Canto Coro, a Brunswick-based community choir with a repertoire composed of new work and Latin American and Greek choral classics, and the popular Andean band Inka Marka, present the concert ABLAZE, featuring the beautiful music of Victor Jara.
Jara divided his work between loving and celebratory pieces that identify with his cherished peasant roots in the villages of Chile and songs expressing his desire to liberate people from feudal conditions.
While Jara was a solo singer, the choir's director Peter Mousaferiadis, together with choir member Tanya Heine, have, for the first time, arranged some of his most popular and moving songs for choir and the choir will present these along with instrumental and solo pieces.
Canto Coro follows in a long tradition of artists, poets and singers who, over the past 30 or so years since Jara's cruel murder during Chile's 1973 coup, have been driven to celebrate his life and important work. Jara's emotional melodies, humane subject matter and passionate lyrics still resonate within today's political climate
Stand up, look at your hands
Give your hand to your brother so you can grow
We'll go together, united by blood
Today is the day
We can make the future
— From "Prayer to a Worker" by Victor Jara
[Dress rehearsal at 8pm on December 7 at the Christ Church Hall, 8 Glenlyon Street, Brunswick, $5. Concert on December 9 and 10 at 8pm, Northcote Uniting Church, 251 High Street, Northcote. $15/$10. To book, email <berrys@connexus.net.au> or phone Sandy after hours on (03) 9439 9570. Tickets also available at the door (including $5 standing-room tickets).]
From Green Left Weekly, November 30, 2005.
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