America will celebrate its 250th birthday next summer, a milestone that True Concord Voices & Orchestra will carry through its 2025-26 season.
Every concert in True Concord’s “The American Dream” season will focus on the people who made America what it is today.
“It provides the opportunity to explore some of the aspects that make this country really great,” Music Director Eric Holtan said. “And for me, it is the wonderful diversity of musical traditions that originate from really all over the globe as we’ve created this wonderful melting pot that we call the United States of America.”
That melting pot of diversity is the throughline of the season, including the two-time Grammy-nominated professional choir’s season-opening concert this weekend.
True Concord Voice & Orchestra, with founding music director Eric Holtan, front far right, conducting, will open its 2025-26 focus on America season with music that explores our rich immigrant history.
“ ‘Voices of immigrants’ celebrates the fact that we are an immigrant country,” Holtan said. “We’re doing music from the Irish and English and Scandinavian, Jewish, Mexican and Cuban traditions — a nice cross-section of representative groups that make up, at least in part, our country.”
The 30-voice choir, accompanied by piano and a couple of other instruments, will perform classic folk songs including the Irish standard “Danny Boy” and the English folk ballad “Barbara Allen,” which Holtan said “is one of the oldest English folk songs that has been sung by immigrants here to the U.S.”
The song started as a ballad in the mid-17th century, and by the early 18th century, it had been widely shared orally and in print and became popular in England, Scotland and Ireland. Immigrants from those countries brought the song to North America, where, fast-forward to 1970, Simon & Garfunkel recorded their own version, “Barbriallen.”
The song was never released until 2001, when it was included as a bonus track on the duo’s CD reissue of “Sounds of Silence” and in the 2007 box set “The Collection: Simon & Garfunkel.”
“Voices of Immigrants,” which True Concord will perform three times this weekend, also includes the Jewish wedding song “Hava Nagila” and a fun arrangement of the satirical Mexican folk song “La Cucaracha.”
“I call it a smorgasbord concert because there’s 15 pieces on this program, they’re all about three to five minutes in length, and you just get to explore all these wonderful traditions within,” Holtan said.
True Concord’s focus on immigrants comes at a time in our country when the issue of immigration has become a political lightning rod. Holton said his program “represents the wonderful diversity of our nation” and celebrates “the fact that we are an immigrant country,” two concepts that he said have no political aspirations.
“This is not about making a political statement. It’s not even about patriotism,” he said. “It’s about celebrating America. One of America’s greatest strengths is our diversity, and I think that transcends politics.”
True Concord will perform “Immigrant Voices” at 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17, at Green Valley’s St. Francis in the Valley Episcopal Church, 600 S. La Cañada Drive; and at 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19, at Catalina Foothills High School, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive.
Tickets are $23.50-$68.50 through trueconcord.org.
