Anthony Brown, internationally acclaimed baritone and Hesston College sociology faculty and artist-in-residence, will present “I Go On Singing,” a tribute to Paul Robeson at Wichita’s Orpheum Theatre in honor of Black History Month.

Hesston College and The Orpheum Theatre will partner to present “I Go On Singing” an original tribute to Paul Robeson at The Orpheum Theatre (Wichita, Kan.) at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 21 and a free program for schools at 10 a.m., Feb. 22.

Internationally acclaimed baritone and Hesston College faculty member and artist-in-residence Anthony Brown’s tribute to Robeson, who was an all-American athlete and scholar, champion orator, international recording artist, and star of the stage and screen during the 1930s and 40s, is in honor of Black History Month.

Robeson’s story is a 75-minute song-filled, multi-media presentation that reveals him as a towering figure in 20th century American history. Brown uses Robeson’s own words from his autobiography “Here I Stand” and comments from legendary peace activist and artist Pete Seeger to trace his humble beginnings as a preacher’s son in Princeton, N.J., to his international celebrity and pioneering activism on the world stage.

Accompanied by a pianist, photo projection and narrator Junius Dotson, senior pastor at Saint Mark United Methodist Church in Wichita, “I Go On Singing” is equal parts historical documentary and live concert experience. Musical numbers range from spirituals to Broadway, and include original arrangements of Robeson’s favorites like “Ol’ Man River,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” “Shenandoah,” “Scandalize My Name,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “All Through the Night,” “Joe Hill,” “Deep River” and many others.

Brown is an international promoter of peace, Hesston College sociology faculty and artist-in-residence and founder of Peacing It Together Foundation, an organization that serves the global community as a resource for peace and social justice. He uses music and the spoken word to bring people together across the divides of race, culture and religion. Brown’s travels have taken him to countries such as Bosnia, Moldova, Northern Ireland, Uganda, Ethiopia, the Philippines, China, Japan, South Korea and Colombia, where he has seen music transform and heal.

“Paul Robeson: I Go On Singing” was written especially for Brown by personal friend and playwright, Andrew Flack, and premiered in Robeson’s hometown of Princeton, N.J., to inspiring reviews.

Benjamin J. Colbert, chairman of The Paul Robeson House Committee in Princeton said of the show, “We were very fortunate to have witnessed Mr. Brown’s portrayal of the music, life, and times of Paul Robeson. His performance in ‘I Go On Singing’ brings new life and inspiration to a generation of admirers.”

“Anthony Brown is a treasure,” said Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, Ph.D of Princeton University. “Endowed with a superb baritone voice, he has assembled an exquisite show that celebrates Paul Robeson and his times. Instructive and deeply touching, Mr. Brown’s performance is extraordinary. More people should have the opportunity to witness it.”

Hesston College, the only two-year liberal arts college in Kansas, was named the number 2 two-year college in the country by “Washington Monthly” magazine in 2010. Hesston offers students a supportive and relational community that values immediate leadership and involvement opportunities in all areas of the student experience. Students build a foundation that starts them toward futures of success and service to others, the church and the world.

Tickets for the Feb. 21 performance are $15 and can be purchased at wichitaorpheum.com or through Select-A-Seat by calling 316-755-7328 or at selectaseat.com.

School groups wanting to attend the free Feb. 22 performance should contact Hesston College at 866-437-7866 and The Orpheum Theatre at 316-263-0884 to reserve seating. The program is best suited for middle school and high school age students.

The evening included a Muslim call to prayer by Saheeb Sabur, a drumming
ensemble, the Bethel AME and Highland Presbyterian Church choirs, the J.P.
McCaskey High School Gospel Choir, Voces Inspiradas Vivendo en el Spiritu, and
the Max Bruch “Kol Nidrei,” for cello. Tony Brown performed the closing pieces -
inspirational songs, including “Come Let Us Dream,” “I Believe This Belongs to
You,” and “Each Other’s Light.”

The event was planned by concert committee chair, Eleanor Taylor, with program
arrangements made by Highland’s Music Director and composer, Dr. Simon Andrews.
Dr. Andrews also performed as accompanist for Tony Brown and for the remarkable
young cellist, Kathyrn Westerlund.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hesston College offering China trip

HESSTON, Kan. – International relationships are a vital part of the Hesston College culture both on and off campus. During the 2012 May term, beginning May 7, the college will expand its international learning opportunities with a three week trip to China led by sociology faculty and artist-in-residence Tony Brown and Chunrong Li, a Chinese citizen living in Philadelphia.

“Global awareness is a big part of what we do at Hesston College,” said Brown. “The trip is meant to be an inter-cultural experience for people to experience and explore Chinese history and culture.”

The trip is open to Hesston College students first, but the college is extending the invitation to anyone interested, including alumni and friends of the college, community members and others. Three hours of social science credit may be earned as part of the trip as well.

Most of the time will be spent in Beijing, the country’s capital city, with a three day trip to Xian, the first capital city of China and home to the famous terracotta warriors, made to protect the first emperor of China in his afterlife in the third century B.C.

Robert Peters, husband of Chunrong Li and a trained historian, helped Brown organize the details of the trip to make it authentic and allow participants to experience China in ways inaccessible to most tourists.

“This trip is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” said Peters. “Most visitors to China see the artificial, elite, tourist side of things, but this trip is designed to give a truly indepth encounter with the real China and see what life is like for the typical Chinese person.”

The itinerary includes ancient attractions like Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, Ming Tombs and a variety of temples, museums and markets. With the connections and contacts Li has in her home country, the group will be able to experience the sites in a way most people cannot.

“Participants will do more than just walk along the Great Wall, they will get to learn what is underneath it, how it was built and how it is being restored,” said Peters. “They will learn that the best food is from a guy with a cart in a night market, not in the fancy restaurants.”

Availability for the trip is limited to 20 people, and the cost per person is based partially on the size of the group and the option of taking the trip for course credit, but is estimated to be between $3,200 and $3,800. All expenses, including airfare and other transportation, lodging, meals and admission to attractions are included in the cost.

“If someone were to take this same trip through a travel agency, it would cost about twice as much and would not offer the same quality or authenticity of the trip we put together for Hesston College,” said Peters.

“The point of this trip is to allow students and others to become educated in a deeper, more spiritual way with China,” said Brown. “China has a kind of mystique that we will be able to experience as we learn its history and culture and dialogue with religious communities, artists and normal people just living their lives.”

For more information or to reserve a spot, contact Tony Brown at 620-327-8285 or tonyhb@hesston.edu for.

Located 30 miles north of Wichita, Hesston College is the two-year liberal arts college of Mennonite Church USA.

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Contact: Rachel Schlegel, 620-327-8185, rachels@hesston.edu

The program is sponsored by Hesston College. If you have interest in this program contact Dallas Stutzman at 620-327-4554 or email him at dallass@hesston.edu

Songs include Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, Deep River. Dry Bones, Wade in the Water, He’s Got the World in His Hand and many more.Steve Zielke, choral director at Oregon State University together with. Louis Lehman, a retired music teacher, will conduct the choir.

The concert will take place at 7pm at the Assembly Church in Albany Oregon.on Friday April 15.

If you would like more information about the 88-voice chorus led by Louis Lehman perform next Friday at First Assembly of God click the link below:

http://www.democratherald.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/religion/article_e2f7099c-61f5-11e0-94e6-001cc4c002e0.html

As an eight-year-old and one of a very few African Americans at a rural school outside of Pittsburgh, baritone Anthony Brown got his first gig singing when the school superintendent discovered his talent and invited him to perform for his fellow students — who were very impressed. “It upped my status in school as relates to peers and teachers,” says Brown. “The superintendent was the teachers’ boss, and he was aligning himself with me.”

Brown has collaborated with playwright Andrew Flack to create “Paul Robeson: I Go On Singing.” The world premiere, which includes transcriptions of original Robeson arrangements by composer Paul Fowler, takes place on Saturday, April 9, at the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts. The show’s narrator will be Jim Floyd Sr., former mayor of Princeton Township. The event in celebration of Robeson’s 113th birthday takes place just a few doors down from where he was born.

Although Brown never stopped studying music, he decided to major in psychology at Goshen College in Indiana in the late 1960s (he began his college career at Heston College in Kansas and transferred after two years) and eventually pursued a career in social work after earning a master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania. He spent 17 years at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he taught social work and counseled students, while also maintaining a private practice.

Brown was content with his work and loved Seattle, but suddenly found himself with a job offer from Heston College. The draw was that he would be able to integrate music into his professional life. Having impressed the college’s administration with his performance of spirituals for its alumni in 2000, Brown was invited to join the college as a teacher and counselor.

When the dean also asked Brown to serve as the college’s representative and public face at high schools, colleges, and alumni events, Brown agreed to a try-out year to make sure the college’s promises were real, a year that turned out to be incredible. Not only was he free to work on his own music, he never had to take a vacation day to do a concert. “To the chagrin of many of my friends who thought I had lost my mind,” he says, “after that year, I moved to Kansas.” He stayed about 10 years, and although still connected to Heston, he moved in August to Albuquerque, where his wife is studying at the New Mexico School of Natural Therapeutics.

While at Heston, Brown was part of a United States State Department trip to Bosnia, where he performed for a mixed audience of Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and Jews. “I had them all in one concert hall singing with me and me singing to them, and at the end of that event they jumped out of their seats in applause,” says Brown. “I realized then that music was powerful and could transform lives and create the atmosphere for peace.” This inspired Brown to tour other war-torn and stricken parts of the world including Northern Ireland, Ethopia, and Uganda. He then founded the Peacing It Together Foundation; its mission is to use music to bridge divides between people and support people who have suffered natural disasters.

On his musical journeys Brown began to think about Paul Robeson, whose music he had listened to as a youngster with his family. He started to see intersections between his own life and that of Robeson, who also had performed benefit concerts throughout the world for causes of social justice. “I felt a kind of kindredness with him in terms of his commitment to doing justice, to promoting peace, and to raising the status of African Americans in this country,” says Brown.

Although Brown lived in Pittsburgh until he was eight, his parents decided to purchase a small plot of land in a rural area outside the city so that their children could attend better schools. His father was a pressman for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and his mother stayed at home with their six children. “She was a strong person who knew who she was, and she felt good about that and had tremendous compassion and a very strong faith,” says Brown. “I think that is what has gotten us through as a people over all these years.”

Initially living in a place with so few African Americans was a challenge for Brown, but his parents helped him, he says. He recalls in particular a neighbor who would raise her window and yell at him every morning as he walked down his driveway to catch the school bus. His parents advised him, “Don’t say anything back. This woman is a misguided person. She is a good person, but has not had the proper experiences in life to understand that we are really one people.” They told Brown to keep his chest up, back straight, and recite the 23rd Psalm as he walked. But their advice also held another important lesson, he says. “They made it clear that it wasn’t about me.”

His mother was undaunted by the neighbor. When his mother would collect money for the March of Dimes or muscular dystrophy, she would stop by the woman’s house and talk to her about the charity — never mentioning the yelling. “It was just human interaction with the person — developing a bond with the person and finding a common issue — which is a wonderful peace building strategy,” says Brown. Eventually the lady quit yelling but, he adds, “it took us seven years before some of that family sat around the table in our house.”

At 16 Brown went to a Mennonite boarding school in Ohio, where he sang in competitions and often got superior ratings. Then on to Heston, where he continued to sing and study voice.

At Goshen College in the ’60s he imbibed the spirit of the time, becoming both a pacifist and a conscientious objector. Moved by the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 and by the Vietnam War, he developed a strong sense of social justice. “I became an advocate for racial equality, for justice, and for peace in world,” he says. “That was when, theoretically or intellectually, I started developing this sense of trying to do good in the world.”

After graduating Brown remained at Goshen for five years, developing tutorial programs for academically challenged students and then spent two years recruiting for the Mennonite Central Committee, an organization in Akron, Pennsylvania, that sends people around the world for service projects.

After receiving his master’s degree, when he moved to Seattle, he started to sing both oratorio music and spirituals at concert halls, at churches, and in festivals as well as at venues across the country. Brown shares this Paul Robeson quote to express the bond he feels with Robeson: “When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest.”

Suffering is universal, says Brown, and therein lies the power behind the spirituals he performs. “They connect with people all over the world because they connect with suffering, and through the songs, people can transcend suffering and live in hope.”

Paul Robeson: I Go On Singing, Arts Council of Princeton, 102 Witherspoon Street. Saturday, April 9, 7:30 p.m. World premiere of a show by Anthony Brown and Andrew Flack blends spoken word performance with original arrangements of Robeson’s best-loved songs. Brown is the founder of the Peacing it Together Foundation, an organization that presents music events to promote peace and social justice throughout the world. Many of the words are based on Robeson’s autobiography, “Here I Stand.” Jim Floyd Sr., former mayor of Princeton Township, narrates. $15. 609-924-8777 or www.artscouncilofprinceton.org.