Alumni and students will perform in an event also featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

August 21 , 2007

On Friday, September 7, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)/Boston presents an awareness-raising day of larger-than-life images of the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region. The images, by some of the most important photojournalists working today, will be digitally projected from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on large screens inside the ICA's Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater, as part of the unique traveling exhibit, Darfur/Darfur, curated by Leslie Thomas. The event includes a program from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. with a keynote address by Pulitzer prize-winning author Samantha Power; an overview of the crisis with Susannah Sirkin; director of Physicians for Human Rights and photographer Michal Ronnen Safdie; and a performance by renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The photos will also be visible through the museum's glass walls from 8:30 to 10:00 p.m., accompanied by a free outdoor performance on the Putnam Investments Plaza by Berklee's Voices of Mercy.

Berklee's Voices of Mercy performs songs from the CD We Are All Connected: Berklee College of Music Reaches Out to the Women of Darfur, a collection of r&b, soul, jazz, pop, world, and gospel songs written, performed, and produced by Berklee students, faculty, staff, and alumni, to raise awareness of the plight of women and children affected by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur. The project was inspired by a fact-finding trip to the Darfur region by prominent Boston women.

Press: to inquire about photo availability and usage, please e-mail us. Berklee's Voices of Mercy Photo by Margot Edwards

The 16-member group will perform songs including "We Are All Connected," written by Berklee alumna Andrea Whaley especially as a musical gift to the women of Darfur, and presented in early 2005 to women in the refugee camps by Linda Mason, Bright Horizons chair and Human Rights Watch board member who has made several trips to the area with women including TV journalist Liz Walker and Rev. Dr. Gloria White-Hammond. "Love Myself Instead," written by alumni Abria Smith, Arielle Hayes, and Jesse Hayes, inspired by field recordings that Mason brought back of Darfurian women trilling and singing in response, will also be performed.

Berklee's Voices of Mercy have performed songs from We Are All Connected at Berklee's 2005 commencement ceremony, on the TV show Sunday With Liz Walker, and for tens of thousands at Save Darfur rallies in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In Washington, singer Patti Austin joined the group onstage for a performance of "We Are All Connected" that was broadcast live on C-SPAN. The group also performed at a "Die-In" on the Boston Common as part of the Global Days for Darfur events that took place in April of 2007.

Berklee's Voices of Mercy is organized by Lynette Gittens and Shannon Kim, co chairs of the CD committee, and includes Berklee students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

Admission to the ICA theater is free with museum admission from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Tickets to the evening speaking program are sold out. Loudspeakers will be set up on the plaza outside the ICA to make the program audible to all, free of charge.

DARFUR/DARFUR is a traveling exhibit of digitally-projected changing images that provide visual education about the richly multi-cultural region while exposing the horrors of the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Motivated by the death and injury of over 300,000 civilians since 2003 and using a photojournalism exhibit as a graphic tool, Darfur/Darfur aims to help educate the public on the culture and politics of the region so that the gravity of the ongoing atrocities can be fully understood. The goal is to prompt international support for the prevention of further humanitarian destruction and to save lives. For more information about the exhibit and its supporters, please visit www.darfurdarfur.org, www.physiciansforhumanrights.org, and www.savedarfur.org.

About the ICA The Institute of Contemporary Art, located at 100 Northern Avenue, is open Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and college students, and free for members and for people 17 and under. Admission is free after 5 p.m. on Target Free Thursday Nights. For more information, call 617 478-3100 or visit the ICA's web site at www.icaboston.org.

For editorial information or digital photos, the media may contact:

Margot Edwards
Office of Public Information
(617) 747-2004
medwards@berklee.edu