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HYMN FESTIVAL "SONGS FOR THE JOURNEY" TAKES PLACE AT OBERLIN’S FINNEY CHAPEL SEPTEMBER 29
SEPTEMBER 12, 2002--"Songs for the Journey," a hymn festival conceived and conducted by organist and choral director John Ferguson, a 1963 graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College and a professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, will take place at Oberlin’s Finney Chapel on Sunday, September 29, at 4:00 p.m. Finney Chapel is located at the intersection of Lorain (Route 511) and Professor streets, across from Tappan Square.
The free, public event features the Oberlin College Choir and Musical Union (prepared by Hugh Floyd, assistant professor of choral conducting at Oberlin) and some 50 church and community choirs from Northern Ohio lifting their voices in hymns both familiar ("Amazing Grace," "Shall We Gather at the River") and rare (the Native American hymn "Many and Great"). This magnificent ensemble of more than 700 voices will nearly fill Finney Chapel, which seats approximately 1,000 people. Individuals who are not members of a choir are not only welcome, but desired as participants and members of the general audience. Doors will open to the public at 3:30 p.m.
The program will be ASL interpreted for the hearing impaired and additional accommodations are available for individuals with disabilities. More information can be found online.
Ferguson will lead and accompany the hymns, performing on Oberlin’s Kay Africa Memorial Organ, the Opus 116, inaugurated in September 2001 to great acclaim.
The Oberlin organ will be honored as a finalist in this year’s Northern Ohio Live Awards of Achievement Monday, September 23, at a gala reception to be held at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio.
Sponsors for the "Songs for the Journey" hymn festival are the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin College’s Office of Chaplains, and the Oberlin Alumni Association. Planning for the event was organized by Professor of Organ David Boe, Executive Director of Oberlin’s Office of Alumni Affairs Midge Brittingham, Assistant Professor of Choral Conducting Hugh Floyd, Oberlin College Protestant Chaplain Manfred Lassen, Music Director of Choral Spectrum Carol Longsworth, organ performance major Timothy Spelbring, and Mary Louise VanDyke, affiliate scholar at Oberlin College and librarian of the Dictionary of American Hymnology, a project sponsored by the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and the Oberlin College Library.
"This festival celebrates the human spirit in song," says Lassen. "It also acknowledges the organ’s special role as song leader, and Oberlin as a premiere training ground for organists and choral conductors in this country.
"We are honored that John Ferguson--whose name, it’s been said, is almost synonymous with the words ‘hymn festival’--is returning to his alma mater to conduct this event. He is a respected and expert teacher, performer, improviser, and leader of congregational song. Anyone attending one of his festivals is assured of an experience that is never dull; the assembly is enveloped and whisked away into a unique experience of song."
Ferguson, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, is the Elliot and Klara Stockdal Johnson Professor of Organ and Church Music and Minister of Music to the student congregation at St. Olaf College, where he directs the church music and organ program, teaches organ, and conducts the St. Olaf Cantorei.
Church and community choirs from as far as Painesville to the east and Mansfield to the south are scheduled to participate--25 communities across northern Ohio in all. They comprise nine faith denominations (American Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Lutheran, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist), and include several African American churches and a multicultural church.
Organs at Oberlin
The
renowned firm of C.B. Fisk, Inc., designed and built the Kay Africa Memorial
organ, the Opus 116, in the best of the late Romantic tradition, based
upon the symphonic style of the great French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.
Ideally suited for the performance of 19th- and 20th-century music, the
organ completes a triad of Oberlin period concert instruments. An organ
designed and built in 1974 by D.A. Flentrop in the northern European style
of the 18th century is located in the Conservatory’s Warner Concert
Hall. In 1981 John Brombaugh built an organ for Fairchild Chapel that
was modeled on the late Renaissance and early Baroque style of North Germany.
The educational value of these three organs in different historic and
national styles is of inestimable value to Oberlin Conservatory students.
Oberlin College
and Hymns
Oberlin College is the repository of one of the finest collections of
hymnic resources in the United States. In addition to hymnals in many
languages, recordings, bibliographies, and dissertations in microform
– and the reference materials available in the Oberlin College Library
– the international office of the Dictionary of American Hymnology
(DAH) is located in the College’s Mudd Library. The DAH Project
is supported by the Hymn Society and the College, and is a rich source
of information for
historians and scholars, providing tools for research into American history,
social studies, language, literature, religion, and hymnology.
The DAH Project, with the support of the Oberlin College Library and the Hymn Society in the U.S. and Canada, provides data related to hymns and hymnwriters as well as the history of congregational song in America. The project comprises four sources for research: an index of first lines of hymns published from 1640 to 1978 with a supplementary index covering 1978 to the present; a bibliography of some 5,000 hymnals published in America; an author file; and a biographical file.
There is, in the DAH office, a microfilm edition (University Music Editions, 180 reels) of the original archives – more than one million cards comprising the first-line index. Data from these cards is being digitized to be made available online. Leonard Ellinwood’s Bibliography of American Hymnals, also a part of the DAH, is available in the office or on microform in the Oberlin Conservatory of Music library.
About the Oberlin
Conservatory of Music
Long recognized as one of the world’s leading centers for organ instruction,
the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865, became part of Oberlin
College in 1867. It is the oldest continuously operating conservatory
in the United States, and the only major music school in the country linked
with a preeminent liberal arts college.
Media Contact: Marci Janas
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