Songweavers Offer ‘We Are The World’ On April 15, 21

CONCORD, NH - From The Concord Community Music School: Songweavers Women’s Chorus of Concord Community Music School presents its annual spring concerts, April 15 in Manchester and April 21 in Concord:

• Sunday, April 15, 4:00pm
• St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
• 102 N. Main St., Manchester, NH
• For tickets and information, call 603-622-8632

• Saturday, April 21, 5:00pm
• South Congregational Church
• 27 Pleasant St., Concord, NH
• For tickets and information, go to ccmusicschool.org or call 603-228-1196

This year’s Songweavers theme is We Are the World, and is inspired by the final words of a poem written by Maya Angelou. Entitled “Human Family,” each stanza highlights the infinite and beautiful variety in human form and nature. Angelou concludes:

I note the obvious differences

between each sort and type,

but we are more alike, my friends,

than we are unalike.

Songweavers director Peggo Horstmann Hodes writes that the songs for this show were chosen to “Frame our natural diversity within the context of our greater humanity.” In addition to the concert-title song “We Are the World,” by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, the Songweavers will sing traditional and popular selections that reflect the ways that people are “more alike than unalike.”

Songweavers, New Hampshire’s original women’s community chorus, is a program of the Concord Community Music School in Concord, NH. The goal of Songweavers is to build community through singing together, and in particular singing about what binds us together and surpasses our differences. Through music, says Horstmann Hodes, the Songweavers “aim to touch and rekindle our common humanity, without fear, politics, or ideology.”

Several New Americans from the community have become active members of Songweavers, with enthusiastic support and mentorship by chorus members and the Music School, which is committed to supporting New Americans in pursuit of educational, employment, and partnership opportunities. On March 22, four of our talented young New American members – Yvette Mahoro, Deborah Elonga, Claudia Bahininwa, and Dorise Ndienganya, all students at Concord High School – were honored to join their teacher Peggo Horstmann Hodes in singing the National Anthem at the opening of the New Hampshire Legislative Session. They will be featured as a solo quartet in the Songweavers concert on April 21, singing a welcome song from their native Congo that they taught their fellow Songweavers.

For both spring concerts, the Songweavers will be accompanied by the Songweaver Drummers, a class at Concord Community Music School in African style hand-drumming, directed by Grace Schust and Lindsey Schust. Joining the Schusts on percussion will be Emilie Meadows and Peg O’Neil. The concerts will also feature Kent Allyn on piano and Paul Hodes on guitar.

For more information, visit www.ccmusicschool.org.

Photo courtesy of Concord Community Music School