Index
Choralis, an energetic volunteer choral program based out of the Falls Church Presbyterian Church since 2000, culminates its seventh annual Summer Festival Week for 36 high school students this Friday night. That’s when the students will join with more than 70 adults and three professional soloists for a performance of Franz Haydn’s dramatic oratorio, “The Creation,” at
the Schlesinger Hall on the Alexandria campus of the Northern Virginia Community College, beginning at 8 p.m. Gretchen Kuhrmann founded Choralis in 2000 when a group she formerly directed folded, and over 40 participants begged her to start up something new. Since she was already the music director at the F.C. Presbyterian, she proposed starting a program at the church, and the pastor, the Rev. Thomas Schmid, was eager to welcome it. The rest is history. The pro-
gram has prospered, even with meager funding mostly in the $20 to $25 range from supporters, and the intergenerational energy of the group has given it a special vitality. There is no shortage of choral groups in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, Kuhrmann noted in an interview with the News-Press this week. In fact, there are more than 300 around, including four of the nine best-funded programs in the U.S. (Choralis Continued on Page 4
“They might not have gotten what they’d hoped for, but the input of the St. James Church, the St. James School parents and the neighborhood vastly improved the project, and it will be a great benefit for the City and the area.” So stated Falls Church Mayor Robin Gardner to the News-Press following the City Council’s unanimous vote late Monday night to approve the construction of a Hilton Garden Inn Hotel at 706 W. Broad St. It took since the first submission last August by the Jefferson Park, LLC, group to seek required zoning, special exception and other changes for the final approval which came this Monday, despite persisting and angry opposition mostly from parents of students at the St. James School. “Let the boycott begin!” wrote one opponent to the hotel, writing on the News-Press web site in response to an article reporting the vote. “I agree totally. I will shop elsewhere and pull my kids out of their doctors’ and dentists’ offices immediately and I will never recommend the Hilton,” replied another. The threat of a boycott of local Falls Church city businesses was repeated by hotel opponents more than once during the many public hearings, petition periods and special meetings held in recent months, including before the Planning Commission, City Council work sessions and at City Council general business meetings. Despite the fact that only 37 of the more than 600 students at Continued on Page 5