Westminster’s Bells in Concert with the Minnesota Orchestra

By Amanda Weber, Director of Worship and the Arts

On Saturday, July 16, the Minnesota Orchestra will celebrate the International Day of Music with four stages in and around Orchestra Hall, featuring free performances by 20 different artists. The day will culminate in an outdoor evening concert on Peavey Plaza at 8:30 pm, where the full orchestra will perform the Great Gate of Kiev in a nod to Ukraine – the final movement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. This piece will feature the bells of five downtown churches, all ringing together. We will hear bells from Central Lutheran Church, St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, the Basilica of St. Mary, and St. Olaf Catholic Church, in addition to our own. When Westminster included a peal of bells in the design of the Open Doors Open Futures campaign, it was a strategic way to ring out our telling presence in the city, whether in times of celebration, solidarity, distress, or remembrance.

Don’t miss this significant moment, coordinated in large part by the organization City of Bells, in which the downtown community can unite just as we once hoped and envisioned.