor Everett Suttle, and then bass singer Kevin Thompson brought down the house with Old Man River.

The second part of the program opened with Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, which asks its listeners to contemplate their own mortality, and was followed by Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, the refrain of which is “When love and power are united, then mankind has earned divine grace.” The performance was done with two pianos instead of piano and orchestra and was spectacular.

Everyone stayed for the reception following the program, with almost everybody reporting how much they had learned! One woman, a retired African-American opera singer, reported that when she came in, she had already decided not to commemorate America’s 250th at all, but she has now changed her mind.

The concert video and program can be found at https://www.sinycchorus.com/america_s_250th_in_music_lore