The Utah Statesman

Issue date: 3/23/07 Section: Diversions

Media Credit: Tyler Larson

Some in the audience will never hear a musical performance exactly like it anywhere. Others may not hear it at all. But, that's kind of the point.

The 6th annual Multicultural Messiah concert is not just a musical performance of Handel's revered oratorio; it also features interpretation of the performance in American sign language.

"It's an experience when you get into it you know you'll never forget," said Andrew Beck, a senior deaf education major who is a signer for the program for the fourth time.

The Multicultural Messiah concert features Handel's "Messiah" sung in English, with a portion in Spanish, by a chorus of more than 100 people and a 40-person orchestra, with 21 additional signers contributing the theatrical interpretive signing. The concert will be held today and tomorrow at the Eccles Theatre and March 30 at Peery's Egyptian Theater in Ogden.

All performers involved are volunteers - people "from all backgrounds and all faiths become a real common unit," said John Ribera, musical director and organizer for the event and deaf education professor at USU.

George Frederic Handel's "Messiah," written in 1741, is one of the best-known pieces of classical music in the world. While it is often performed at Christmastime, Ribera said Handel originally wrote for the piece to be performed in the spring.

Each year the performance has grown both in community support and in quality, said Ribera. Last year marked the first year the performance played in Ogden, and this year, the event is moving from the Kent Concert Hall to the more intimate Eccles Theatre, which will "allow the audience to interact with the performance," Ribera said.

"To my knowledge, 'Messiah' has never been theatrically interpreted anywhere (outside of these performances)," said Freeman King, who directs the interpretive signing for the performance and is a professor in the deaf education department at USU.

The idea for this unique performance of the "Messiah" came from watching the film "Mr. Holland's Opus," Ribera said. He said he was moved as he watched how Holland, a music teacher, communicated musically with his deaf son in the film. Ribera began thinking of staging a musical performance that both deaf and hearing audiences would enjoy. Because of Cache Valley's Latin-American population, Ribera also decided to perform a portion in Spanish.

Continued...

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