PORT ANGELES — A concert of entirely African music will fill the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave., as the school’s choirs give their end-of-year performance tonight.
Admission is free to the 7:30 p.m. event, while donations to Port Angeles’ Captain Joseph House Foundation will be accepted.
During this school year, choir director Jolene Dalton Gailey taught her students a number of African songs, replete with call-and-response verses and ululating, the trilling technique heard in tribal music.
On their April tour of New York City, the singers included African songs in their concerts at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and at the 9/11 Memorial Plaza and in the New York Heritage Festival, an adjudication of some 30 school ensembles from across the U.S.
The students took home several plaques and trophies: gold awards for the Symphonic Choir and Vocal Unlimited ensemble, the Choir Sweepstakes for the Port Angeles High School Choral Department and an Outstanding Soloist Award for senior Beth Ann Brackett.
Along with the music, tonight’s event will feature a bake sale and a prize drawing for a Fourth of July gift basket, also to benefit Captain Joseph House.
With founder Betsy Reed Schultz at the helm, the house — the former Tudor Inn bed-and-breakfast at 1108 S. Oak St. in Port Angeles— is being renovated into a haven for families of fallen military service members.
The house is named for Schultz’s son, Army Capt. Joseph Schultz, who was killed in action in Afghanistan on May 29, 2011.
This is the fourth year the Port Angeles High School choirs have given a fundraising concert for this cause, Gailey said, adding that the singers have raised close to $10,000 so far.
The African program is inspired in part by Gailey’s travels last August to South Africa and to Mozambique, where her son, Justin, 23, serves in the Peace Corps.
For more information about the performance, phone Port Angeles High at 360-452-7602.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
