Simón Estes was born in Centerville, Iowa in 1938. His father was a coalminer. Simon and his brother and two sisters received a deeply religious education, and Simon sang treble in the choir of the local Baptist church. His voice did not break until he was in high school, so for some three years his vocal abilities were somewhat limited.

He joined the Iowa University Choir as a tenor, and it was while he was at this university that he began to study music with Charles Kellis, who advised him to sing the bass-baritone register and began to teach him diction and vocal and performance techniques.

Today Simon Estes has established a noteworthy international reputation. He has performed with the world's major orchestras and with conductors of renown such as Gerd Albrecht, Leonard Bernstein, Gary Bertini, Myung Whun Chung, James Conlon, Sir Colin Davis, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Carlo Maria Giulini, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Mstislav Rostropovich, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Sir Georg Solti, Horst Stein and Marcello Viotti.

During his career, Simon Estes has given many performances now considered as historic. He was the first black singer to appear at the Bayreuth Festival, where he was acclaimed on his d‚but as the Flying Dutchman in 1978. He was the first Porgy at the Metropolitan in 1985, and the following year sang with the Boston Pops at the centenary celebrations of the Statue of Liberty, held at the base of the statue itself.

He has performed at the White House for three different Presidents and in 1990 sang at a religious service in tribute to Nelson Mandela at the Riverside Church, New York, Mstislav Rostropovich conducting the National Symphony Orchestra. In 1994, Simon Estes performed at a similar service, this time for the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York.

He has made discs for Auvidis, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Deutsche Schallplatten, EMI, Philips Classics and Sony Classical.

During the 1999-2000 season he took the part of Sarastro at Santander and sang Wotan in Das Rheingold and Die Walkere from Wagner's Ring cycle at the Vienna Opera. He returned to the Metropolitan to sing Amonasro in Verdi's Aida, a part he took again at the Vienna and Berlin Operas. He sang Alvise in a concert performance of Ponchielli's Gioconda at the Carnegie Hall, New York, and appeared as Jochanaan in Richard Strauss's Salom‚ in Valencia.

He was again invited to the May Festival in Wiesbaden, where he gave a recital and a concert with the other basses Kurt Moll and Matti Salminen. He has taken part in numerous festivals around the world, such as those at Weimar, Santander, Munich, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Detroit, Durban, New York, San Diego, Lucerne, Sao Paulo and Schleswig-Holstein.

During the 2000-2001 season, he will be singing Amonasro at the Los Angeles and Berlin Operas, Macbeth at Santander, the High Priest in Samson and Delilah at the Liceu, Barcelona, and Bartòk's Bluebeard in Munich, this last with Lorin Maazel as conductor.

He has been awarded academic honours from Siena College, New York; Luther College, Iowa; Tulsa University, Oklahoma; Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa) and Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin). In 1996 he received the Iowa Award, the highest honour awarded by the State.

He teaches at the University of Iowa and gives masterclasses throughout the United States. He takes great interest in promoting the prospects of young students, and has established the Simon Estes Scholarship Fund at the University of Iowa, the Simon and Westella H. Estes Scholarship Fund at Centerville Community College, the Simon Estes Educational Fund at Tulsa and the Simon Estes Artistic Scholarship Fund at Iowa.

In 1993 he established the Simon Estes International Scholarship Fund for Children, in aid of children who are needy or have health problems.

Donald Ryan has won frequent acclaim in the major concert halls of Germany, Switzerland, Poland, France, Austria and the United States. He was awarded the Madeyska Prize at the Chopin Competition of 1975, and is the only pianist active today who is renowned for his improvisations.

He was born in Trinidad, West Indies and at 14 was already a gifted student at Trinity College, London. He has been awarded many prizes in national competitions and was the pianist in a well-known radio programme broadcast throughout the Caribbean.

Donald Ryan also performs and records works which he himself has composed or arranged. The disc he recorded for the Deutsche Schallplatten label and his performances with Simon Estes have been acclaimed by audiences and critics alike.

He has often played at great public occasions, performing for Government leaders or other dignitaries.

The Music of the Holy Spirit Francesc Torralba Roselló, filòsof i teòleg

Through music, an individual can find many different ways of expressing himself and communicating with his fellows. Thanks to the language of music, he can move from a totally closed, almost autistic state, with minimal concentration obtained from silence and with a degree of participation limited to compliance with social convention, to a level of communication which reveals the personal convictions he shares with the community, moving from a tranquil state of acceptance to enthusiastic participation, bringing into the open the intimate side of his being.

One of the most beautiful forms of Lutheran musical expression is Gospel music Negro spirituals. The Reformation, both in Europe and the New World, has found its expression in different artistic styles during the course of its history, and has had considerable beneficial effects on the arts, philosophical thought and the economy. Among the variety of forms of artistic expression which incarnate the spirit of Luther, one of the most original is the sacred music of the form of Lutheranism that came to be established in the United States the music of the American Negro Methodists and Baptists.

This music is above all the expression of a religious experience which elevates Man to levels of grace, beauty and unification of the self, a spiritual state which makes it easy to enter into dialogue with the Living God. The music of Negro spirituals is indeed an open, spontaneous dialogue between the religious community and God. It is the expression of an invisible bond between the Creator and Man, springing from a shared message felt deep in the heart and expressed directly to God.

From a formal standpoint, Gospel music is a prayer for salvation. Awareness of sin and human weakness runs deep in Lutheranism and even more so in Calvinism hence the necessity of the faith as a means to redemption. By repetition of verses from the New Testament, the congregation entreat God to bestow on them His grace and redemption. Some of the music is prepared in advance and the rest improvised, on the basis of the theological notion that the Holy Spirit appears in the heart of the community, giving inspiration to the voices of its members. Hence the description of Gospel music as "music of the Holy Spirit", as the Spirit makes its appearance during the improvisatory passages. The third person of the Trinity has an important place in the Lutheran vision of God, and outside official church circles has been figuratively described as a softly blowing breeze.

The structure of Negro spirituals usually consists of a solo singer who improvises on a verse from the New Testament with the congregation repeating the verse several times, thus creating a collective creative atmosphere. In the world of Lutheranism, biblical text (sola scriptura) is of great importance and the repetition to music of certain parts of the Bible brings the believer to interiorise the Word of God and to identify fully with it. By means of Gospel music, the believer exalts and gives open expression to his faith in God.

Gospel music is indeed inseparable from the Protestant form of church service, whose rituals and liturgy are of a notably austere nature if we compare them with, say, the services of the Orthodox faiths. The active r"le played by music in American Lutheranism led Tagliateia to distinguish between a "chiesa che canta" and a "chiesa che non canta" (a church which sings and one which does not). While this is not a totally satisfactory distinction, it does makes clear that music in Lutheranism is not a casual or external element, but a means of expressing the glory of God and the beliefs of a community.