For 200 years now, Americans have been singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
It’s our national anthem, but it is by far not our only anthem.
There’s also Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” the Irish ode “Danny Boy” and Bob Dylan’s protest song “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Those are some of the songs that Tucson Chamber Artists Music Director Eric Holtan would classify as America’s greatest anthems. And he has programmed a full evening of these songs to open his professional choir’s 11th season this weekend.
“These songs were embraced as anthems,” Holtan said on a recent weekday morning, sitting in the loft of a downtown coffee shop as the street below was starting to come to life. “So I thought, let’s expand the palette a little bit and include these other pieces.”
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In doing so, Holtan has created what he believes is the most diverse program his singers will have performed to date. And they will be performing in some of the most far-flung venues in the choir’s history, from a new east-side stage at St. Matthew Episcopal Church to a church in Catalina north of Oro Valley that the Air Force once used as a staging ground for the powerful Titan 2 missile. (That Air Force Titan 2 missile base has long been decommissioned, of course.)
“We had determined that our mission is to bring the music to where (people) live,” Holtan said. “It’s a value to us that we are accessible to the community. We’re easy to get to; we’re in your backyard.”
Also on the program are works by Stephen Foster, excerpts from Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” and several folk songs that have been adopted as anthems, including the African-American creed “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which since 1919 has been considered the official anthem of the NAACP; and “Amazing Grace,” considered by many as the Christian anthem.
The Davis-Monthan Honor Guard will participate in the first half of the Saturday night concert at the Scottish Rite Temple to recognize “The Star-Spangled Banner’s” 200th anniversary, which was last month. In Green Valley, the Lady Titans Color Guard of American Legion Post 66 will present the colors.
The TCA will perform the concert five times from Friday through Sunday, including two performances each on Friday and Sunday.
