Sinclair College’s concert series is returning for November. The main concert will be focused on making a positive response to the violent social unrest.
According to Nolan Long, professor of Music at Sinclair and the conductor of the choral concert, he decided upon the theme after a massacre hit a little too close to home.
“I got married at the end of May and I was on my honeymoon with my husband… so we took off on this beautiful cruise, an absolute dilly cruise and the next to last day of our honeymoon here comes the Orlando Pulse massacre on the television screens. So, I was up here and down here weirdly both at the same time in a really odd sort of personal space,” he said.
Long recognized a sense of ‘That could have been me’ when the Orlando massacre occurred. Long also noted that many people now have a sense of unease.
“Most of us now when we’re in large crowds, there is some element of us that is looking around and have this heightened awareness. That’s just kind of part of our life unfortunately,” he said.
According to Long, he began to think about what sort of response he could make to all the unrest that was occurring in the world.
“I’d already started planning for this semester and I got to think, you know all this violence and weirdness and uncertainty that everybody in the world has started to experience. What can I do personally to make a positive dent in our world? I really started thinking about that very strongly,” he said.
Long had seen this done before and thought that a concert of his own was needed as a response to the massacres, bombings and deaths that have occurred.
“Throughout the world I’ve seen a lot of concerts, a lot of performances that are dealing with what we’re dealing with in our world with positivity and cohesiveness and unity of helping people to come together rather than division. So I thought you know perhaps this is timely and it’s needed,” he said.
Long once visited the site of the Oklahoma City bombing that occurred in 1995 with the American Choral Director’s Association. Their live performance around the area, according to Long, affected him powerfully and helped provide him some inspiration for what he could at the concert at Sinclair.
“Realizing how much togetherness and unity in music can all make this wonderfully powerful sense of community and bringing people together rather than dividing them,” he said.
According to Long, he began to piece together the concert using some of the emotions that many Americans feel.
“I thought ‘Okay there’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of sorrow and so that has to be recognized, that needs to be a part of who we are and how this concert starts and how it grows and the only way we’re able to move beyond that is having a goal for ourselves and for our future of allowing some hope for ourselves because we humans, as individuals and as a society and as a world, if we don’t have hope we have nothing,” he said.
The concert has been broken down into several sections including hope, peace, unity and sorrow.
One of the pieces they will perform is an an oratorio, which is a lament of a person’s anticipated death.
“It’s gorgeous, but it’s very heartbreaking at the same time. A lamenting of someone’s death,” Long said.
They will also be premiering a brand new piece that has been commissioned called “Sweet Day so Cool.”
Long said that peace is the main concentration of the concert and that most of music will deal with peace.
“I’ve really striven to make this concert very much interdisciplinary, concert of unity on campus and unity of students. Oftentimes, the arts can say things that otherwise we can’t get the thought across with and other times the arts can get a point across that otherwise people don’t catch. It has its own unique language,” Long said.
According to Long, he has also seen the impact in his students while he is teaching them the pieces.
“The fascinating thing is, you know I’ve got students who are going through divorce right now, I’ve got students who are going through chemotherapy in our rehearsals, I’ve got students with extreme personal turmoil and it’s been wonderful to hear how they themselves have felt the uplifting of the music as well as validating their own struggles all at the same time,” he said.
The choral will include speaking parts that have been written by English Composition students who wrote poetry as they interpreted the music pieces. The poetry was based on how the students interpreted the music. There will also be dance headed by Rodney Veal of the Theatre and Dance Department. Four Art students will be sitting in the crowd drawing as they interrupt the concert from their own view.
The Dayton International Peace Museum has donated a piece quilt that will be displayed in the hallway of Blair Hall.
“This has been a journey that we’re all experiencing and I hope that this concert in our own little subtle way will help all of us to have some peace,” Long said.
The concert is free admission for anyone who would like to attend. It will take place on a Sunday evening, November 20 at 7:00 P.M in Building 2 at Blair Hall.
Laina Yost
Managing Editor