MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE MARKS SEPTEMBER 11
WITH 'SERVICE OF REMEMBRANCE IN MUSIC'

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. – The Mount Holyoke College community will gather on September 11 for "A Service of Remembrance in Music," beginning at 12:15 PM in Abbey Memorial Chapel. Students, faculty, and staff will perform musical selections during the service, and all members of the Mount Holyoke and greater South Hadley communities are invited. "This is for anybody who wants to mark the day, be in meditation, be with others, and pray for peace and hope," said Andrea Ayvazian, the College's dean of religious and spiritual life. "I think it's going to be very lovely and varied."

The event, organized by Ayvazian and Larry Schipull, associate professor of music and College organist, includes members of each of the campus's constituencies. "The program shows the depth and breadth of talent and the desire for involvement on our campus," Ayvazian said.

Last year, the College marked the first anniversary of the attacks in a program of prayer, meditations, and blessings in many languages and from many cultures. A program of music was chosen this year, Schipull said, because music invites individual responses, each of them valid. "What to one person seems a statement of quiet resignation, to another might seem melancholy, and to a third might even be triumphant," he said. "It allows people to have their own personal reaction—and often that reaction would be one that would be difficult to verbalize. But that's the whole point to having it be musical."

Remarks by President Joanne V. Creighton will follow a prelude by Mark Gionfriddo, director of the Mount Holyoke jazz ensembles and director of music for the Roman Catholic community. Schipull, on organ, and violinist Linda Laderach, professor of music and chair of the music department, will perform the Elegie (from Suite for Violin and Organ, op. 150), by Josef G. Rheinberger. The Mount Holyoke vocal jazz ensemble, directed by Gionfriddo, will perform "I'll Be Seeing You" by Sammy Fain, and the ten-member facilities management chorus, formed for the event, will perform "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein.

Flutist Jackilynn Wood '05; violinist Krystal Bordoni-Cowley, a Williston Northampton School junior and daughter of MHC carpenter Peter Cowley; and Schipull, on organ, will perform a meditation on "Amazing Grace." Schipull, on piano, will accompany soprano Melinda Spratlan, professor of music, in "Envoy" by Paul Hindemith and Francis Thompson. "We Will Remember You," written by Ayvazian for the one-year anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, will be sung by Ayvazian, accompanied by the Mount HolyokeVocal Jazz and Chamber Jazz Ensembles, with Gionfriddo as the director.

Rabbi Lisa Freitag-Keshet, the College's Jewish chaplain, and Sister Shamshad Sheikh, the College's Muslim chaplain, will deliver a benediction. The postlude will be performed by Schipull.