Communities without borders

This is Késia Decoté (in atrocious lighting – ISO 16000!), a talented Brazilian pianist who has been our choir’s accompanist for the last two years while she’s been doing her Contemporary Arts and Music PhD in Oxford. To bid her farewell before her return to Brazil we planned a concert of Brazilian music this evening. She accompanied us and also played some extraordinary contemporary solo piano pieces.

I was responsible for making the concert poster and asked Markus Hediger if I could use his fabulous picture of his muse. Today is a day for celebrating this warm community and, it being what it is, he generously agreed. Where else would I have found such an appropriate photo? Thank you, Markus. (What I did with it is an Extra.)

I’ve had a lot of other commitments recently so have managed to get to only one of our concert rehearsals. I had a go at learning the pieces on my own but wasn’t sure I’d be up to this afternoon’s rehearsal. But our small singing community moved over to fit me in, forgave me my missing notes and taught me quite a few.

We decided to make the concert a fundraiser for Sanctuary Hosting, which matches homeless asylum seekers, refugees and vulnerable migrants with local residents prepared to share their homes. That is a large and generous commitment which is understandably beyond many people but in the last two years it has meant 49 people have been spared 7,233 nights on the streets and have started to feel part of a community.

Before the concert we heard that Késia has been awarded a scholarship for another year here so the evening became a celebration of her presence rather than a farewell. Afterwards she wrote to us all, ‘Thank you so much for such a magical concert. I feel so proud and touched to hear your love to my Brazilian roots.’ And it was fantastic for us to find a way into understanding Brazil just a little bit through music.


'Community' is a much abused word, often used by those with privilege to categorise others they don't understand who don't necessarily have much in common other than the irritation of being lumped together (the 'black community', the 'Muslim community', the 'gay community', etc.) but we can make all sorts of communities from the inside by acting with and for each other, and more and more I think we need to.

They might just be our salvation.

Thanks, all, for this one.



 
If you’re interested in what we sang:
 
Heitor Villalobos – Estrela é Lua Nova. If you have time for only one, make it this – a weaving of music from Brazil’s African and European heritages.

Ronaldo Miranda – Cantares. (Késia contacted Miranda for permission to sing this and he said it would probably be the European premiere.)

Ernano Aguiar – Salmo 150