Remembering Our History
For several years in the 1950s Tabernacle Sunday morning worship featured the Allen Family Singers from Dorchester, MA. Promoted as “America's foremost family in music,” the family presented both vocal and instrumental music. Their publicity explained they were “known nationally through concerts given in 38 states throughout the United States.” Each summer they would perform in churches across the Cape. The Yarmouth Register reported that when the family appeared at a 1948 evening concert at Hyannis’s Federated Church, the church and its parlors were all filled.
The family included father James, mother Marie and six children. Each was an accomplished musician. James K. Allen was a member of the Boston University Singers. His wife, Marie Allen, was a public-school music teacher in Maine. Several of their seven children were tutored by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Their daughter, Ilo Schmid, received an award from Brown University for her organ skills.
Yarmouth Register, Friday, August 11, 1950; Section: Front page, Page: 1
Helen Salem Rizk
In the summer of 1961 Tabernacle worshipers were able to listen each Sunday to one of their neighbors, Helen Salem Rizk, who spent her summers in what is now the Walsh cottage at Craigville’s northern border. The Tabernacle bulletin that summer described the soprano soloist as “an exotic personality with the ineffable singling style, and the divine quality of voice, have made her many admirers in musical circles.”
She appeared in concert at Carnegie Hall and with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and was a soloist in many leading churches throughout New England.
Mrs. Rizk is probably best-known for her book, Stories of the Christian Hymns, published by Abingdon Press in 1974.