Local Choral festival honors Sandy Hook community

The City of Angels Community Choirs, founded by veteran Catholic parish choir director Richard Medrano, will host its inaugural choral festival next month in efforts to bring a measure of healing to the community of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn. Proceeds from the free will offering taken during the April 6, 4 p.m., concert at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills’ Hall of Liberty will be used to help defray festival expenses and to purchase a set of hand bells, which will have each bell inscribed with a name of one of the 26 Sandy Hook shooting victims who died at the school on Dec. 14, 2012. Plans are for the hand bells to go to St. Rose of Lima Church in Newtown, a parish home to many of the Sandy Hook victims. Participants in the event include adult and children’s choirs from Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, Boys Scouts of America Troop 911 and the Youth Singers of America. Among local Catholic participants are choirs from St. Genevieve, Panorama City; St. Joseph the Worker, Canoga Park; St. John Eudes, Chatsworth; and St. Monica, Santa Monica. The festival will include a combined choirs’ performance of Kurt Bestor’s “Prayer of the Children” synced with a video clip of the community of Sandy Hook. For more information on the City of Angels Community Choirs, a not-for-profit organization, log on to: www.coacc.net. —Paula Doyle