This short film highlights a distinctive collaboration of acapella music and sculpture in a production featuring members of our chorus performing Kevin Siegfried’s Peace unto Zion in collaboration with artist and activist Joyce McDonald. Re-imagined during a time of palpable social unrest and paired with the sculptural works of contemporary Joyce McDonald, this project underscores the tension between the Shaker hymn, both in its text and its ideals, and the realities of a modern society that is polarized, unjust, and suffering from the pain of racial inequality.
Joyce McDonald has chosen a group of sculptures of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, among other Black men, women, and children, who have died at the hands of the police or while in police custody over the last decade. In creating these sculptures Joyce shared the powerful sense of energy, pain and hope as she created each these powerful works of art. The collaboration among an arranger of Shaker hymns and this sculptor who captures the range of emotions she’s experienced throughout her spirited life offers a powerful meditation on hope and the equally painful striving for a utopia of peace and grace
Kevin Siegfried is known for his arrangements of Shaker music have been performed and recorded by choruses around the world. Like many Shaker hymns, Peace unto Zion is a poetic reflection of the utopian ideal, where all are created equal and working together to create a more perfect society through humility, faith, work and the beauty of nature.
Learn more about Joyce McDonald
Learn more about Kevin Siegfried
Peace unto Zion (Shaker hymn) – Arranged, Kevin Siegfried (1997)
Acapella SATB chorus
Peace unto Zion.
Peace, peace to the faithful,
And a crown of rejoicing
And a crown of rejoicing
From your Heavenly Father.
When Zion shall be cleansed
She shall flourish as a rose
I will walk in her midst
And will bless all those with a tenfold blessing And their sorrows shall cease
For I’ll cry upon her walls
Peace, sweet peace
