Members of the Chautauqua Choir sing a hymn during the Sacred Song Service Aug. 16 in the Amphitheater.
MARY LEE TALBOT
Staff Writer
Migration is all about movement from one situation to another. For people, it could be internal migration, international migration, forced migration or economic migration. Migration, whether forced or voluntary, puts people into the categories of stranger or foreigner, which makes them vulnerable.
The 8 p.m. Sunday evening Sacred Song Service in the Amphitheater will explore migration and the vulnerabilities people have felt. Most of the readings and songs explore forced migration, whether through slavery, economic hardship or for personal safety. Readings will come from the Bible, the poem “Things We Carry on the Sea” from My Name is Immigrant by Wang Ping and “The Immigrant’s Song” by Tishani Doshi.
A Chamber Ensemble by Valerie Coleman, “Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes,” will be presented by flutist Reva Youngstein, clarinetist Daniel Spitzer, violinist Sarah Spitzer, cellist Daryl Goldberg and pianist Arlene Hajinlian.
The Chautauqua Choir, under the direction of Sonya Subbayya Sutton, will sing “A Hymn to the Evening” with music by Robert Lehman and words by Phillis Wheatley, “Wade in the Water,” Spiritual, setting by Aaron David Miller and “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” Spiritual, arranged by Dan Davison.
There will also be congregational singing of the hymns “Day is Dying in the West” by William Fisk Sherman and Mary Artemesia Lathbury, “Where Charity and Love Prevail” to the tune Ubi Caritas, “There’s a place for everyone at the table,” words by Shirley Erena Murray and music by Jane Marshall, and “Now the Day is Over, music by Joseph Barnby and words by Sabine Baring-Gould. The service will close with “Largo,” from George Frideric Handel’s Xerxes.
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor of Chautauqua, will preside. Maggie Brockman and Beth Brockman Miller will be the readers.
