BANGOR — Voices for Peace will celebrate activist and musician Pete Seeger’s birthday with a concert and sing-along at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 3, at The Brick Church on Union Street. Seeger, organizers said, who rarely held a concert without inviting his audience to join him in song, kept folk music alive and influenced generations of musicians, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Voices for Peace. He popularized traditional and political songs throughout a career that spanned more than 70 years. Through song and action Seeger championed civil rights, spearheaded the clean-up of the Hudson River and advocated for union workers.
Voices for Peace, directed by Marty Kelley for 10 years, has sung in support of numerous community organizations, at rallies in the greater Bangor area and in churches from Pittsfield to Somesville, and at local senior citizen residences. Annual concerts have included being the core of the HOPE Festival Chorus performing at the Hope Festival held at the University of Maine every April.
Recently, Kelley announced that she will relinquish her position as chorus director in June. “ I am retiring in November and will move to Pennsylvania to be with my grandchildren,” she said. There is a possibility that she will find another chorus to direct after she moves to Pennsylvania, she said.
“I had been in a community choir in New York before I moved to Maine,” she said. After she was settled in her new home, she went to the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine to ask if there was a chorus she could join. There wasn’t one, but Ilze Petersen of the Peace and Justice Center suggested that Kelley start a chorus.
“It has been an incredible experience, and incredible people to work with,” Kelley said. Voices of Peace will take part in a Wabanaki Truth and Reconciliation Commission event in Hermon on June 14 and that event will mark the last time Kelley will direct the chorus.
“It’s a real honor [for the chorus] to be invited,” she said.
The 30-member chorus has sung in concert with portrait artist Robert Shetterly and singer-songwriter Gordon Bok, as well as with guest performers from out of state.
Sponsorship by the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine has provided the choral group a home for rehearsals and a strong community network that recognizes the power of song on the path to a more just and peaceful world.
Pete Seeger, who died at age 94 on Jan. 27, 2014, made at least two major public appearances in the last months of his life. For the Farm Aid Benefit Concert in New York in September 2013, he wrote a new anti-fracking verse for “This Land is Your Land.” His last concert was with Arlo Guthrie at Carnegie Hall at the end of November.
Seeger believed that the right song at the right moment can change history.
The Voices for Peace concert will sing Seeger’s “To My Old Brown Earth,” “My Rainbow Race” and “Oh, Had I a Golden Thread.”
The audience will be invited to join in on familiar tunes including, “We Shall Overcome,” “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”
The concert also will include a debut performance of “The Flight of Cuatro Ojos,” written by alto and poet Judy Williams of Belfast and set to music by the late Cathy Jacobs of Ellsworth. Another debut will be Dana Williams’ performance of “Not That Kind of Music” written as a tribute to Pete Seeger by Noel Paul Stookey. Dual vocalists and instrumentalists Tracy Bigney on piano, Dana Williams, Ned Smith and Peter Phillips on guitar, Tim Rogers on flute and Laurie Cartier on drum will accompany performances throughout the concert.
The concert is open to all.
Proceeds will benefit the work of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine. For information, email kgreenman@gwi.net, or call 469-2122 or 478-2684.