FOR RELEASE
9 AM EDT, December 28, 1999

ALICE PARKER, MUSICIANS OF MELODIOUS ACCORD, AND RIVERSIDE CHOIRS SING A CONCERT OF SPIRITUALS TO HONOR DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. AT RIVERSIDE CHURCH ON 15 JANUARY 2000

New York, NY, --The Musicians of Melodious Accord, The Riverside Inspirational Choir, and The Riverside Chamber Singers will join forces to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. with a concert of music based on the spirituals he loved on Saturday, January 15, 2000, at 7:30 p.m. The concert will be held at The Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive at 122nd Street, New York City. Alice Parker, founder and Artistic Director of Melodious Accord, Helen Cha-Pyo, Associate Director of Music at Riverside, and Nedra Olds Neal, conductor for of the Inspirational Choir will conduct. The Varisty Women’s Choir (Appleton, Wisconsin) conducted by James Heiks will also perform.

The centerpiece of the concert will be a series of spiritual songs arranged by Alice Parker and the late Robert Shaw and performed by the Musicians of Melodious Accord under Parker’s direction. Included on the program will be My God is A Rock, By an’ By, and the haunting Don’t be Weary Traveler with contralto soloist Pamela-Warrick Smith. The ensemble will also perform spirituals arranged by Charles Brown and Ms. Warrick-Smith.

The Riverside Chamber Singers and the Inspirational Choir will perform singly and then, together with The Musicians of Melodious Accord, sing familiar spirituals. African Celebration, a spiritual written in Xulu, Mxhosa and Msuthu (arranged by Canadian composer Stephen Hatfield), will be performed by the Varsity Women’s Choir of Appleton, Wisconsin.

The program will conclude with all choirs and the audience singing Ms. Parker’s arrangement of We Will March Throu the Valley. Traditionally at the end of this concert, Alice Parker leads the audience in singing favorite popular spirituals.

The January 15 concert is the 13th annual festival honoring Dr. King by Melodious Accord, an organization whose mission is to promote melody as a means of communication for human beings. The organization believes that when we use our ears and voices we enrich our lives through creating communities of sound; and that singing together brings immediate benefits‹physical, mental and spiritual‹to those who join in this most participatory of all the arts.

To this end, Melodious Accord founder and artistic director, Alice Parker notes "The Rev. Dr. King preached that he wished Œto build armies that would sing but not slay,’" says Parker. "I believe wholeheartedly that the forces that gather each year at the Riverside Church are what King had in mind, and I find that my spirit is refreshed by rehearsing and performing this music from the Black tradition, with the vision of Dr. King watching over us."

Spirituals, long the voice of African-Americans only, have become one of the best-loved musics in the world, recognized and sung on every continent. They have even managed to cross that most forbidding divide into 'serious' classical music. On this point Parker says "We have no hesitation in acknowledging that they are among the world's great melodies."

Alice Parker, legendary composer, arranger, conductor and teacher of choral music, has championed the singing of spirituals by Americans of all ethnic backgrounds for nearly six decades.

Tickets for the January 15 concert are $10, $5 for students and seniors, and may be reserved by calling The Riverside Church Music Office at 212-870-6722, or purchased at the door on the evening of the concert.