The Bakersfield Branch of Sister Cities will be remembering 9-11 with a concert on the 11th.

From a Bakersfield Sister Cities press release

On September 11, 2011—the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—Bakersfield Sister City is joining with other Sister City organizations throughout the United States and the world to sponsor a special remembrance concert: “A Concert of Peace and Hope”.

The concert is free and open to the public. However, attendees may make donations to the Wounded Heroes Fund at the door.

The concert will take place at the Olive Drive Church (5500 Olive Drive, Bakersfield, CA 93308) at 4 pm on September 11, and will feature patriotic and inspirational music performed by members of the Bakersfield Winds, the Bakersfield Symphony, and other local professional musicians. Don Clark will act as Master of Ceremonies, with Mayor Harvey Hall and Supervisors Karen Goh and Mike Maggard as guest speakers.

Mrs. Regina Pryor, BSCPC board member, is the chair of the organizing committee which includes music educators Audrey Boyle, Dennis Herbst, Rhonda Martin, and Scott Smith, along with Bakersfield Sister City board members Jim Hunter, George Ogden, and Susan Stone.

Mrs. Pryor noted that this concert will take place on the same day that the 9-11 Memorial in New York City, which is titled “Reflecting Absence”, is being dedicated. The designer/architect of that memorial—Michael Arad—has said, “The Memorial is about the individual and communal loss that we all experienced together.”  This, too, is the focus of our concert.

According to Mrs. Susan Stone, BSCPC board president, the purpose of this concert can be summarized in the credo of the September Concerts Foundation of New York City: “The power of music to bring people together, to reaffirm our hope for peace, and to celebrate life and our universal humanity.” Thus the focus will be on the heroic efforts of the first responders and the courage of the victims and survivors of the attacks, not on the destruction and death that were caused by these attacks.

Mrs. Stone added that there is a close affinity between the missions of the September Concerts Foundation and Sister Cities International. September 11, 1956 is regarded as the founding date for the Sister Cities movement, for it was on that day the President Dwight D. Eisenhower challenged communities and individuals throughout the United States to “help build the road to peace” by providing ways for “people to get together and to leap governments—if necessary to evade governments—to work out, not one method, but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little more about each other.”

President John F. Kennedy supported this mission when he noted that the Sister City program demonstrates “the power of people, acting as individuals, to respond imaginatively to the world’s need for peace.”