Courage for Lydia – a Noon Hour Concert for Lydia Herrle
music by Waterloo composers
Carol Ann Weaver and Joanne Bender
Wednesday, Oct. 31st, 2012, 12:30 Noon,
Conrad Grebel Chapel
Free concert – all are welcome
A concert of new music for Lydia Herrle will be performed on the October 31, 12:30 Noon Hour Concert at Conrad Grebel.
This concert hopes to bring further courage, strength, joy and healing to Lydia Herrle, whose parents James and Michelle Herrle own the famed Herrles Country Farm Market on Erb Street between Waterloo and St. Agatha. Lydia was seriously injured in May, 2012 while alighting from her school bus, and is now home from the hospital, regaining her strength. Literally thousands of Waterloo area people have been supportive of Lydia, displaying green bows and ribbons for her. This concert features new music by Grebel/UW music and composition professor Carol Ann Weaver, and Waterloo pianist, teacher and composer Joanne Bender. Performers include flautist Meaghan McCracken, saxophonist Willem Moolenbeek, cellist Ben Bolt-Martin, violinist Marianne Wiens, and pianists Joanne Bender and Carol Ann Weaver.
Newly composed for the concert is three-movement suite composed expressly for Lydia by Carol Ann Weaver entitled
Three Seasons for flute, alto saxophone, cello and piano. Within this piece are these sections:
Summer Silence,
Autumn Dawn, and
Winter Prayers and Blessing. This music attempts to capture different aspects of Lydia’s story, while expressing hope for fullest-possible recovery. Carol Ann Weaver describes the sections of the piece, completed October 8, 2012, in these words:
Summer Silence expresses silence occurring for Lydia, while the cello represents her heartbeat.
Autumn Dawn begins like a dawn I witnessed at an Algonquin lake this August – at first all is obscured by mist and then distant shores gradually become visible. Slowly the entire world opens up. Though there are moments of fullness of life, there is also a sense that this world is in the process of unfolding for Lydia. In the spring of 2012 a group of UW students (including flautist Meaghan McCracken) and I were in South Africa listening to sangoma (traditional healer ) Joyce Mazibuko when Lydia suffered her accident. So this music resonates with the sangoma’s healing gestures.
Winter Prayers and Blessing for the upcoming season, contains musical prayers as well as a special “blessing” for Lydia. I thought I had finished this piece when this “blessing” emerged as the final musical statement for Lydia, her family and medical team, and all those thousands of people who are thinking and praying for her.
Joanne Bender’s solo piano pieces stem from her seasoned compositions for young pianists, while instrumental trio for violin, cello and piano was written as a healing piece.
For further information about Lydia Herrle check, http://prayforlydia2012.blogspot.ca/
