Canadian-led European choir tours in the fall.The Choir of the Hungarian Reformed Seminary in Romania will be heading to Canada for a concert tour from Sept. 20th to Oct. 10th. Presented by The Presbyterian Church in Canada The Presbyterian Church in Canada is the name of a Protestant Christian church, of presbyterian and reformed theology and polity, serving in Canada under this name since 1875, although the United Church of Canada claimed the right to the name from 1925 to 1939. , the choir will visit all four Atlantic provinces Atlantic Provinces, term used since 1949 to designate the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. as well as southern Ontario. The seminary students glorify God through joyful music, bearing witness to how God has worked to restore the church in Romania after years of persecution. The choir will be performing hymns and gospel songs, classical selections and Hungarian folk music Hungarian folk music includes a broad array of styles, including the recruitment dance verbunkos, the csárdás and nóta. To some extent, the music of ethnic Hungarian people and the music of the Roma in Hungary have been conflated, though the exact degree to which this has occurred . In addition to the seminary students, there will be two musicians from the conservatory in Kolozsvar/Cluj, both active members of the Hungarian Reformed Church Reformed church Any of several Protestant groups strongly influenced by Calvinism. They are often called by national names (Swiss Reformed, Dutch Reformed, etc.). The name was originally used by all the Protestant churches that arose out of the 16th-century Reformation but . The 19-member choir is under the direction of the Presbyterian Church's mission staff person, Brian Johnston Brian Alexander Johnston MC (June 24 1912 - January 5 1994) (known as Johnners) was a cricket commentator for the BBC from 1946 until his death. Early Biography and Education . Johnston grew up in southwestern Ontario Southwestern Ontario is a region of the Canadian province of Ontario, centred on the city of London. It extends north to south from the Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron to the Lake Erie shoreline, and east to south-west roughly from Kitchener to Windsor. , and served as organist/choir director at Knox, Waterloo, from 1987-1992. A brief stint in Hungary in 1982, where he further developed his passion for music and music education, sparked his close connection with the Hungarian people. He began his work as a music and English teacher in Romania at the Theological Seminary of the Hungarian Reformed Church in 1993, which was formally recognized and supported by the Presbyterian Church four years later. Steve Ross, Mary Goromby and David Pandy-Szekeres are the church's other mission workers in the region. A Youth in Mission group has been travelling to Eastern Europe since 1999 to help Johnston establish English camps. For more information contact Barbara Nawratil at bnawratil@presbyterian.ca, 416-441-1111 or 1-800-619-7301. To watch a video of the choir and to find the full schedule for the Canadian tour, please visit the Record's website. |
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