Elias "Al" Booth: 1916 - 2007
Brought music to masses
Published
Elias "Al" Booth didn't just bring music to the masses;
he created a forum for the masses to stand up and sing.
The founder of the "Do-It-Yourself Messiah," a
Mr. Booth came to Chicago after high school to train as a singer,
but it wasn't until he was 60 years old that he made his lasting musical mark in
the city.
The "Do-It-Yourself Messiah" is sold out--actually
tickets are free--within a few hours every year and enlists about 6,000
volunteer singers in two performances of Handel's composition at the Civic Opera
House.
Mr. Booth also initiated the weekly Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert
series at the
To help organize these events, Mr. Booth started the International
Music Foundation in 1979. Two years later, the foundation launched the Live
Music Now! Concerts in Chicago Public Schools. The program has been expanded
into nursing homes and puts on about 400 concerts each year, said Ann Murray,
who took over from Mr. Booth as executive director of the International Music
Foundation.
"There are a lot of people who talk the talk about making the
cultural landscape a little better," said Richard Young, concertmaster for
the "Do-It-Yourself Messiah." "Very few people do it on such a
regular basis and with the intensity and passion with which Al did it."
"Al was inventive, feisty and a doer," said Norman
Pellegrini, former program director at WFMT and president of the International
Music Foundation's board. "He kept coming up with these ideas, and they
were all so good, you couldn't refuse."
Mr. Booth got the idea for both the singalong "Messiah"
and the Hess concert series while in
A businessman with a long history of social activism, he had left
the country for
Living in
"He saw the value of an hour of beautiful music in the middle
of the day, to give your soul a respite,"
Also during his English sojourn, Mr. Booth had visited a tiny
village in the
Returning to
"He was definitely persistent," said Emil Zbella, who
worked at Talman and is senior vice president of advertising at LaSalle Bank.
LaSalle acquired Talman in 1991 and sponsors the "Messiah" and the
Dame Myra Hess Series.
Born in
The "Do-It-Yourself Messiah," with a largely amateur
orchestra and singers off the street, is not perfect musically. But Young and
Pellegrini said the passion that propels the contingent of amateur
singers--which in most years included Mr. Booth's bass voice--make listening
beside the point.
Mr. Booth, who was twice divorced, also is survived by another
daughter, Louise McCormick; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
A memorial service is set for
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