THE ITHACA JOURNAL (Article published May 4, 2006)
Ithaca Children's Choir dedicates concert to Schlather

On Tuesday, May 9 at 7:30 pm, the Ithaca Children's Choir of the Community School of Music and Arts will present “Stand Together”, a concert dedicated to the memory of Erin Aljoe Schlather.

Tickets for the concert are $5 and will be available at the door. For information, call 274-1474.

Ms. Schlather sang with ICC in the early 1990s and died unexpectedly in July of 2004. The concert, under the direction of Janet Galvan, will feature two works of new music dedicated to Erin's memory: “Stand Together” by Jim Papoulis, an internationally renowned composer for films and children's choirs, and “I Will Arise” by local composer, Dominick DiOrio.

“Stand Together” is a choral work composed by Jim Papoulis, a conductor and composer for films, commercials, television programs, and special events. He is the co-founder of The Foundation for Small Voices, which uses music to cross cultural, generational, and ideological boundaries for national and international music and mentoring programs for children.

Papoulis has worked with children's choirs in Asia, Europe, and the United States and says that music is a natural way for young people to express themselves. “I am constantly searching for ways to find out what young people are thinking and what they want to say to the world. When children sing, they seem to open themselves up.”

Papoulis was inspired to write “Stand Together” during a week-long residency at the Chorale Music Experience held in Ithaca in 2005. The combined choruses in attendance were able to try out the work as it developed.

Papoulis recalled, “Listening to Janet Galvan, hearing the choirs — it all added to ‘Stand Together' and I completed it that week. There is no substitute for immersion like that for sparking ideas.” According to Papoulis, the work reflects the spirit of striving together towards a goal and the “exploration of unique inner strengths that make the whole more viable and vibrant” that takes place when people make music together.

Dominick DiOrio is a senior at Ithaca College, and will be a graduate student at Yale University next fall. He has studied conducting with Dr. Janet Galván for the past three years, and was recognized nationally as a finalist in the American Choral Directors Association Undergraduate Student Conducting Competition in Los Angeles in February 2005. His newest work, “I Will Arise” is a setting for eight parts of the W. B. Yeats poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”. He found Yeats' poetry to be “as delicately poignant as it is beautiful. My composition uses a recurring chord progression to harmonize with a simple melody and the chorale section of the Ithaca Children's Choir is the perfect ensemble to premier the work.”

The concert is dedicated to the memory of Erin Aljoe Schlather, who grew up in Ithaca, NY, graduating from Ithaca High School in 1995. She graduated from Vassar College in 1999, and worked in Washington DC as a researcher and analyst while pursuing a degree in law. Music and theater were important to Schlather. Locally, she performed with the Ithaca Children's Choir, The Hangar Theatre, Ithaca Opera, The Ithaca Community Chorus and Chamber Singers, and Dryden Footlighters; she was one of the founders of the Orange Tree Theatre Company. She was a soloist with the Ithaca Children's Chorus in a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1991. Janet Galvan, director of ICC, remembers her as a person with remarkable sensitivity to fairness. “When four young people from ICC were chosen to sing in a national honor choir, Erin was aware that one of the young people might not be able to afford the airfare. She came to me to see if there was a way that the other three could help out.”

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