An upcoming concert of Civil War music at Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will benefit new educational programming at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s birth and the sesquicentennial of the start of the Civil War. The Ohio Historical Society and the Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House, who manage the site for the society, have embarked on a series of improvements to the Stowe House to underscore its significance as a Cincinnati cultural and historic landmark and expand its offerings to the public. To underscore these activities, the Ohio Historical Society and the Friends will sponsor a concert of Civil War music Saturday, Oct. 1, at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, featuring the Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band, pianist Jacqueline Schwab, the Northern Kentucky Brotherhood Singers and a special appearance by Cincinnati journalist and human rights activist Nick Clooney.

Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati

Concert Artists
The Civil War, Ken Burns’s famous PBS documentary, featured a Grammy-winning musical score performed in large part by Ungar and Mason and Schwab. Ungar composed the haunting melody Ashokan Farewell, the musical hallmark of the series. Ungar and Mason are one of the most celebrated duos in American acoustic music, well known for their appearances on A Prairie Home Companion, their own live radio program Dancing on the Air on WAMC in Albany, film soundtracks such as Legends of the Fall and Brother’s Keeper and the fiddle and dance camps they conduct in the Catskills. They will be joined by their daughter Ruthy and her husband Michael Merenda for this performance.

The emotional and expressive piano of Jacqueline Schwab is featured in many of Burns’s productions. She performs solo piano concerts of vintage American and traditional English, Irish and Scottish music, creating the intimate feeling of an old-fashioned parlor setting. Schwab has toured the United States and England as a solo pianist and with Bare Necessities, a quartet known nationwide for its unique presentation of English country dance music. She performed at the White House for President Clinton in 1997 to celebrate Burns’s Lewis and Clark series and at the Smithsonian in 2000 to celebrate its exhibition on the presidency. In May 2009, she accompanied Scottish singer Jean Redpath on the Late Show with David Letterman.

The Northern Kentucky Brotherhood Singers, from Covington, Ky., will lend their distinctive a capella jubilee-style harmony to the performance. The group, well known to Cincinnati audiences, began singing at the Ninth Street Baptist Church in Covington 24 years ago and specializes in gospel, patriotic and R&B music. They have performed in churches, secular music venues and on television throughout the United States, Canada and Spain and have appeared at the Library of Congress, the Lowell Folk Festival and on the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage.

Nick Clooney is well known as a print and broadcast journalist, author and activist. Following a distinguished career in radio and television in Kentucky, Ohio and California, he became a columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer and host of cable television’s American Movie Classics. He later joined the faculty of American University’s School of Communication and was Distinguished Journalist in Residence at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. More recently he has achieved prominence as a human rights activist and advocate for the people of Darfur.

Location and Tickets
The concert takes place Saturday, Oct. 1, at 7:30 p.m. in the Harriet Tubman Theatre at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center at 50 E. Freedom Way in downtown Cincinnati, and will be followed by a reception with the performers for all ticketholders. Tickets are $50. Proceeds benefit new educational programming at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House.

Click here to purchase tickets online. For more information, call 800.647.6921 or 614.297.2308 or e-mail kwyatt@ohiohistory.org.

The Concert is sponsored in part by the Ohio Historical Society, the Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House, CET Public Television, Cincinnati Public Radio, ArtsWave, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and generous individual donors.