The Summer Singers of Lee's Summit, a community chorus active only during June and July, is recruiting members for its 2023 performance of music commemorating the Holocaust.
The central work will be the "Holocaust Cantata" by Donald McCullough, a work that has seen hundreds of performances across the nation since it was premiered in Washington's Kennedy Center in March 1998.
The Holocaust Cantata contains no plot; rather, each reading and song represents a different person and time in the Holocaust experience. All of the songs, originally written in Polish, were created by prisoners while incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps. The Summer Singers will perform the work in English. There will also be a student art exhibition by children from the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy.
A short selection will begin the concert. "Kaddish for the Six Million" was composed by Atlanta-based conductor and musicologist, Amy Thropp. The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education will offer a short pre-concert talk about the music and the Holocaust experience. The program will conclude with a newer work by a young Norwegian composer, Kim Andre Arnesen, called "Even When He Is Silent."
The Summer Singers of Lee's Summit was established in 2014, and will be holding its ninth season in 2023. The group has averaged 60-75 members. Past summers have seen classics by composers such as Georg Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Joseph Haydn.
The season will conclude with concerts on Sunday, July 30, and Monday, July 31. All rehearsals and concerts are held in the nave of the St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 416 SE Grand Avenue in downtown Lee's Summit.
Jennifer Lahasky, MME, was appointed music director in 2022. She is a native of Topeka, Kansas, and holds a Bachelor of Music Education from Washburn University and a Master of Music in Choral Pedagogy from the University of Kansas. She is a middle school choral director in the Blue Valley (KS) District.
The 2023 Summer Singers of Lee's Summit is sponsored, in part, by the Lee's Summit Arts Council and the Louis and Francis Swinken Supporting Foundation through the Jewish Community Center.
All adult singers, and all youth singers 16 and older, are invited to register for membership in the 2023 Summer Singers of Lee's Summit by visiting ChoralFoundation.org/registernow or calling (913) 488-7524.
