Hammerstein Theatre at the Manhattan Center
Friday, June 28, 2002,
8:00 P.M.
15 of the original members of the Gospel Choir sang with us in New York:
Adrienne Ewing-Roush, Sandy Simmons, Van, Sean, Cookie and Kim Gilmer, Sharon Dixon-Peay, Georgia Sanchez, Gloria Haithman, Kay Yoder, Ernestine Atkins, Ladjamaya Mahoney-Green, Sharon McCord, Myrna Brown-Forte, and Martha Banda.
31 States were represented
10 Countries and territories were represented
Most singers came from California
Most were from the US and Canada
Thank you from the Director!
Dear Singers in the New York Bahá'í Arts Festival Gospel Choir:
THANKS!!! THANKS!!!! THANKS!!!!
There has not been a day since our concert on last Friday that we have not mentioned something about the whole experience of participating in the LARGEST Bahá'í GOSPEL CHOIR ever. What a relief that it is over, but what a joy it was that it was such a wonderful experience!
Since this was the reunion of the original Gospel Singers who performed at the 2nd Bahá'í World Congress, I started my list of invited gospel singers with those original 70 names. It took me nearly six weeks to finally get the current addresses of those original singers. Meanwhile, I had started to receive applications for the gospel choir. I looked first for those of you who had had experience singing GOSPEL music. Key words I looked for back then were: "I have sung with One Human Family or Eric Dozier," "I sang with my college or church gospel choir," "I have sung with Van or Ernestine," or " I have attended a workshop on Gospel Music." This method yielded less than half of our choir in New York! Our hope was to have approximately 200 singers. Applications came in increasingly, but most people said that they had NO EXPERIENCE singing gospel music. This created a dilemma for me.
Several of you also mentioned that you LOVE gospel music and would give anything to be a part of this choir. So far, I had only about 30 singers with true gospel experience. So, near the end, I began to add names of people with no experience but great desire. Our final number of singers totaled about 170.
Had I started adding singers with no gospel experience earlier, the choir would have been at around 250 singers (or more). My regret is that some people were deprived of this wonderful opportunity. However, if you had received the number of emails that I received beforehand inquiring about the sheet music and the parts CD and expressing fear, you probably would have also been reluctant to add any more singers. The good news is that YOU ALL WERE GREAT!!! Your eagerness to learn and perform gospel music dispelled all of our initial fears!! Most of all THANKS for easily following all of our instructions! As you know, the concert was quite different from our rehearsals. You followed the directors so well and the songs unfolded with so such love and enthusiasm that everybody was affected by it!!
I THANK EACH OF YOU FOR A GREAT PERFORMANCE!!
We were extremely lucky to have the expert assistance of Dr. Joyce Garrett, Patrick Lundy, Michael Pugh (the bass player) and Lester Saucer (the drummer). They are seasoned gospel musicians and added so much to our performance. While we have known Joyce and her family for years, we have known Patrick only in this year and only met Lester and Michael the evening before we left for New York as we had our first rehearsal together. None of these musicians are Bahá'ís, yet they graciously accepted my invitation to join us and LOVED our music. They were also affected by your warmth and appreciation of their participation. As we returned home on Monday evening, we ironically received a call from Joyce who was still on a HIGH from the NY experience!! She continued to express how much she enjoyed working with all of you. She said the music kept running through her head. In fact, when we called her Saturday morning after our concert, she said that she was just laying in bed smiling and thinking about the performance. She said that "Divine sweetness" kept running through her mind. Many of you also saw Patrick, who decided to stay for the Carnegie performance. He too enjoyed his time with us. During the last half of the Sunday program, I sat with him in the audience (This is the first time I have ever sat through a Voices of Baha performance without singing!) He asked me several questions about the Faith.
CD of performance - There was a recording made, though there were problems. The plan is to provide whatever is available to you. There will be a yet to be determined cost for it, but it won't be a big price. I will let you know when it is available and how much it will cost later.
If you heard comments/reactions from our audience that you want to share, send them to me directly and I will compile them and send them to the whole list in the near future.
THANKS!! THANKS!!!! THANKS!!
Van Gilmer