7 choirs sing for peace tonight at Stambaugh Auditorium

YOUNGSTOWN

Becoming proficient in singing and developing core concepts of musicianship require virtues such as discipline, focus and a keen ability to listen to others – the same qualities that contribute to laying the groundwork for a more-peaceful society, a longtime music professor contends.

“Some qualifications are to quiet yourself down and listen to someone else,” explained Dr. Hae-Jong Lee, director of choral activities at Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music. “If you sing too loud, even if you have the best voice, you can’t hear others.”

Suffice it to say that those attributes flowed freely through the two-hour Giving Voice to Peace II Choral Festival and Peace Concert on Friday at Stambaugh Auditorium.

The Stambaugh Chorus, which Lee conducts, performed perhaps the show’s premier highlight: the seven-part Faure Requiem. Gabriel Faure, a French composer and organist, wrote the piece in the late 1880s.

Lee also cited a 2009 research project that says adults and children who sing in choirs tend to be more philanthropic, exhibit greater civic leadership skills, get better grades in school and show improvement in academics.

Also offering their choral-music interpretations were the Ashtabula County Choral Music Society Chorale, Austintown Fitch High School’s Concert Choir, the Maestro Arts Youth Concert Choir, the Mahoning Valley Chorale, the Warren Civic Chorus Children’s Choir and the Wilmington Area High School Chamber Choir.

Read more about the event in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.