On May 18th, 2025, the choral group Harmony Collected had a concert in the sanctuary of the Irvington Presbyterian Church. Dr. Webb Parker, the Founding Executive and Artistic Director of the Irvington Arts Collective, waved his invisible wand and directed an outflow of songs from the choir members and music from the pianist, violinist, and saxophone/flautist. As phrased on the printed posters, it was a “Community In Song,” that presented a “concert of world music celebrating belonging.”
This is the second year for Harmony Collected; at the urging of my editor and creative director, I joined the group in 2024. At almost every rehearsal, Webb encourages us to share, to invest in the community of our interests. In my American Heritage Dictionary, one of the definitions of “community” is this: “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.” For Webb, “community” is at once, the noun, the verb and the adjective, a place where this choral group resides and from which it joyfully sings.
The pews at the Irvington Presbyterian Church filled up with strangers, friends and neighbors and Harmony Collected sang to the rafters. One of my friends noted to me later that when the singers spread out along the walls, that we created a “surround sound” effect for the audience, and an almost palpable warmth. We ended the concert with “Hope For Resolution: A Song For Mandela and de Klerk.” Then, everyone was invited to go into the basement to eat the confections that had been prepared for us by Alexander. As we filed out of the sanctuary, I was stopped by a reader, and Lynda Dunlevy told me that she enjoyed my work for this paper. (Thanks for reading, Lynda.) In the basement, choral members mingled with the attendees of the concert and sat to discuss and absorb the goodwill that had been dispensed in the sanctuary above. On the day following the concert, Webb sent an e-mail to the group that was, itself, a celebration of the jubilation that we had voiced. He wrote that we “sang with (our) whole hearts and bodies,” with every piece being delivered with “joy, sincerity and love.”
In the week following the concert, I experienced some more community, this time with a group of artists. Five of us met at the house of one of the members of the Eastside Arts Collective for a pitch-in dinner. Teresa Barber Gooldy fired up the grill for me in her lush backyard and I listened to the call of the Red-Breasted woodpecker as I fried brats and burgers. Still riding the high of the music of the concert, I sang aloud before the Weber Grill, only to be answered by the howl of a hidden cat. Inside the house, Teresa and Mary Hanna Wilson, Paula Nicewanger, and Dave Thornburg assembled the pitch-in food. We five sat around Teresa’s table and caught up with each other, telling our tales and reliving our miseries and triumphs, while we ate brats, burgers, pasta salad, au-gratin potatoes, potato salad and fruit; chips and double chocolate cookies complemented the grand food finale of angel-food cake topped with strawberries and whipped cream. Our tales of art, of painting and bunnies and metalcraft, were interspersed with other shared life experiences.
I had a good week of community, with exultations of song with a choral group, and a delightful dinner with the artists, who are also my friends. With the passage of our country’s 157th year of observations of Memorial Day, we have had many opportunities to celebrate community.
Take every one of those opportunities.
cjon3acd@att.net