Mennonite Weekly Review

NORTH NEWTON, Kan. — Every four years, the Bethel College Concert Choir tours in Europe.

The Bethel College Concert Choir, with director Bill Eash, will tour in Europe Jan. 6-25. — Photo by Vada Snider/Bethel College

The 2010 tour, Jan. 6-25, takes the choir to five countries for 14 concerts.

The choir will perform in Poland (Gdansk and Szczecin); Switzerland (Les Bémont and Moron); France (Montbéliard and Wissembourg); Germany (Berlin, Leipzig, Wuppertal, Krefeld and Espelkamp); and the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Ouddorp, Haarlem and Rotterdam).

The choir has gone to Europe every four years since the 1950s. The last time it went to Poland was 1978.

“The choir will be singing in Gdansk in the former Mennonite church building, which now houses a Pentecostal congregation,” said Merle Schlabaugh, professor of German, who does much of the Europe tour planning and will accompany the choir.

The choir will sing at two Mennonite churches in Switzerland, at Evangelische Mennonitengemeinde Sonnenberg in Le Bémont and at Eglise Evangélique Mennonite du Petit Val-Moron in Moron, and two in France, Chapelle de la Praire in Montbéliard and Église Évangé­lique Mennonite in Geisberg (Wissembourg).

Choir director William Eash, professor of music, also has a connection to the church in Wissembourg. Right after World War II, about 1947-49, Eash said, his father, Elon Eash, now of Archbold, Ohio, did reconstruction work at the church, then called the Geisberg church, under the auspices of Mennonite Central Committee.

“He has maintained contacts in the church there to this day,” Eash said, “and I’ll be meeting with some of those people when the choir performs.”

The choir will spend most of its time in Germany and the Netherlands.

“While in Berlin, choir members will have the opportunity to visit their choice of the following sites: the Reichstag [German Parliament Building]; the East Side Gallery, a preserved section of the Berlin Wall; Hohenschönhausen Stasi Prison, used by the East German state security for holding and interrogating political prisoners; the Holocaust Memorial; the Pergamon Museum; the Checkpoint Charlie Museum; the Olympic Stadium; the Berliner Dom and the Berggrün Museum, among others.”