Block Association meeting 11/14/11

Meeting is being hosted by Everett and Jeannie Roberts at 507 Monroe Street. The meeting will begin at 8 pm.

Block Party August 28th 2010

Family, Friends, and Fun. All donations will be accepted the day of the event.

Stoop meeting-Tuesday, July 20th 8 pm

Get informed. Meeting will be held at 8 pm on the stoop of the President's house. Bring a chair or pillow.

October 15th Meeting

Attendance:

Mr. Grady
Pat Martin
Debra Hunter
Derek Cradle

Agenda:

• Thanksgiving Giveaways by St. Mary's Church- 5 families interested.
• Status of Incorporation-Mr. Grady said he would look into this.
• www.monroestreetbk.blogspot.com- Our blog is up and running, meeting notes and block info will be posted on online.
• Debra Hunter paid her dues. ($20 for September and October)

Next Landmarking meeting-November 2nd at Restoration-6:30 pm

Next Block Assocation meeting November 3rd.

Derek

October Block Association Meeting

Welcome back members. As Fall graces us with the change of leaves and shorter days it is time for us to plan and move the Block Association forward.

MONROE STREET BLOCK ASSOCIATION
MONTHLY MEETING
OCTOBER 15, 2009
7:30 PM
503 MONROE STREET

Look forward to seeing you all,

Derek

The 2009 Monroe Street Block Party

I would like to thank Celeste Lewis for her tireless efforts each year during our block party. She has participated at every level during my tenure as president. I would also like to thank my wife Monica, Mr. Richard Grady, and Debra Hunter each played a key role in this years party. We were able to serve 150 hot dogs and 150 hamburgers and sponsor scooter races, a hula hoop contest and bike races.

Celeste and Todd Lewis' daughter Parris at Carnegie Hall

BELOW PLEASE VIEW MS PARRIS LEWIS SINGING WITH SONGS OF SOLOMON
WHO WAS FEATURED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES ON MARCH 21, 2009
PARRIS IS POINTED OUT WHERE THE CONDUCTORS BATON IS POINTED.

Music Review
Before the Spring, a Bleak Winter of the Soul
Erin Baiano for The New York Times
Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival: Craig Jessop conducted Michael Tippett’s oratorio “A Child of Our Time” at Carnegie Hall.
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By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Published: March 22, 2009
“It is spring,” the alto soloist sang and the chorus repeated near the end of a performance of Michael Tippett’s oratorio “A Child of Our Time” at Carnegie Hall on Friday evening. And indeed it was, to the day.
So it was as good a time as any to celebrate renewal, as embodied in a young chorus of 180, comprising groups participating in the Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival: the Pebblebrook High School Chamber Choir of Atlanta; the North Jersey Homeschool Association Chorale of Hawthorne, N.J.; the Shorewood High School Aeolian Choir of Shoreline, Wash.; and Songs of Solomon: An Inspirational Ensemble, of Manhattan. Part of “Honor!,” the three-week Carnegie festival organized by Jessye Norman, who introduced the program, the concert was presented by the Weill Music Institute, Carnegie’s educational arm, which is offering a related program in schools, “African-American Song: Spirituals and Anthems of Freedom.”
This is where Tippett fits in, for — profoundly English though he was — he used black American spirituals to punctuate “A Child of Our Time” in much the way Bach used Lutheran chorales in his Passions: to lend a certain universality to the specifics of the story. In truth, though, almost the whole of Tippett’s work transcends the particular.
The oratorio, which takes its title from a short novel by the Hungarian anti-Nazi writer Odon von Horvath, was a response to events in November 1938: the killing of a German diplomat by a young Jew in Paris and the unspeakable reprisals of Kristallnacht in Germany. But the closest Tippett came to portraying specific characters was, in the central section, to call the vocal soloists Boy, Mother, Aunt and Uncle. The Boy shoots an official, the bass recounts as the narrator, and “they took a terrible vengeance.” The Child of Our Time, it emerges, is the scapegoat.
That blessed arrival of spring comes after a long, arduous winter of the soul, the only consolations being those spirituals, evoking not only the suffering of American blacks in slavery and of ancient Jews in captivity but also the remarkable resilience of the human spirit. The youngsters in the chorus captured it all every bit as movingly as the more experienced soloists: Angela M. Brown, soprano; Meredith Arwady, contralto; Russell Thomas, tenor; and Morris Robinson, bass. The choral specialist Craig Jessop conducted, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s played with its usual understated brilliance.
In the first half of the program the choruses took turns on stage to sing two or three numbers each, mostly a cappella. It was a good opportunity to drink in the spirit of youth as well as to make the acquaintance of unfamiliar composers or works, including a couple of standouts: Frank Ticheli’s “Earth Song,” from the Pebblebrook chorus, and Eric Whitacre’s “Lux Aurumque,” from the North Jersey contingent.
There were also arrangements of spirituals, and laudable attempts at soulful stylings. But even those who hadn’t heard some of the groups at a concert for schoolchildren at the Apollo Theater in Harlem on Friday morning probably knew who would win at that game.
Songs of Solomon, a group composed of students from various New York high schools, appeared last, happily, for it would have been an impossible act to follow. Conducted by Chantel Wright, it sustained attention through “Jesus Is King,” an initially fascinating but ultimately overlong gloss on Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus by Glenn Edward Burleigh. But it positively brought the house down in William L. Dawson’s “Ezekiel Saw de Wheel”: an earlier spring before Tippett’s winter.