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Paens and Pains in our City of Refugees New York
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church
11/21/2025 - & November 22, 2025
Paula Cole: Comin’ Down (arr. Ari Messenger)
Joan Szymko: Make Ready Your Beauty – Sail Away
Rich Campbell: Border
Moira Smiley: Refugee
Laura Jobin-Acosta: Sometimes I Wonder: A Chamber Oratorio (World Premiere)
Mario Castelnuevo-Tedesco: Selections from Romancero Gitano, Op. 152
Dorothy Robson: Winter Wheat
Laura Nyro & Billy Childs: Save the Country (arr. Matt Robbins)
Arianna Rodriguez (Soprano), Brooke Slemmer (Vocal Soloist), Ben Larson (Cello), Sam Friedman (Trumpet), Christine Chen, Chin Lin (Percussion), Carlos Cuestas (Guitar)
Choral Chameleon, Vince Peterson (Artistic Director and Conductor), Ronnie Romano, Drew Young (Assistant Conductors), Hee Sung Kim (Collaborative pianist)
A. Rodrigues/V. Peterson (© San Francisco Opera/Courtesy of the artist)
“I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong. The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges.”
George Washington
“Immigration keeps this country young, it keeps it dynamic, we have entrepreneurs and strivers who come here and are willing to take risks, and that’s part of the reason why America historically has been successful.”
Barack Obama
Physically, we all looked different in Holy Trinity Church last night. But we brown, black white congregants had two things in common. We were all New Yorkers. And we all were related (usually by two or three generations) with... what 18th Century ‘mericans called “furriners.”
The choral program, “We Are Seeds,” was to celebrate our immigrant past. But–without any homilies–our antecedents came here with Homburg and babushka, with yamaka and turban... and fetters. We were called “Paper Sons” or “Wetbacks” but usually the Immigration officials called us “Over here, you!” or “Get in line” or “Doncha understand English?”
These days, our refugee immigrants, having braved Ecuadorean swamps, or dripping miasmic Nigerian rainforests or arid Somalian deserts, try swimming over the Rio Grande with their children and try to avoid Immigration men.
Once they have made their homes here for ten, twenty years, they must hide from that fierce new acronym, ICE.
Which brings us back to “We Are Seeds.” The name could have come from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s line, “A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.” But it was actually from Choral Chameleon’s subtitle “A Concert of Immigrant Stories Where Displacement Becomes Transformation and Struggle Becomes Song.”
The program transcended that wordy title. Yet I claim both elation and ignorance of the work at hand.
Elation because Choral Chameleon is such a superb large choral group. This was my first hearing, though their reputation as professional singers with adventurous and social allegiance is wide‑spread.
At times those voices were ringing out in the church, twinned with the resonance, the echoes, the medieval joy. For both the instrumental and vocal soloists were superb.
As for conductor and Artistic Director Vince Peterson, he was a rare figure, quite appropriate for a church. Outside of rapport with the chorus, Mr. Peterson’s electricity, energy and enthusiasm could have been akin early young Seiji Ozawa, or the fabled hyperbolic messianic gestures of John the Baptist.
And it worked!!
But my ignorance? The musical titles, origins, and poetry (all choral, many with solo instruments) were unknown both to me and the audience. No programs had been printed, the world premiere largest piece had texts written by kids between 14 and 17 years old in Spanish without translations.
The final songs were written by songwriters like Dylan and Niro. And while sung with monumental import, one wanted to say, a choral We Shall Overcome ain’t Ode an die Freude, no matter how you cut it.
The soloists were splendid. But I particularly enjoyed the suave gently colored guitar of Carlos Cuestas. His work with the chorus was by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, whose Guitar Concerto is a concert staple.
I cannot say enough about Sometimes I Wonder: A Chamber Oratorio by Laura Jobin‑Acosta.
These texts were poems from girls in a Honduras Orphanage, The Little Roses. And Choral Chameleon had different full‑bodied styles for each poem. The cello was like a basso continuo. And soprano soloist Arianna Rodriguez lavished her amazing voice with what I can only call spirit, joy, pure operatic elegance.
I wish the words had reflected the music, but alas, we never had those words. The music, by composer-in-residence Laura Jobin‑Acosta had as many modes as the nonet of poems.
L. Jobin-Acosta (© Courtesy of the Artist)
Yet my one wish was to see or read those poems in Spanish or English. I have a feeling Ms. Acosta would have transformed the words into choral notes. But the audience wouldn’t have known that.
After the intermission, we had well-known texts. Tagore and Lorca and Dylan. The poems by Federico García Lorca came with that beautiful guitar by Carlos Cuestas and music from Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who escaped from Fascist Italy to find sunshine and peace as a Hollywood film‑composer.
There was so much music in this Choral Chameleon concert that one almost forgot this was a concert as homage to all of us refugees. Artistic Director Peterson explained, “When the news cycle hardens hearts, art has the power to reopen them. This program asks us to hear each other again.”
Well, frankly, that is forgivable b.s. Congreve wrote that “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,” not the savage beast. Our present savage beast and his savage minions can’t be soothed by music, no matter how monumental.
Last evening’s music could momentarily be charmed. But the beast can only be soothed by political machinations which are rooted in wrath and rage.
Harry Rolnick
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