The "Messiah" isn't coming to Savage -- at least not this year.
Illness has forced music director Ray Miles to cancel this year's performance of Handel's "Messiah," a free benefit concert held the past two years at the Historic Savage Mill.
Mr. Miles said he's too sick to prepare the performance himself, and few volunteers offered to help him with the program -- a one-night performance that drew 700 people last year.
"We're very sad that the 'Messiah' is not coming," said Ellie Butehorn, a spokeswoman for the Mill. "We kept thinking, 'It's coming any day now.' "
Mr. Miles, 51, suffers from Sjogren's syndrome, a little-known disease affecting the immune system, and from neuropathy, which causes inflammation of nerve endings in his feet.
As a result of the two disabilities, Mr. Miles says, he often becomes fatigued and feels sharp pain when he walks. With his responsibilities as the Savage United Methodist Church music director, he said the load became overwhelming.
Mr. Miles said he spent about 150 hours organizing and preparing for last year's concert.
"I did not have the physical and emotional energy to do the 'Messiah,' " he said. "I thought somehow I was going to be able to do all of this. I just didn't have it in me."
Last year, the free concert featured an 80-voice choir, a 15-piece RTC orchestra and four trained soloists. The concert raised almost $5,000 in donations.
"I don't know what to say," said Louise Phelps, a Savage resident who sang with the choir during its first two years. "I look forward to it every year. It just seemed like the people really enjoyed it, but it is a lot of work."
Mr. Miles organized the concert in the tradition of composer George Frederic Handel -- as a benefit concert for the needy.
The Irish government commissioned Handel to compose the "Messiah" to raise money for hospitals and debtor's prisons in Dublin, Ireland. The first performance in 1741 raised 400 pounds.
Last year, concert-goers donated about $5,000, with the money going to Grassroots, a homeless shelter; AIDS Alliance of Howard County; FISH, a soup kitchen and pantry in Laurel; and World Vision, an international relief organization.
Mr. Miles said that, if he can muster enough strength and find volunteers to help him, he would like to resurrect the "Messiah" -- possibly around Easter -- and use the concert to focus on the need for health care reform.
"I'm feeling a real call to heighten the awareness of the need for health care," he said.
Looking at his own illnesses, Mr. Miles said that he has found it difficult to meet his health care costs.
"I started becoming disabled in 1987," Mr. Miles said. "I must have gone to 100 doctors over a period of three years, using up all my insurance, trying to figure out what I had."
In 1990, Mr. Miles moved to Savage after retiring on disability as a Prince George's County music teacher. He later became the music director at the Savage United Methodist Church.
And in 1992, Mr. Miles started the Messiah concert, hoping to satisfy his longing to perform. "When this disability came onto me, I thought I'd never be able to conduct the "Messiah" again," he said.
But the program flourished, drawing 500 people the first year and raising $2,200 for charity.
Last year's performance included closed circuit TV viewings throughout the Mill, in addition to the standing-room-only crowd of hundreds that gathered inside the Mill's Great Room. This year, Ms. Butehorn said that officials at the Mill were looking forward to extending the performance from one night to two.
"People always ask, 'Why aren't you doing it?' " Mr. Miles said. "I just say, 'It's a tremendous amount of work, it really is.' "