Nov 12: Halalisa Singers present 'Shine On! The Music of Nick Page'

Artistic Director Mary Cunningham leads The Halalisa Singers in Shine On! The Music of Nick Page, a full program of music by the beloved Boston area choral master. Page will join the choir for selected pieces and lead an audience sing. Accompanying the singers will be pianists Trevor Berens and Ruth Roper, percussionist Bertram Lehmann, clarinetist Glenn Dickson and Page himself on steel cello at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 12 at First Parish Unitarian Universalist, 630 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington. Tickets are $25. All audience members must wear a mask. For information call 781-648-5579 or visit http://www.halalisa.org/concerts.

Decades of transcendent music making by song leader, composer, conductor, author, and Mystic Chorale and Halalisa Singers founder Page have made him a Boston area treasure. As he relocates to Missouri, Halalisa is thrilled and honored to present a full program of his choral music.

The program includes the seldom performed “And the Trees Stood Like Beautiful Buildings” set to text by Frank Lloyd Wright. With its incorporation of architectural ideas expressed through music, the towering choral piece reflects Page’s admiration for the renowned architect. “Anu Sharim,” Hebrew for “We Sing,” composed for the 50th anniversary of the Boston area Zamir Chorale, is an epic statement on the power of singing in times of joy and hardship. “In the Presence of the Past” interweaves the inspirational hymns “Amazing Grace” and “Swing Low” with a sweet original melody. As each element is added, the music grows into a breathtaking climax, reminding listeners of the ever present past and the possibilities inherent in building on the work of those who came before us.

Page’s first published piece “Niska Banja” has been sung by more than a million singers. Halalisa presents the Serbian Roma dance, popular throughout the Balkans, with its infectious 9/8 rhythm and Glenn Dickson’s lively clarinet. Page’s sweet setting of the South African lullaby “Thula s’Thandwa” offers a piano part based on the mbira (thumb piano) music of Zimbabwe and quotes the well-known “Rock-a-Bye Baby.” Halalisa’s high voices sing another gentle lullaby, “Fairest Lady,” based on a nursery rhyme.

The choir’s low voices sing Page’s moving a cappella arrangement of Stephen Stills’ “Find the Cost of Freedom,” written after visiting a Civil War battle site. In “Like Sweet Water,” the chorus laces various lines together in a lush, eloquent vocal tapestry that proclaims the triumph of love and joy in the face of death. The contemporary shape note styled anthem “Lights Upon Our Souls” is a brisk a cappella number celebrating renewal. With its spattering of international expressions of the prayerful word “Amen,” the gospel-tinged “Say Amen, Somebody” makes a rousing case for proclaiming one’s faith, whatever it may be.

Song leader, composer, conductor, composer and author Nick Page has been surrounded by singing all his life. He earned his undergraduate degree in Music Education from Ithaca College in 1975, and a Masters in Education from Lesley College in 1993, and studied conducting with Lorna Cook de Varon at New England Conservatory in 1979. After college, Page taught children and composed and arranged choral works and musical comedies. His music is now performed by choral groups around the world. Some one hundred of Page’s pieces have been published by publishers including Boosey & Hawkes, Hal Leonard, World Music Press, and Choristers Guild. Page has been commissioned by many choral organizations including the Chicago Children’s Choir, Elgen Children’s Choir, Glen Ellyn Children’s Choir, Disney World 1999 Keynote Festival Choir, Naperville Singers, Tulsa Children’s Choir, Zamir Chorale, Jubilate Singers, Cal State Concert Choir, Syracuse Children’s Choir, Canterbury Children’s Choir. Greenwich Honors Chorus, Cincinnati Children’s Choir, and Ketter Children’s Choir. Page’s musicals include “Gimme Gimmes,” “Olly Olly End Free” and “Attack of the Windmills.” In the 1980s Page worked as a conductor with the Chicago Children’s Choir, where he became intoxicated with the worlds of Black Gospel and music from Jewish traditions. He began to study choral styles from diverse cultures, studying the South African Mbube choral style with Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and jazz with Bobby McFerrin and Richard Green. In 1987 he took a workshop with Sweet Honey in the Rock’s Ysaye Barnwell, who inspired Page with her creation of a singing ensemble made up of non-singers. In the late 1980s, back in New England, he taught at Cambridge Friends School and began leading sing-a-longs for people of all ages, dubbed Power Sings. Studying ethnomusicology at Tufts University with David Locke led to Page incorporating the cultural styles of many traditions into his compositions. In 1989, he founded The Mystic Chorale, which has become a Boston-area institution. The ensemble’s 200+ voices have presented concert/sing-a-longs on many cultural themes, as well as an annual Gospel sing. They have toured in Canada, Germany, Ireland and Costa Rica, and perform in New York City every other year. The chorale has recorded more than 30 CDs. Page has written how-to music books including “Sing and Shine On! The Teacher’s Guide to Multicultural Song Leading,” “Music As a Way of Knowing” and “Sing With Us.”

Mary Cunningham is in her seventeenth year as Artistic Director of the Halalisa Singers. Following her vision to share their music, mission and message with the world, she leads the ensemble in reaching out to wider audiences and performing an eclectic and diverse choral repertoire, both here in the Boston/New England area and internationally. Mary is well known in the Boston area as a choral conductor, vocalist, and flute soloist and holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the “Mozarteum” in Salzburg, Austria. She is the Music Director at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading, is on the Woodwind Faculty of the Powers Music School in Belmont where she also leads their “Watch City Singers” Chorus, and has a private teaching studio in her Medford home.

Pianist, composer, and accompanist Trevor Berens plays in many different styles, specializing in avant-garde classical music, traditional classical music, and free improvisation. Trevor holds degrees in piano performance, composition and music therapy from Loyola Marymount University, California Institute of the Arts and Lesley University. As a collaborator, he enjoys working with solo vocalists and instrumentalists, chamber groups, choruses, and with dancers and actors. Trevor is the founder, pianist, and resident composer of the nine-member new music ensemble Sonic Liberation Players. Trevor is the Pianist at the UU Church of Reading and, with his wife Jessica, runs the Berens Voice and Piano Studio out of Pepperell, MA.

Percussionist Bertram Lehmann is a versatile, widely renowned performer who has appeared with artists including Paquito D’Rivera, Danilo Perez, Kenny Werner, Luciana Souza, and Dave Samuel’s Caribbean Jazz Project. He teaches at Berklee College of Music and Phillips Academy, and has conducted clinics and workshops at Harvard University, Princeton University, Wellesley College, Oberlin College, Moscow Conservatory, Keimyung University in South Korea, and elsewhere. He has played on more than 40 recordings with musicians including the Mehmet Sanlikol Big Band, NEA jazz master Dave Liebman, Mango Blues, and Randy Brecker. His international performances have included appearances in Bermuda, Ecuador, Germany, Ghana, India, Israel, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, Spain, and Turkey, at venues including Lincoln Center, Boston’s Symphony Hall, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and The Kennedy Center.

Clarinetist Glenn Dickson has had a varied career playing klezmer, jazz, rock, Balkan and ambient music. His klezmer band, Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, has performed concerts and festivals across the United States, Canada and Europe, with recordings including the “Klezmer Nutcracker” and a collaboration with Maurice Sendak, “Pincus and the Pig.” The band has played live on the CBC and with the Philadelphia Pops. Glenn’s original music was featured on Woody Allen’s film “Deconstructing Harry.” His klezmer fusion band Naftule’s Dream has played major festivals in the United States, Canada and Europe, including the Berlin, Montreal and New York jazz festivals, and recorded for John Zorn’s Tzadik label and Innova. Glenn is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant in composition. His 2022 solo debut “Wider Than the Sky” has been compared to Fripp and Eno’s “Evening Star” and described as “avant folk primal” and “ineffably beautiful.” Michael Toland of the Big Takeover says “Dickson essentially meditates through his instrument, creating an hour of sacred ambience that seems to be setting a table for a meeting between the corporeal and spirit worlds.”