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A descendant of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, will appear as part of a musical performance in Yamate, the site of the original foreign enclave set aside shortly after the arrival of the Black Ships in the 1860s.
On Monday, Feb 11, at 3 p.m., Frances Conover Fitch (whose grandmother was Priscilla Foster Perry) will play organ and harpsichord with distinguished colleagues at Ferris Hall in Yokohama. The concert, called "Prayer Toward Resurrection," will feature Gregorian chant, and the music of Hildegard von Bingen, 11th-century mystic, visionary and abbess, Henry Purcell, Palestrina, and Michel Delalande, an important musician at the court of Louis XIV of France.
Fitch will be joined by Yukari Nonoshita, soprano (Geidai University faculty), Yukimi Kambe, viola da gamba (Ferris University faculty), Tomoko Miyamoto, organ (Ferris University faculty), and the Ferris Easter Choir.
Fitch has been Guest Professor in Performing Arts at Ferris University during the recent semester. She has been honored by this distinction, and particularly enjoys her connection to Commodore Perry, a legend in Yokohama. As Fitch and Commodore Perry are both descended from the same two couples - Edward Perry and Mary Freeman, as well as Robert Hazard and Mary Brownell - they are double third cousins, five times removed.
Admission is 1,000 yen at the door.
© Japan Today
2 Comments
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ubikwit
Would like this concert to be performed in Kansai, too.
CrisGerSan
what a bizarre turn of events. I am so sorry that Perry and the US felt it appropriate to break open Japan's closed world. It would have been much better in some ways to have let things happen naturally. And the US had no good intentions then and not many now. History is indeed a strange dance. Thanks for sharing this rather odd event happening.