Philly Orchestra Concert #3 (+ misc. tidbits)

I went to the Philadelphia Orchestra again on Friday. On the program were two Mozart works - Serenade in D major (K 239) and Piano Concerto #25 - and Brahms' Symphony #1. While the Philadelphia Orchestra is a very good ensemble, their programming is not too adventurous. It seems like each concert features one very standard-rep warhorse (so far: Beethoven 3, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Brahms 1) and then something slightly less famous by another most-performed composer and/or the one of the most famous things by a slightly less-performed composer. Oregon Symphony is definitely better at programming works by living composers, as well as seldom-performed but high quality works by composers you thought you knew well. I'm not sure why this is, but my guess it that it has to do with the Oregon Symphony's and Philadelphia Orchestra's respective financial situations and audiences, both of which (I suspect) give the Oregon Symphony a little more room to take programming risks. Anyway, the warhorses do get excellent performances in Philly.

The Mozart Serenade was, to be honest, not the most interesting Mozart I've ever heard, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that I don't remember much about it. The soloist for the concerto was Emmanuel Ax. I expected him to be really good and he was. I was unfortunately not very focused in the first two movements - I was tired, and perhaps just not in the right mindset for Mozart - but I was rapt during the rondo. I've always loved rondos, and they tend to make me laugh at inappropriate times (such as when I am in a concert hall, or even when I am onstage playing the damn things). Ax played it with great sensitivity to its humorous potential, broadening the end of a phrase leading into the return of the rondo tune, hesitating a moment before launching back into the familiar material - I couldn't help it; I giggled, and the guy sitting next to me (another ezseatU kid) looked over. I think he smiled, though, so hopefully he wasn't thinking "How dare you giggle in this Temple of Art!" (I get a little paranoid.)

An interesting thing happened at intermission. I was whistling a bit of Brahms 1 as I was walking out of the hall, and then I stopped, and the guy sitting next to me (who was walking out behind me) took it up where I left off. Dear readers, I should have spoken to him. I am a fool.

So, Brahms. Brahms was great. I know more than one person who's really into Brahms but not that into his first symphony (bet one of them is reading this, you know who you are, hi!) but it might actually be my favorite, even if it's not the most distinctively "Brahmsian." And I think the Philadelphia Orchestra was born to play Brahms. I got a little sleepy during Mozart (shame on me!) and was worried that I would continue to be sleepy after intermission, but as soon as they started playing, I was completely swept up in the lush strings and rich woodwinds. These folks "get" romantic better than classical, I think (though maybe I'm projecting). All the solos were wonderful; oboe and violin in the second movement, clarinet in the third, and horn in the fourth all had beautiful tone and played flawlessly. The Brahms made the concert for me. Wish I could say more about it. I guess this is what I get for writing about it three days after it happened.

And now, for those of you based in or near Portland, I shall comment on the Oregon Symphony's 2012-2013 season (announced Saturday) and tell you that you should go to lots of concerts. (I, sadly, cannot.) There's a pretty good balance of stuff I know an love and stuff I've never heard before. I think I counted five living composers - could be better, but still better than Philly. Among the better-known things I really really wish I could be there for: Sibelius 5, Mahler 6, Copland 3, German Requiem, War Requiem (Yes, both! WANT), Tod und Verklärung, and Mozart's Piano Concerto #20. They've again saved their most interesting programming for Carnegie - Prangcharoen, Weill, Schoenberg, Schubert, Ravel, with Storm Large. See here for the complete season: http://tickets.orsymphony.org/auxiliary/AUXListing.aspx

In other news, I found a Chinese bakery four blocks from my house and have now gone there five days in a row because it is fantastic. This could become a problem.

Bad Ideas: Governor's Budget

Part of my work entails being on conference calls and taking notes for my supervisor when she is unable to be on the calls herself--such as this past Thursday and Friday, when she had a speaking engagement at Cornell. While I do little or no talking, I learn a lot on these calls. The one on Thursday was about the criminalization of homelessness. The one on Friday was about an impending crisis that, if not averted, promises to drastically increase homelessness and other social problems--Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett's proposed budget.

So, here it is, folks--my blog is getting political!

The proposed budget features a number of austere (one might say draconian) cuts prompted by troubled economic times, but the one that has PPEHRC (and pretty much every other Pennsylvanian human services and/or social justice organization you can name) up in arms is the complete elimination of the General Assistance (GA) program. GA is the state's baseline cash assistance program for vulnerable Pennsylvanians with no other source of income. It pays $205 a month. To qualify, one must be disabled, a survivor of domestic violence, a caretaker of a disabled person, in an alcohol or drug treatment program, or a child living with an unrelated adult. A lot of these people will be pretty much screwed if they are simply cut off from assistance. Some examples:

Domestic violence survivors: Most of the ones on GA have just recently fled their abusers. Abusers, who often prevent women from going to school or working, are the sole source of income for many of these individuals. When survivors take the courageous step of leaving, GA is their lifeline while they work to get their lives back together and become independent. Without aid, leaving is often not a financially viable option, leading many women to stay with their abusers rather than take their chances with homelessness and destitution.

People in drug treatment and mental health programs: The cuts will lead to a number of programs being eliminated, with no provisions for where the people in them will go afterwards. One county commissioner says, “Literally, people could be turned out on the street. They could end up in prison or worse.”

Disabled people: In order to qualify for GA as a disabled person, you must be unable to work. This should be self-explanatory. They cannot earn money. Do they therefore lose the right to subsist? Just something to think about.

Multiple groups that have done cost benefit studies are stressing that the plan will cost much more money in the long run than it will save in the short run. As they are cut off by the state, greater numbers of people will turn to the already overwhelmed and underfunded shelter systems, counties, and churches. Higher incarceration rates are projected as well, and prisons are spendy. Keeping somebody behind bars costs a fair bit more than $205 a month. Prisons might get trickier to fund with the business tax cut that is also in the budget proposal.

Whenever politicians start talking about welfare reform, they hone in obsessively on people who "cheat the system" (by not reporting other sources of meager income, etc.). Reagan generated righteous anger on the part of the American public with an image he created of a woman on welfare with eighty aliases, collecting dozens of checks and driving Cadillacs--the Welfare Queen. It turned out Reagan had very lavishly embellished the news story of a woman with four aliases, accused of defrauding the state of $8,000. And she made the news because she was an anomaly. But the image stuck. The facts: people who are on cash assistance are desperately poor. Most people who are on cash assistance and have some other income that they do not report are also desperately poor. One cannot live in an American city on $205 a month, which is 25% of the federal poverty line.

I am of the opinion that even if welfare fraud were a common phenomenon, it would not justify cutting off aid to thousands of people in truly dire straits, for whom a monthly check can be the difference between barely getting by and not getting by. I leave you with this quote from Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 speech before the Democratic National Convention, which speech is an interesting piece of rhetoric not only because it illustrates a very different response to financial crisis, but also because it is indicative of views on economics and social responsibility that would mark Roosevelt as a radical today.

"Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference."

And that's all for now.

Helpful links
Coalition to Save General Assistance: pacaresforall.org
FDR Speech: http://www.austincc.edu/lpatrick/his2341/fdr36acceptancespeech.htm

Philadelphia Orchestra Concert

I went to my second Philadelphia Orchestra concert today. I have access to unlimited concerts for a year, having paid $25 for the college student ticket program (“ezseatU”), which is a great deal. This afternoon, I hurried back from a field trip, printed my ticket, and arrived at Verizon Hall maybe ten or fifteen minutes before the start of the performance. The ezseatU kids gather in one area of the lobby and have to wait there until right before the concert begins, when an usher leads us all in like ducklings and puts us in whichever seats nobody bought. Both times I’ve gone, standing in the midst of the other college students has made me feel like I’m back in the Whitman music building, which is both comforting and a bit of a homesickness trigger. Nerdy-looking young adults, some of whom carry instrument cases, discuss harmonic novelties in Beethoven, make terrible music puns, and complain about orchestration homework. (If you’re reading this, current and former denizens of the music library, I miss you!)

I had a good seat this time. I was fairly close and had a clear view of the soloists. The program was Frank Martin’s Concerto for Seven Winds, Percussion, and String Orchestra; the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto; and the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra. The Martin had a little group of wind and brass soloists (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone) seated at the front of the orchestra and they were brilliant. They had some dazzlingly virtuosic solos in the outer movements which rolled out from under their fingers like they were nothing. My favorite movement, though, was the second. In the beginning, the violins play the fragmentary first theme over a persistent minor third ostinato and then the winds eventually pick up the theme in turns and give it very different treatments. It becomes dreamy and lyrical when the flute takes it, and militant when it belongs to the trumpet, while still sounding like part of the same theme. The relentless ostinato can be heard through most of the movement, storming all over the melody at times only to recede politely into the background a moment later. The program notes say it “might suggest a slow march or the inexorable flow of time.”

I wasn’t terribly excited about the Mendelssohn because I am so familiar with it, but this was a really good performance. I had heard it in concert once before, with Joshua Bell and the Oregon Symphony, and that time I had been looking forward to it, but everybody coughed the whole time. Also, tangent: I don’t love Joshua Bell, and the reasons have—perhaps unfairly—little to do with how he actually sounds. Yes, very good violinist. Okay. It’s just all those posters of him playing with his hair all over the place and the halo of flying sweat droplets, and that look on his face like he’s being tortured. And the album covers where he’s reclining on a mahogany sofa surrounded by candles or some similar nonsense. It’s probably not his fault. Anyway, I liked this soloist, James Ehnes. He came onstage wearing a black suit and red necktie and it took me a moment to realize he was, in fact, the soloist because he looked like a rather diminutive businessman. But, my goodness, could that man ever play the violin! He seemed to vary his timbre with the character of the music. In the cadenza, his tone was bright and clear and sounded to me like it should have been produced by an instrument made of crystal. In the B theme, it was warm and rich and matched perfectly with the orchestra. (The Philadelphia Orchestra is known for having a “warm” sound. I can’t really describe what constitutes a warm sound, but I feel like I recognize it, and at the same times as other people.) And I love that theme anyway. My favorite moments in Mendelssohn are the ones with an “It’ll be all right, child” air to them, like this and the “lovers going to sleep” parts of the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture.

The Bartók was another piece I knew, though I hadn’t heard it for a while and had forgotten how much I like it. The first two movements are not my favorites, though the second movement “game of pairs” is conceptually interesting and has awesome creaky bassoon solos. The third movement is creepy and desolate and the clarinetist and flutist really played up the “creepy” aspect. The fourth movement has to be my favorite, the way it alternates between serious sections with long, legato melodies in the strings and moments that are just plain silly, like the accelerating clarinet march or the deep, quasi-flatulent tuba honks. And then in the final movement, Bartók flirts with the idea of straightforward major tonality but, from the opening horn solo on, keeps throwing in out-of-key notes or surprising modulations… until you get used to him doing so, whereupon the music becomes (for a time) relatively harmonically static and uncomplicatedly sunny. And when you get used to that, it’s back to Bartókian harmonies again. It was fun. And also had fugues. Yay!

So, that was my concert. It’s harder to write about music when I don’t have an assignment to write about it from a particular angle. But anyway, I enjoyed the performance very much! If you ever spend a term or more in Philadelphia during your college career, do invest in their student ticket program.

Internship

Today was the third day of my internship. I am working at the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, a grassroots social movement organization that fights poverty and social injustice on a number of fronts, both locally in Philadelphia and working with other organizations on a national scale. To quote the mission statement, PPEHRC is “committed to uniting the poor across color lines as the leadership base for a broad movement to abolish poverty. We work to accomplish this through advancing economic human rights as named in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as the rights to food, housing, health, education, communication, and a living wage job.” The organization operates on the principle that social movements should be led by the people most affected by the issues they are addressing, and in accordance with that, PPEHRC’s leadership is made up of people living below the federal poverty level. Some areas where PPERHC is active include:

·         Food Distributions – PPEHRC talks to grocery stores and food banks, gets lots of donations, and goes door-to-door delivering them to people.

·         Housing Takeovers – Philadelphia has ten times as many homeless people as shelter beds, and it has twice as many empty houses as homeless people. The process of acquiring subsidized housing if you are homeless takes forever, and there are numerous obstacles along the way. PPEHRC reclaims abandoned houses and puts homeless families in them in a hurry, then works on acquiring the legal rights to houses for the families.

·         Reclaiming Vacant Land – Besides just empty buildings, Philadelphia has thousands and thousands of empty lots, ugly “urban prairies,” so to speak, mostly in poor neighborhoods. These lots often stay undeveloped for years and discourage investment in the areas where they are located. Residents want to use them for community gardens or sites for affordable housing, but do not have the legal right to use the land. PPEHRC is working with a number of other organizations to help design legislation to create a Community Land Trust that would make it easier for community members to gain access to abandoned land, revitalizing neighborhoods and putting residents in control. PPEHRC is also currently working on an urban cooperative farm on what was a large abandoned lot.

·         World Courts on Poverty in the US – The World Courts are assemblies (not actual courts of law) that take testimony from everyday people to expose human rights violations and then present their findings to the UN Human Rights Council. There are four big ones taking place across the country this spring and Philadelphia is hosting one.

·         Organizing Marches and Protests – PPEHRC is currently working on plans for the March for Our Lives, which happens at the Republican National Convention every election year and usually a pretty enormous gathering.

·         Camps for Kids – PPEHRC organizes summer camps for children in poor neighborhoods with a variety of activities. They get free passes for the kids to many places around the city that charge admission, like the aquarium.

·         Connecting with Artists – Art Feeds Us is a PPEHRC program that connects local artists (visual artists, musicians, writers, etc.) with the movement.

·         Fighting the Marginalization and Invisibility of the Poor and the Homeless – Whenever there is a proposal to build affordable housing in Philadelphia, there is a great deal of resistance to it – nobody wants it where they are. PPEHRC supports proposals for affordable housing. Cheri Honkala, the director, also has a history of organizing tent cities designed not only to fight the isolation often experienced by homeless people, but also to (very successfully) draw media and public attention to issues of homelessness.

·         Political Education – PPEHRC is constantly working on getting people affected by poverty involved and informed.

PPEHRC uses a few rooms in the Norris Square Civic Association building. When I go to work, it’s usually just a few people sitting in either the computer room or the office working on a million different things at once and somehow making so much happen. Today I made phone calls and sent emails to people about the planning meeting that is happening on Monday for the World Court, I researched a grant foundation and the Community Land Trust project and began writing a grant, and I connected with the director of Art Feeds Us in preparation to help locate more artists. Cheri, my supervisor, is amazing. She is brave and tireless and I think she knows everything. I am glad to be working here.