(March 2004)
Habitat For Humanity and opera singer Beverly Vanessa Hill. Although at first glance it may seem the two would have little in common, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Hill, who was raised in Milledgeville, says she’s supportive of “anyone that’s doing things to elevate the community and people in need.” Habitat is dedicated to providing decent, affordable housing in partnership with those who lack adequate shelter. Suddenly, the connection seems more credible. The Macon and Milledgeville chapters of Habit for Humanity are having a special “Home Sweet Home” fundraiser concert as part of the Cherry Blossom Festival in Macon. The event will be at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 22 at the Grand Opera House. Money from the concert will benefit both Habitat chapters.
Hill, the principal dramatic soprano with the Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble in New York, will be the featured artist. Gerald Steichen, a conductor with the New York City Opera will accompany her on piano. Tickets are $30, and may be purchased two ways, either by calling the box office at the Grand Opera House at 478-301-5461 or by visiting a special website www.thegrand.mercer.edu. Once at the site, click on the “Buy tickets here” link and look for “Home Sweet Home.”
Hill, however, is bringing more than her own operatic talents to the concert. She’s bringing The Grover and Lula Mae Hill Memorial Choraliers with her. The Choraliers, named in honor of her parents, are a concept that Hill uses to promote her ideas of enriching communities by bringing diverse groups of people together in song. Just as Habitat builds each house out of new materials, Hill builds the Choraliers out of local talent found at each venue.
For the Habitat concert, the Choraliers will consist of about 60 first- through sixth-graders from the Martha Bowman United Methodist Church in Macon and children from Flagg Chapel Baptist Church in Milledgeville. “The Choraliers are an effort not only to reach out in a musical way, but to cross barriers of communication,” Hill said. “The more you travel and get to know people the more you realize that we’re much more alike than we are different.”
Singing together has many benefits, she said.
“They’re learning to sing together, they’re learning to breathe together, they’re learning to think together. That means you have a rhythm of togetherness.”
Hill has planned the concert for months, blending an eclectic selection of classic opera and other musical pieces, plus spirituals she learned in her living room in Milledgeville. She begins the concert with Handel’s “My Redeemer Liveth,” a story of the biblical passion, hoping to educate concertgoers to the fact that the retelling of the passion story did not begin with Mel Gibson’s recent movie. Other selections include works by Wagner, Verdi and Puccini. The Choraliers will sing “a couple of ‘up’ pieces,” according to Hill, and then she’ll sing the spiritual, a continual favorite of New Yorkers.
Milledgeville Habitat executive director Harold Tessendorf said within 30 minutes of his first meeting with Hill in Macon last week, “She basically knocked me over.” He wasn’t sure what to expect, he said, thinking perhaps he would be meeting an opera singer with an opera-diva ego to accompany her. Such was definitely not the case.
“She’s an amazing person,” Tessendorf said. “She impressed me with her combination of passion, commitment and dedication. She sees music as the vehicle to bring things together. Her vocation is obviously not to just go out and sing opera.”
Hill hopes that the connections forged between the children singing, between the community and Habitat, will continue as a legacy left behind by the Choraliers.
“We all need to be aware that we all live and breathe the same air. We want the same things from life – housing, food, family, love, and whatever our religious preferences are. Once you really start to breathe and work together, which music allows us to do, so many barriers come down because you really see the superficiality of it all.”