HIGHLIGHTS
TOURS
CHRONOLOGICALLY

Departed teen poet inspires choir to explore the theme of freedom
By John Von Rhein and Tribune Music Critic

June 15, 2007

The indomitable spirit of America’s extraordinary teen poet lives on.

Mattie Stepanek published five best-selling books of poetry about love, hope and the joy of living by the time he died of muscular dystrophy in 2004, shortly before his 14th birthday. The brave boy accepted his fate with a kind of angelic grace. And when he spoke of universal brotherhood to Oprah Winfrey, he enthralled a nation.

This weekend at Millennium Park, Stepanek’s messages for mankind will take on new resonance in music, thanks to a chorus of young Chicago voices that has been bringing together people of diverse backgrounds for a half-century.

Sunday afternoon at the Pritzker Pavilion, director Josephine Lee will lead her Chicago Children’s Choir in the world premiere of “Reflections of a Peacemaker,” Chicago composer Lita Grier’s choral setting of poems by Stepanek.

Sunday’s free concert, consisting of classical, pop and gospel selections, will be presented in celebration of the multiethnic, multicultural choir’s 50th anniversary.

It will give visitors to city’s spectacular lakefront park a chance to catch the program Lee and her 145 young charges will perform next month during their 10-day, six-city “freedom tour” of Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi cities associated with the 1950s and ’60s civil rights movement.

Grier’s work takes its title from that of the final volume of poems the Maryland teen wrote before he died of a rare form of muscular dystrophy that also claimed the lives of three siblings. (His mother, who may attend Sunday’s concert, has a milder, adult-onset form.) The children’s choir commissioned the piece last year to be performed as part of its golden anniversary.

“Singing the words of a child who had such a short life but who had such a profound impact is very inspiring to the choir,” says Lee. “Preparing this piece, with its extremely poignant text, has been a moving experience for all of us.”

The inspiration for creating a work for young choral singers based on Stepanek’s poems came to Grier after she heard the boy reciting his verses on Oprah’s and Larry King’s shows. “He was so upbeat, so filled with the love of life and living despite his very dire circumstances, that I thought this was made for the children’s chorus,” she says.

Grier says she tried to reflect the essentially upbeat, inspirational tone of the verses, of which one of Stepanek’s favorite lines was: “Treasure each moment of life, welcome the sunrises, remember the sunsets.”

“I absolutely relate to that,” says the composer, who has weathered a severe health crisis in her own life.

“Reflections of a Peacemaker” will serve as the musical cornerstone for the choir’s July concert tour of cities emblematic of the civil rights struggle (Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery, Ala.) as well as of cities devastated by Hurricane Katrina (Waveland, Miss., and New Orleans).

(The tour cost of approximately $110,000 will be covered by a grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation, donations raised by the choir and fees paid by the participants.)

Although African-Americans have made enormous strides toward achieving the social equality and justice for which Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders have worked so zealously, performances by the children’s choir will make clear – through the inspirational power of music – that the struggle is far from over, according to Lee.

“I think it’s important to recognize, as a nation, what is happening in our country,” she says. “Fifty years after the beginnings of the civil rights movement, there is still a lot of hidden racism in our society. It’s important for our children to open the eyes of others [to that].”

Chicago Children’s Choir
From mouths of babes, the poetry of hope
When: 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Michigan Avenue and Randolph Drive
Price: Free; 312-849-8300

jvonrhein@tribune.com

Copyright 2008 Chicago Tribune

Click image below to view video.
To experience the Choir in more videos visit us on YouTube.

Download Chicago Children’s Choir newsletters: