GRAFTON — The 95-member River Singers Community Chorus will perform an eclectic concert of world music on Saturday, May 18, at 7:30 p.m. at The White Church in Grafton.
The River Singers, a multi-generational community choir led by Mary Cay Brass, sings a thrilling variety of community-based music from many diverse cultural and musical traditions.
Brass will be joined by guest conductor, singer, and dynamic gospel piano player Kathy Bullock of Berea, Ky. Bullock, professor of music at Berea College for 21 years, directs the Black Music Ensemble, a 70-voice choir that specializes in performance of African-American sacred music. She performs, lectures and leads workshops in the United States and internationally on music and culture of the African diaspora.
This will be her fourth residency with the River Singers, teaching the choir a wide range of thrilling gospel songs that are then performed with the rest of the repertoire that the choir has studied this session.
Every River Singers concert is a benefit for a global or local project. This spring's concert will benefit the Conflict Transformation Across Cultures Program at the School for International Training in Brattleboro.
The River Singers typically includes songs from Eastern Europe as that is of particular interest to Brass who, earlier in her career, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the former Yugoslavia. This concert will feature a Macedonian love song and an Albanian work song and a hauntingly beautiful Yiddish folk song.
The accompaniment will feature the director, Brass, on accordion, Walter Slowinski on clarinet, Mary Lea on fiddle, Andy Davis on accordion, Julian Gerstin on percussion, and Joe Blumenthal on bass.