Choir of Joy (Joqat al Farah) US Tour

As you can tell from the title we are now in Detroit, thank God we arrived safe and sound.

I will try to catch up on the couple of days i missed now. On the 25th of February the Choir performed in Duke Ellington School of the Arts. about 500 people attended, most of them were students. The performance was great and everybody enjoyed it, especially the teachers who’ve shown a lot of appreciation to the music and the kids to the extent that one of them told me “you brought up the Syrian in me”!!!

On our way back to the hotel we passed by The National Cathedral. It was really worth seeing.

In the evening we went to Tyson’s mall, then came back to the hotel and packed for our next day travel to Detroit.

Yesterday we left Washington DC, with all the great time, people and memories we had there and came to Detroit. Dr. Arwashan was waiting for us in the airport and had arranged all the buses to take us to the hotel. In the evening an Arabic dinner was served -tabboule, musabba7a, birak and shawerma- and a tremendous amount of the Choir’s friends came to see them and salute Abouna.

Another day has just started and you will have an update about it tonight hopefully.

we went yesterday to The National Museum of Natural History, where we’ve seen the different stages that the earth has been through up till now.

as far as we’ve heard most of the parents were watching the performance live, yet i still would like to tell you how things were here. but before doing so i would like to ask all parents leaving messages to their kids to please put them on the recent posts so that i won’t have to check all posts to print the new messages.

now, back to the performance and starting with the audience. the Millennium stage was full, and though there were some Arabs attending but there was also a good percentage of non Arabs too.

here are some of the comments that I’ve heard: a Syrian lady said “they made us laugh, cry and dance at the same time”, another American lady said “what a pity that we can not make the whole world watch those beautiful kids and listen to this great music. I’m sure that their singing can bring all people together”, and an American couple asked a lot of questions about the Choir in general then we found out that they attended the opening ceremony, decided to come to watch the Choir’s performance, and to my surprise they were asking about today’s performance hopping that they will attend it too!!!!!

i can’t really remember all the comments and i guess words can’t describe how wonderful and fascinating the Choir was. God bless them all.

Ramez forwarded to us a report on Arabesque that was shown on PBS. The Choir and Abouna Zehlawi are shown in different places in the 8 minute video.

To see it click here

or (depending on your computer you may be able to see the report  directly from the blog if you see the screen below)

Thank you MR, Joe and Firas for pointing out that Kennedy Center has put the performance online for people to view it at their convenience.

Go to the Kennedy Center Millenium Stage page

Then go to Past Performances and Click on Play this performance as shown below

Past Performances

February 24, 2009

Based in the Lady of Damascus Church in Syria, more than 100 children of the choir perform Byzantine, Muslim, and Arab songs. IN THE EISENHOWER THEATER Part of ARABESQUE: Arts of the Arab World

Play this Performance

Yesterday the Choir went to the Kennedy Center around 12::30 to have its own rehearsal at 1pm then to join all the other groups performing at the ceremony at 2pm. and guess who was performing too?? it was Marcel Khalife!!!!

So the ceremony started at 7:30 and it was a great start with the Choir, they also had several other groups performing then they ended the ceremony with Marcel Khalife and had everybody coming back on stage for a final salute.

i’m sorry for not posting this yesterday but it took some time to gather the photos and be able to add them online.

P.S. just the first photo is posted with its original high resolution the others are not… i’ve changed the resolution to make them easy to open for parents in Syria. if you think i shouldn’t do so please tell me.

have a good day everybody and we’ll meet again hopefully tonight

For those of you who cannot make it to Tuesday’s performance, the Kennedy Center will broadcast it live at 6 pm local time. To figure out when that is you can check the world clock by visiting the worldclock site or http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=263

To see the performance live go to the Kennedy Center page http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/millennium/# on Tuesday the 24th of February and click on the 6 pm performance line (the one enclosed inside the box).

to see the performance live

Firas sent us a short video he captured during Sunday’s performance… Thank you Firas!

it is short but is 22 Megs in size - might take a while to download. Make sure you have a good internet connection.

a short clip from Sunday 22 February (22MB)

I have also the original longer version (220 Megs) online but it takes forever to download. If anyone is more technical than I am and can tell me how to stream it, please let me know @ nabilbeit(at)gmail.com

First of all I want to apologize for my delay in writing but there were plenty of things to do in the past couple of days. I will keep you all posted as often as I can (but definitely not more than once a day).

As for now, and just like Lin said a couple of hours ago, the second group arrived safe and sound yesterday and all the choir members are doing good, busy all the time but healthy and having a great time.

They had a mass in the National Shrine Church and it was absolutely great.
After that there was a half an hour reception during which we had the time to meet some American and non American people, who have attended the mass and were fascinated by the Choir in general and the idea of having kids in this age performing abroad. God bless them all, everybody’s working so hard to make this trip as successful as possible and so far i guess we’re succeeding.

On our way back we passed by the white house and some of the monuments in Washington DC then came back to the hotel for a break. now the kids are going for a rehearsal at the Kennedy center and after that hopefully they will come back to rest and be ready for tomorrow.

I just remembered that some parents left some hellos on the blog, I will try to print them out and have the kids read them.

As for yesterday, we went with the first group to Lincoln Memorial. Here are some photos

I hope I gave you all a good idea of what was going on here and as I said I will keep you posted.

I have a little update. First I want to assure all the parents that the second group has arrived safe and sound yesterday night. (thank God)

Today as we all know they had a Mass in the morning, and I wasn’t able to get in touch with anyone, till this minute; I got a very brief word from Mays, that they preformed beautifully, and things are going just as they wish them too.

She promised that within the coming 2 hours, she will have on this blog much more details, and hopefully some photos.

Thank you Parents for your patience!

Please, be assured all kids and adults are well, but, they are really working extremely hard (all the group).

God bless them all!

Good news! The first group has arrived to D.C. with Abouna.

Though exhausted, after the long trip and some unexpected obstacles, but very enthusiastic, and getting ready for a new start today

Tonight, God willing, the second group will arrive safe and sound. We’ll keep you posted!