The Northwest Enterprise

Phelps To Sing With City Philharmonic Choral

Don Phelps, student of music at Cornish School of Arts and the grandson of John T. Gayton is the first Negro to join the Seattle Philharmonic Choral Society, a semi-professional music organization, which will give the third concert of the sixth season May 5th at the Meany Hall.

This society was founded in the fall of 1944 by 12 Seattle business men with the purpose of bringing a higher type and better class of music to Seattle.

The young baritone emphasizes his belief that the Negro community should back the Philharmonic Choral Society by attending their concerts because the organization was "practicing what we as a race have been striving to gain for the last half century."

Each year the organization presents three regular programs. The first and third are a combination of the orchestra and chorus while the second performance is given by the orchestra without the chorus.

The next concert will be presented at Meany Hall on the U. W. Campus, May 5. The Eight Beatitudes, by Caesar Franks, will be featured by the entire group— a choral and orchestra body.

Some of the programs the society has given constitute several performances at veteran hospitals, two performances on the radio program "Voices of the Northwest," and singing in the Sunrise Services at Washelli the last three years.

Don Bushell director of the Seattle Philharmonic Choral Society, a Seattle man and a graduate of the University of Washington, was the chairman of the music department at Western Washington College at Bellingham and also was one of last years cellists in the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

As active members of The Community and residents of Seattle The Northwest Enterprise urges your support by attending all of the Seattle Philharmonic Choral Society's programs.