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June 11, 2009

By DOROTHY ANDRIES
Contributor

School's out! So why not spend the afternoon of June 17 at the Ravinia Festival? Bring your kids for a moon jump and an age-appropriate cooking demonstration. Tote your own picnic or sample some of the kid-friendly items on the menu at the new Ravinia Market.

Then, sit back and enjoy the sounds of the Emmy Award-winning Chicago Children's Choir, a concert ensemble of 90 select voices presenting a program of immense diversity: Vivaldi's "Gloria," a Beatles medley, Latin, Gospel and World music, as well as three works commissioned by the CCC, two by choir alums, including one by the choir's composer-in-residence and alum W. Mitchell Owens. "He came to us as a child from the South Side," Lee said, "and in the fall he's going to the Berklee College of Music in Boston."

Past engagements have included Mahler's Symphony No. 8 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last season, conducted by the festival's music director James Conlon, and with Chrisoph Eschenbach in 2004, Mahler's Symphony No. 3 with the CSO and Conlon in 2006, Verdi's "Otello" with the CSO and James Conlon in 2005 and two performances in 2004 with Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

The three commissioned works June 17 are "Because" by former composer-in-residence Ted Hearne, 28, who sang with the choir and is finishing up his doctorate at Yale. "It was commissioned for our 50th anniversary in 2006," said Lee. "The composer drew a parallel between the forced removal by the U.S. government of the Cherokee Indians from their home in Georgia in 1838, known as the Trail of Tears, and the loss by many people of their homes due to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005."

Another 50th anniversary piece to be performed is "Light" by Greg Jasperse, 40, "It is an a cappella work, jazzy," she said. "A mosaic with luscious chord groups and very uplifting."

Owens, current composer-in-residence, is 18 years old and has written several pieces for the choir, including a hip-hop style song titled "Breaking the Silence," which will sung at Ravinia.

The Concert Choir is just one part of the vast CCC organization, which encompasses 2,300 Chicago Public School children, served by 10 conductors working in 45 schools. The choir also runs a network of neighborhood choirs in eight locations from the Beverly neighborhood to Rogers Park in Chicago. About 500 children, aged 8 to 14, are in the neighborhood choirs, including some who live in the suburbs. There is also a small choir for boys whose voices are changing, call the Dimension choir, which rehearses at the Chicago Cultural Center.

The Concert Choir, which has about 100 members ages 12 to 18, is the choir's highest level and it has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Grant Park Symphony. This group has also toured the world. "Our children sang at Nelson Mandela's home in South Africa," Lee said with obvious pride. "We've sung in Quebec and Montreal, in Carnegie Hall, the Vatican and in South Korea at the DMZ.

"My father was born in North Korea and my mother in South Korea," she continued. "So I am very committed to reunification efforts there."

Lee impresses on her young singers that they are ambassadors for Chicago. "And for humanity," she added. "When audiences see our diversity, they recognize that."

The diversity was intentional. The choir was founded in 1956 by the late Rev. Christopher Moore, as a reaction to the problems with racial intolerance in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. Like Daniel Barenboim's West Eastern Divan orchestra of young people from Israel, Palestine and other Middle East countries, the choir was conceived with the express mission of bringing together children of numerous races and ethnicities for the common purpose of making music together.

"The social mission has always been intact," said Lee, who has been the choir's director for 11 years, taking the post when she was but 23 years old. "But I wanted to take this choir to another level, to aim for musical excellence as well."

She has certainly achieved that. In addition to the Chicago Emmy for its documentary "Songs on the Road to Freedom," which premiered on WTTW in April 2008, the choir also received a MacArthur Foundation award in support of its South Korea tour.

In 2007 the choir took "Because" and other numbers on a tour of the American South, with a performance in New Orleans and a benefit concert for Louisiana residents displaced by the floods in the storms aftermath.

The Rev. Christopher Moore would have been proud of that and prouder still of the myriad accomplishments of this amazing assortment of young singers, who continue to make beautiful music together.

8 p.m. Wednesday, June 17 at Ravinia Festival, 418 Sheridan Road, Highland Park. Park opens at 3 p.m. for children's activities. $40 pavilion; $10 lawn, $5 children, ages 5 and younger free. (847) 266-5100 or www.ravinia.org
Josephine Lee, artistic director of this multi-racial, multi-cultural ensemble, will conduct. "We've been at the Ravinia Festival before, but this is the first concert in which we have the whole program to ourselves."

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