Women in Harmony to Perform at Sister Singers National Festival in Illinois

Women in Harmony (WIH), Portland’s 60-member women’s chorus, will participate this summer in the Sister Singers National Women’s Choral Festival, which is held only once every four years. The festival, which draws more than 20 choruses and some 500 singers, will be held at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, from July 23 through 27.  About 30 chorus members will attend the festival. WIH Director Catherine Beller-McKenna is exuberant. "This is a very exciting step forward for us, and we’ll come back full of musical ideas and creativity to share with the community,” she says.

Women in Harmony is currently in its 20th year of performing. Known for stylistic versatility and bold programming, the chorus constantly seeks to push its musical envelope. The Sister Singers Festival presents a special opportunity for the group to share ideas with like-minded others, gain practical information about non-profit choral operations, and, of course, to sing. To raise money for the trip, they mounted a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign, which exceeded their $5,000 goal.

Among the pieces the chorus will perform are an excerpt from (f)light: a borderlands song cycle, by Maine composer and former chorus member Erica Quin-Easter—a work that WIH premiered in 2010. The group will also sing an arrangement of Swing Low by Clifton J. Noble, Jr. and "My Legs" from They Have Freckles Everywhere, Elizabeth Alexander's setting of local children's poetry, which was commissioned by WIH.

The Sister Singers Festival emerged from the early days of the women’s choral movement, which has lesbian and feminist roots and a focus on social justice.