wfn.org | [ENS] Thanksgiving Day telecast will focus on Gulf Coast's future

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Friday, November 11, 2005

[Editor's note: a shortened version of this story for use in Sunday
bulletins is available at bottom. It can be included in bulletins
beginning immediately. ]

Thanksgiving Day telecast will focus on Gulf Coast's future

Time Warner Cable to carry half-hour special

ENS 111105-1

[ENS] Thanksgiving on the Gulf Coast will be especially poignant this year
coming as it does near the official end of a disastrous hurricane season.

"The Episcopal Church Presents: Gulf Coast Thanksgivings," documenting
the challenges and joys of rebuilding the Gulf Coast, will be broadcast
on the Time Warner Cable network on Thanksgiving Day, November 24.

The 30-minute program, produced by the church's Office of Communication,
will air on nearly every Time Warner cable system in the United States.
Channels are still being determined. All channel and time information
is posted and will be updated at the church's online visitors' center,
www.comeandgrow.org.

The program will also be available at www.comeandgrow.org as a webcast.
It will be available in Windows Media and Real Media versions, in both
high and low speeds.

A Thanksgiving commercial advertising the broadcast is available at
http://www.comeandgrow.org/tvspots.htm. For local listings and schedule
chart visit: http://www.comeandgrow.org/tgservicechart.htm.

"It's incredibly important that we continue to inform the public about
the ongoing situation in that region," said Michael Collins, director of
broadcast and multimedia for the communications office. "The problem isn't
fixed because the story isn't in the headlines every day anymore. The
humanitarian crisis is going to continue for a long time and we all need
to be aware of that."

Plans call for the program to include footage and interviews from
Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as Newark, New Jersey, where a large
extended family displaced from New Orleans is now living.

The program will feature excerpts from a November 17 concert at New
Orleans' Christ Church Cathedral which will debut "All the Saints,"
performed by a 16-member big band from the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. The
concert is part of four days of celebrations marking the cathedral
congregation's bicentennial. The program will include clips from other
parts of the celebrations.

The bicentennial recalls the day when the Rev. Philander Chase -- later
the first Episcopal bishop of both Ohio and Illinois -- conducted the
first service of Christ Church, the first non-Roman Catholic Church
in the Louisiana Purchase territories, at a public building on Jackson
Square called the Cabildo, on November 17, 1805.

After the city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, the staff
of the cathedral was determined to continue with the celebration while
remembering all that had happened during the hurricane and its aftermath.

"All the Saints," commissioned by the cathedral through its concert
fund with contributions from Anglicans around the world, "is a gift from
the Episcopal Church to the people of the City of New Orleans who have
suffered so much. It's a way of laying to rest all that has happened
while remembering to move forward in God's grace as we begin the process
of rebuilding," cathedral dean the Very Rev. David duPlantier writes on
the cathedral's website, www.cccnola.org.

"The piece will essentially embody a New Orleans jazz funeral," composer
Irvin Mayfield, Grammy-nominated trumpet artist and founding artistic
director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, says on the cathedral's
website.

"It will consist of three major movements: first there will be a jazz
funeral -- here the music will resemble a slow funeral march proceeding
down the streets of New Orleans in which the corpse of the former New
Orleans will be carried; second there will be a memorial service --
after we have marched the deceased city down the streets, there will be
a memorial service and the music will reflect this by memorializing the
tragedy that occurred in the aftermath of Katrina; and third there will
be a celebratory procession -- as naturally occurred in the streets of
New Orleans, the music will celebrate life and glory, and a processional,
a second line, will take us out of death and into the next phase, which
is rebirth."

Mayfield says that the historic music will be a blues piece that will
include Negro spirituals, chain gang chants, call-and-response, and
field hollers rolled into a big jazz funeral event. Using jazz, with
its blues roots, is appropriate, Mayfield adds.

"Through the blues, you take the pain and suffering and turn it on
its head, look at it, celebrate its passing through as a part of life,
and move on," he says.

Story version for bulletin announcement

Thanksgiving Day program looks to Gulf Coast's future

Thanksgiving on the Gulf Coast will be especially poignant this year
coming as it does near the official end of a disastrous hurricane season.

"The Episcopal Church Presents: Gulf Coast Thanksgivings," documenting
the challenges and joys of rebuilding the Gulf Coast will be broadcast
on the Time Warner Cable network on Thanksgiving Day, November 24.

The 30-minute program, produced by the church's Office of Communication,
will air on every Time Warner cable system in the United States.
Channels are still being determined. All channel and time information will
be listed at the church's online visitors' center, www.comeandgrow.org.
The program will also be available at www.comeandgrow.org as a webcast.
It will be available in Windows Media and Real Media versions, in both
high and low speeds.

Plans call for the program to include footage and interviews from
Mississippi and Louisiana, including the long-planned New Orleans Christ
Church Cathedral bicentennial celebrations November 16-20.

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