Boston Performers, Global Music, and a Transnational Cause: Memorial Church Hosts Benefit Concert for Refugees

Memorial Church opened its doors on March 9 to welcome performers from around the world in its inaugural “Help the Children” Benefit Concert, held to raise money and awareness for immigration rights at the U.S.-Mexico border.

With performances from a range of Boston area musicians — Boston Camerata, Blue Heron Acapella, the Choral Fellows of Harvard, Dünya, Fabián Gallón, Eduardo Betancourt, and Black Nativity — audience members tapped their feet and quietly hummed to themselves around the sanctuary. As the concert came to its close, the event’s organizers asked for donations to aid refugees and immigrants, especially children and fractured families along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Joel I. Cohen, Music Director Emeritus of Boston Camerata and Artistic Director and founder of Camerata Mediterranea, was the concert’s host and organizer. He spoke about music’s ability to impact global issues.

“Little children respond to musical sounds with a smile or a tapping foot. It’s so basic within humanity. It has the gift of federating people,” Cohen said. “They hear something they may not have heard otherwise — the Arabic mode, a weird instrument — and say, ‘I can relate to that.’”

No ordinary fundraising event, the benefit kicked off with a Sephardic-Moroccan piece, “Criado, Hasta Cuando.” The pieces that followed were of medieval, renaissance, and contemporary origins, and genres spanned from opera to modern nativity music. Instruments included the tiple (the Colombian national instrument) and Venezuelan harp. A song performed by soprano Anne Azéma, flautist Jesse Lepkoff, and nay player Boujemaa Razgui echoed off the church’s walls.

The Cambridge Legal Defense Fund and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) received all the proceeds from the concert, which was organized as a surprise for the two organizations. Geeta Pradhan, President of the Cambridge Community Foundation and leader of the Cambridge Legal Defense Fund, said she was was deeply touched by the sentiment and effort of the Memorial Church and Camerata Mediterranea to put together the concert.

“You help one family and you help generations,” Pradhan said.

Edward E. Jones, Gund University Organist and Choir Master, said he sees advocacy and music as “going hand in hand.”

“I feel that choral music especially is one of the great equalizers because you don’t need money for it. Everyone can sing,” Jones said.

“I’m an immigrant. I’m a citizen now, but I came over here. America is the great land of opportunity. That’s the way this country was founded.” Jones said. “I think people forget that today. Right now, in the terms of just responsibility to your fellow human being, we all have a moral obligation to be thinking about these things and doing something about it.”