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NM Peace Choir 10th anniversary concerts in Albuquerque, Gallup, Crownpoint and Grants
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The New Mexico Peace Choir is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a new concert program, “In All Things Peace,” at Central United Methodist Church on the afternoon of Sunday, June 8. The choir then travels to western New Mexico.
“In All Things Peace” includes a selection of soul-stirring songs, from the traditional spiritual “Down by the Riverside” to the group’s signature song, “This Is Who We Are,” which the composer Mark Burroughs wrote for them .
“‘This Is Who We Are’ directly addresses what a choir can be in terms of a voice for unity, a voice for peace, a voice for justice and a light in a dark world,” said David Poole, the choir’s artistic director.
The choir will be joined by guest percussionist Ricardo Sarto, pianist Martha Dalager and a sign language interpreter .
The first modern peace choir, the Seattle Peace Chorus, was founded in 1983, initially to raise awareness about the threat of nuclear war. Since then, many independent peace choirs have popped up around the world, including the N.M. Peace Choir in 2015. Poole said New Mexico’s choir is not focused exclusively on peace in a geopolitical sense, but also on peace as a state of mind that begins with individuals.
“The title of the concert, ‘In All Things Peace,’ is meant to remind our audience and ourselves of what our goal is. The concert is intended to explore peace in its manifold contexts and connotations,” Poole said. “People probably think most immediately of peace in a geopolitical context. Of course, it’s very natural to think that way in our place and time, because that’s just something that is so lacking, and it seems so much of a sore point in the world. And we definitely have songs that are more focused on that.”
“But there’s also peace within a family, there’s peace among friends … there’s humanity’s relationship with nature and the call to be more in kinship with nature. We talk about peace within nature being, to some extent, a model and a metaphor for peace in the human world,” Poole said. “And then, of course, there’s inner peace within an individual human being. So, I consider all of those subjects ones that the Peace Choir should, and does, embrace.”
Poole felt it was important to take their message of peace, hope and healing to communities beyond Albuquerque.
“I see this as a long-term investment,” Poole said. “We want to have a relationship in that part of the state.”
One of the choir’s newest members, Scott Sharot, has sung professionally for decades, including with de Profundis, an a capella men’s choir in Albuquerque that Poole used to conduct.
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“I’m a singer, and I’ve got to be singing,” Sharot said. “And literally, I wasn’t singing, and I was getting very unhappy. I couldn’t find a group that was a good fit. Then, last year, I went to a Peace Choir concert, and I was moved to tears several times by the beauty and the power of the music.”
After the concert, Sharot asked Poole if he could join, and within a week he was part of the group.
Sharot said the choir has not only satisfied his need to sing but has also helped him rediscover joy and hope at a time when the daily news often fills him with anger and despair.
“One of the things that I’m doing right now, in this very difficult time for me politically in this country, is to do things that I love. And this is one of them, and it’s definitely helping,” Sharot said. “I leave rehearsals every time so uplifted and so grateful that I joined.”
Poole said that both singers and audience members often tell him how uplifted the choir makes them feel.
“There’s a big difference between what you would hear from the audience afterwards, because the focus is different. We used to hear, ‘The music was wonderful.’ But what we hear now is, ‘We were uplifted,’ or ‘We were reminded of the potential in humanity,’” Poole said. “And that’s the most encouraging thing someone could say to me these days — whether it’s a choir member or an audience member — that it fed us, that it revived us, that it rekindled our hope and our faith.”
Poole was quick to note that “faith,” in his understanding, is not limited to any particular religious or spiritual tradition.
“One of the chief tenets of the Peace Choir is that we are, I would say, fairly rigorously nonsectarian,” Poole said. “For example, we’re singing in this concert a piece based on the prayer of St. Francis, ‘Make Us a Channel of Your Peace’ (by Bob Chilcott). But the text is slightly reimagined, so there’s no reference to God. So, we are careful to avoid appearing to favor any one tradition. By favoring none, we try to be open to everything.”
In the past, the choir has sung in multiple languages, including Arabic and Hebrew. Their current repertoire includes songs with lines in Swahili and Italian.
“The one that has the Italian in it is ‘Life Is Beautiful’ by Z. Randall Stroope, who happens to be a Santa Fe resident,” Poole said. “It’s a gorgeous, lush, romantic piece — a kind of compressed ballad, where the person starts out as a young kid, climbing an apple tree and looking over the fence to try to discern what the world is like out there … Then, they come back as an older person, too old to climb the tree anymore, but realizing that the beauty and the serenity was right there in the apple orchard all along.”
