Help Can't Wait – Yale Gives Benefit Concert for Hurricane Relief Tonight

Musicians at Yale are putting on a benefit concert tonight in Woolsey Hall, corner of College and Grove streets, at 8 p.m., to raise funds for hurricane Katrina disaster relief.

Titled “Help Can’t Wait,” the concert will feature performances by hundreds of musicians from the Yale community—faculty, students and alumni.

The University’s major choruses and instrumental ensembles, as well as several faculty soloists and conductors responded immediately to a request by Thomas C. Duffy, Acting Dean of the School of Music, for performers for the program. Even though some of the groups have yet to meet for their first rehearsal, Duffy decided that help was needed immediately. “People are dying, and the victims of this disaster can’t wait for us to practice and rehearse more,” he said.

The program includes The Yale Philharmonia, Yale Camerata, Glee Club and Schola Cantorum under Shinik Hahm performing excerpts from the Brahms Requiem and Mendelssohn’s “Elijah”; The Philharmonia’s strings in the Barber “Adagio”; The Yale Symphony under Toshiyuki Shimada in a movement from Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony; the Yale Concert Band under James Cheseborough playing selections that include the beloved Irish tune “Danny Boy”; The Camerata under Marguerite Brooks will sing the hymn “Precious Lord,” with tenor saxophonist Michael Breaux, an alumnus of the School of Music and a native of New Orleans; Strauss’s Serenade for Winds conducted by Thomas C. Duffy; plus performances by School of Music faculty pianists Boris Berman and Peter Frankl, flutist Ransom Wilson, organist Martin Jean and more.

General admission tickets will be sold at the door only, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Suggested contributions are $10 to $25. All proceeds will be given to major charities providing services to the victims of the hurricane and flood. For updated information, call the Yale School of Music Box Office at 203 432-4158, or visit the Music at Yale website http://www.yale.edu/music/ysm.html. For information about other initiatives at Yale to aid victims of Katrina, go to http://www.yaledailynews.com /article.asp?AID=29630