Symphony, choirs and King's 'Dream' back home at church concerts

SOUTH BEND — South Bend Symphony Orchestra quintets will get cozy in church sanctuaries, trading performances with home choirs in a series of concerts Jan. 10-12, to honor what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed.

Again.

For the second year, they are once more taking a sort of local tradition that started in 2010 — the big concert of music by Black-composers that always happened on the King holiday — and bringing it to where folks gather and pray.

After all, the concerts succeeded last year in what Marvin Curtis had dreamed, parallel to King’s dream. Curtis, the now-retired IU South Bend arts school dean who’d helped to conceive the original and the revised formats, says last year’s concerts drew racially mixed audiences into the pews.

Folks heard the orchestra for the first time. Others heard local Black choirs for the first time.

That, Curtis says, "gave us the impetus to say, 'How can we improve on it?' … I think it’ll bring more excitement this year.”

Sweet Home Ministries and Faith Alive Ministries return as Black churches who are hosting this year, but they’re joined by the racially mixed Covenant Community Church. And, for extra outreach, one concert of purely SBSO ensemble music comes to the St. Joseph County Public Library.

Titled “Celebration for a Dream,” a focal point at each concert will be this year’s 60th anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered Aug. 28, 1963, during the massive March on Washington, D.C.

Split into four parts, the speech will be read between musical performances.

Armed with his own 25-year passion for “racial reconciliation,” Covenant’s pastor, the Rev. Theo Williams, feels the concerts can represent “what Dr. King stood for” — that is, he says, “the beauty of diversity and the beauty of the equality of that.”

“You can be multicultural, but you defeat that if you have diversity but everyone has to assimilate to a certain culture,” he says.

Among other things, he suggests, that means representing the music of people in the pews.

Turrell O’Neal, Sweet Home’s music and youth pastor, says his choir’s concert will deliver songs sung throughout the year — a taste for visitors of "what they’d hear on a Sunday morning.”

This is one of Curtis’ efforts to branch the SBSO into the community as part of its Equity, Diversity and Inclusion goals, also under Curtis’ urging.

“It bridges that gap and exposes each world to each other,” O’Neal says.

Last year’s King concerts exposed him to the orchestra’s music and, like other people that he’s observed, it prompted him to go to SBSO events.

'Their own pew'

Last year, the first concert drew 30 to 40 people, then more for the second and almost 100 for the third concert, which was at Sweet Home.

Curtis feels the church concerts drew people who wouldn’t have gone to the Morris Performing Arts Center, where the concerts had been held from 2016 to 2020.

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They drew Black church members and White community members who are local leaders and influencers. It inspired the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County to work with Curtis on a concert of gospel music, African dance and Black-composed chamber music as part of the foundation’s summer concert series at Potawatomi Park.

Students from the University of Notre Dame came to the church concerts. Parents brought their kids.

“You have people coming to a place they know, their own pew,” Curtis says, adding that it makes a difference for parents. By contrast, he says, “You take a kid to the Morris, that’s a big place.”

Growing the mix

Covenant got involved after the urging of one of its White members who attended last year’s concerts and, as well, after Williams met Curtis through the 100 Black Men mentoring group.

Covenant is part of the national Evangelical Covenant Church, which has historically been predominantly White, having been started by Swedish immigrants in 1885. Almost four years ago, Williams became the first Black pastor for the local Covenant congregation, whose staff and membership is now a mix of races and bills itself on its website as multiethnic, multicultural and multigenerational.

“We want as a church to be more involved in the community and promoting equality and social justice,” Williams says.

The library joins the lineup at 1 p.m. Jan. 11 after Steven Stamer, SBSO’s community engagement manager, suggested adding it. He says it extends King’s legacy and the work of Black composers to “an even broader audience of community members.”

It will feature only the SBSO quintets, not any church choirs.

“The library is an important partner in our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion work, joining us as a part of our Día de Los Muertos concert this past October," Stamer adds.

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Musical lineup

Curtis will introduce performers as the host, but the only piece he’ll conduct will be “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the more than century-old hymn that will close out each concert — where SBSO musicians will play as the choirs and audience sing together.

At each concert, the SBSO woodwind and string quintets will play three pieces by Black composers. They include recent composer Jeff Scott’s tribute to Duke Ellington, along with pieces by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a British citizen (1875-1912) whose works gained fans in the U.S., along with the recently rediscovered Florence Price (1887-1953).

But each choir will perform songs of their own choosing.

In its event at 7 p.m. Jan. 12, O’Neal says, the Sweet Home choir will sing songs that the choir does throughout the year: “Since He Came” by Ricky Dillard, “We Shall Receive” by Kevin Davidson and an updated version of the old spiritual “Down by the Riverside.”

The familiar tunes make it easier for the choir prepare, he notes, coming so quickly after the holidays and Sweet Home’s big Watch Night service on New Year’s Eve.

Faith Alive Ministries will host its concert at 7 p.m. Jan. 11.

Unlike the other churches, Covenant doesn’t have a full choir but, rather, a small praise team of three to four people. For the concert, Williams says, he and three fellow Bethel University employees and at least one Bethel student and mother will join with the praise team to make a choir. Bethel, which is less than two miles away, is where Williams graduated in 1999 and where he’s taught literature and language for 17 years.

Set for 7 p.m. Jan. 10, they’ll sing three songs that aren’t normally performed at Covenant but that are in the same genre of contemporary gospel, Williams says. They include a piece titled “Be Like You” and “Your Great Name” by Todd Dulaney.

They’ll also sing Hezekiah Walker’s “I Need You to Survive,” which encourages us to love and support each other, of which Williams says, “If Dr. King was alive, I could see this being his anthem.”

In concert

∎ Who: The South Bend Symphony Orchestra and local churches present “Celebration for a Dream” concerts.

∎ When/Where: 7 p.m. Jan. 10 at Covenant Community Church, 3025 E. Edison Road, South Bend; 1 p.m. Jan. 11 at St. Joseph County Public Library auditorium, 304 S. Main St., South Bend; 7 p.m. Jan. 11 at Faith Alive Ministries, 909 N. Bendix Dr., South Bend; and 7 p.m. Jan. 12 at Sweet Home Ministries, 410 S Taylor St., South Bend.

∎ Cost: Free. Donations will be accepted. Registration is requested via southbendsymphony.org, but walk-ups are welcome, too.

∎ On the air: The 7 p.m. Jan. 12 performance will be aired live on radio station WUBS-FM (89.7) and livestreamed on Sweet Home Ministries’ Facebook page.

∎ For more information: Call 574-232-6343 or visit southbendsymphony.org.

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend Symphony and church choirs hold Martin Luther King concerts