Music Feeds More than the Soul

Trudy Weaver Miller Christ Trinity Church, Sheffield

Lich Gate Concerts is a new

concert series which grew out of the confluence of two pandemicrelated situations: 1) access to a very talented NY-based violinist & concert master, Jorge Ávila, who spent the pandemic in the Berkshires as there was no work anywhere, and 2) food insecurity within our community due to the pandemic, school closings, and loss of jobs.

When the country shut down in March 2020, 65 families in our local school district had been receiving two meals a day for their children through the school. The school district continued supplying meals by keeping a very small kitchen staff working and delivering these meals. These families were disproportionately affected by the pandemic in that parents mostly worked in area restaurants and services, which were forced to close.

The Rev. Erik Karas, rector of Christ Trinity, put out a call-to-action to the community to help these families with meals over the weekends, which in turn, helped struggling area restaurants. Folks called a particular restaurant and paid for meals for families over the phone, and the school arranged for pickup and delivery. Erik then wrote a grant proposal which received over $18,000 from Berkshire United Way to support this program and a new one focusing on the elders in our community, using a few more restaurants and galvanizing many volunteers to deliver the meals to elders.

Because there had been church and community relationship building before the pandemic, it was much easier to put together new and more diverse alliances as non-profit social services and health-related organizations became involved in supporting communities during the pandemic.

In September 2020, with the help of Jorge Ávila and his string quartet, Christ Trinity presented two performances under the open-air pavilion in the Sheffield Town Park. These performances netted an additional $8,000 for “Feeding Sheffield,” a program that continues to this day.

As the country began to emerge from COVID-19, Christ Trinity decided to start its own concert series, and Lich Gate Concerts was born. A lich gate, also spelled lych gate, is a covered gateway found at the entrance to a traditional English or English style churchyard. It marks the transition from the secular world into the sacred. Christ Trinity has an exquisite one, designed and built of stone and wood in 1970, and which stands as a unique and well-known edifice on the property. This concert series seeks to transport us from the humdrum of regular life and into the realm of music, which has the power to speak directly to our souls.

The first concert of the new series was on June 12, 2021, and was held under the pavilion in the town park, where enthusiastic patrons heard music by Haydn, Brahms, Mozart, and Duke Ellington, played by the string quartet and guest soloist, William R. Hudgins, principal clarinetist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A second concert featuring the string quartet was held on Saturday, September 4, and a new season is in the planning stages. ♦