A vigil in response to the violence and recent events in Ukraine will be held Thursday, March 6, at 7 p.m. on Patterson Green between the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts and Goizueta Business School.
"A Vigil of Compassion and Recollection" aims to gather students of all faiths, agnostics and atheists," says Elena Glazov-Corrigan.
Its theme is "The Voice of Art that Speaks for the Silenced" and the event will precede a performance of Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, which will start in the Schwartz Center at 8 p.m.
"Our performance is of the beautiful, poignant Symphony No. 3 by Gorecki with Dawn Upshaw protégé, soprano Yulia van Doren," says Richard Prior, who will direct Van Doren and the Emory University Symphony Orchestra.
"The texts sung by the soloist are, coincidentally, on the themes of survival under oppression, loss through conflict, making it the perfect work for art to truly speak to a moment in history as it unfolds around us," Prior notes.
The vigil is being coordinated by Emory's music department, the Russian and East European program, Slavic Student club, Cafe Unity, and the Office of Religious life.
Prior, who holds the Edward Goodwin Scruggs Conducting Chair in the music department, says there will be speakers at the vigil. "The daughters of the Ukraine consul, Olha and Viktoriya Seredyuk, are both Emory students and have been instrumental in the organization" of the vigil, he says, noting that members of the campus ministry and Candler School of Theology have also led the effort.
Glaznov-Corrigan says, "As we come together, both believers of different faiths and non-believers, we want to join those who have accepted the wager of hope against the intractable forces of violence, so powerfully enacted by the recent events in Ukraine with its continued present political danger."
"This time, the bell tolls in Ukraine, and listening to it we think of the experience of all who have faced and continue to face totalitarian violence."
For more information, see Arts at Emory and Emory Symphony Orchestra.