This weekend, our Parish Youth and Children’s Choir attended the 67 ^th Annual Choral Festival for Children and Youth at the historical Trinity United Methodist Church in Denver, Colorado with a 200 voice choir.   This church was built when Abraham Lincoln was president.  The organ has over 4,000 pipes, about 2,000 more than ours. Here is the link to the church.
 
https://trinityumc.org/
 
 
The festival conductor was Tesfa Wondemagegnehu,  conductor of the Viking Chorus and Chapel Choir at St. Olaf College pictured here.
 
 
Tesfa has been sharing joy and a vision for equity and justice through song for over a decade.  Through teaching, conducting and performing, he has found a way to transform both students and audiences and to reach those seeking resolutions of peace, equality and respect through music.  He teaches Music and Social Justice with the goal of helping bridge the gap of social injustice through music, dialogue, and inspiring participants to take action in their communities.  He has co-founded the Justice Choir movement with noted composer Abbie Betinis.  The link is included here.
http://www.justicechoir.org/

At the Ecumenical prayer service,  the congregation sang with the choir on “I Lift My Voice” by Andrea Ramsey”, “Love is Love is Love is Love” by Abbie Betinis and “One Foot/Lead with Love” by Melanie DeMore.  In addition, the Youth Choir sang, “When We are Singing” which is a Traditional Mexican Hymn arranged by Kevin Padworski.  All of these songs are in the Justice Songbook. 

The children’s choir sang,“All Night, All Day with My Lord, What a Morning” arranged by Russell Robinson.  Here is an excerpt recording of a portion of the song.



Both the Youth and Children’s Choir sang, “Draw the Circle Wide” by Mark Miller and “You are Welcome Here” by Mark Burrows.

The festival was a great opportunity for our choir to sing with students of different faith traditions, experience working with a clinician to prepare for the service, and a growth experience to deepen their faith and mission to make a difference in our world. 

Click to see the choir singing