On Thursday September 17, 50 Longwood Symphony musicians gathered at Boston Latin School. Rather than sitting in their familiar spots in the BLS Band room --cellos to the left, violins to the right, winds on the risers--they divided into 14 unfamiliar groupings. Three oboes gathered in one room, and octet of winds and strings in another, two horns and string quartet in yet another. In four short weeks, these new groups will be much more familiar with each other, both musically and personally. - - - Flutist Dany Krause "at play" after performing at Shriners Hospital last spring
Armed with that training, on October 17, they will travel together to health care settings across the Commonwealth.
This is an opportunity for new, shared experiences. ~It is an opportunity for musicians to get to know their patients better ~It is an opportunity for musicians to get to know each other better ~It is an opportunity for musicians to get to know themselves better ~It is an opportunity to consider what difference the experience will make on them as caregivers.
In an effort to measure these changes, LSO has created questionnaires for the musicians, the staff, and the patients. We're exploring our own pre-conceived ideas, our medical perspective, and our expectations.
Midway through the rehearsal, we stopped to gather and each musician shared his/her experiences with music and the intimacy of playing music in a health care setting.
Schubert Octet under Einstein's watchful gaze
One said: "As a child, my family always played music in hospitals and convents. I loved playing my violin for patients. It is one of the reasons I've applied to medical school."
Another shared: "While I have not played in a formal health care setting, I remember performing Bach for my grandmother as she was dying. It was a very moving experience for me."
Many recalled that it had not been since high school that they had the opportunity to play for patients and to play in chamber music groups.
Next step: Matching these 14 groups with patients and health care settings, and matching the repertoire to the audience.
This is a journey. It may not be taking us as far away geographically as our London tour (see June 2008 blogs), but it will challenge our internal compasses nonetheless.
Longwood Symphony Orchestra (LSO)—the award-winning organization of highly trained musicians from Boston’s medical community—announces an ambitious 27th season. Under the baton of Artistic Director Jonathan McPhee, the musical season will feature a Boston premiere by Giya Kancheli, rarely heard works of Sibelius and Ginastera and will culminate with LSO’s debut concert in Seiji Ozawa Hall in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Maestro McPhee will welcome the New World Chorale and soloists Roger Tapping, viola; Tai Murray, violin; and Philip Fisher, piano to the stage.
Dedicated to “Healing the Community through Music”, LSO continues its tradition of helping medical charities raise funds and public awareness through its Healing Art of Music™ program.
Longwood Symphony Orchestra received the 2007 MetLife Excellence in Community Engagement Award from the League of American Orchestras.
This season’s 2009-10 Community Partners will be:
·Dr. Susan E. Spencer Memorial Epilepsy Research Fund
·The Food Project – an urban farming program for inner city youth
·ATASK – Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence
·Berkshire Children and Families
October 17, 2009
LSO on Call:Health and Harmony across the City
Longwood Symphony Orchestra will be launching its 2009-10 season with an unusual "concert" to demonstrate the healing power of music. On Saturday October 17, 2009, rather than starting the year with a formal orchestral concert LSO will send 15-20 groups to15-20 health care facilities with the goal of playing for 1000 patients across greater Boston in ONE DAY.
LSO on Call, launched in the 2008 by a pilot grant from Merck Research Laboratories-Boston, is a monthly outreach program that brings music directly to patients who can no longer attend concerts.
December 5, 2009
New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall – 8:00pm
New England Premiere of STYXby Giya Kancheli
Roger Tapping, viola
New World Chorale, Holly MacEwen Krafka and John Zielinski, co-directors
Sibelius, Kancheli, Shore
In this evening of mystery and mythology, Maestro Jonathan McPhee and the Longwood Symphony take the audience with them on a musical journey. Jean Sibelius’Tapiolaand HowardShore’s Lord of the Rings depict the world of wood sprites and the dark mysteries of Middle Earth, while the highlight of the evening is Giya Kancheli’sStyx for Viola, Chorus and Large Orchestra. Hailed as “a masterwork of the 21st century,” the solo viola represents Charon, who ferries souls down the river Styx, between the land of the living and the dead.
LSO’s Community Partner is the Dr. Susan Spencer Memorial Epilepsy Research Fund established in memory of Dr. Susan Spencer, a highly respected pioneer in the field.
March 13, 2010
New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall – 8:00pm
Tai Murray, violinBoston Debut
Ginastera, Barber, Debussy
Artistic Director Jonathan McPhee paints three distinct panoramas from the palettes of Barber, Ginastera and Debussy. LSO introduces Boston to rising star Tai Murray who will join Longwood Symphony Orchestra for Samuel Barber’s beloved Violin Concerto.The concert also includes Alberto Ginastera’s rarely heard Ollantay and Claude Debussy’s epic La Mer.
LSO’s Community Partner is The Food Project whose mission promotes social and personal change through sustainable agriculture.
May 1, 2010
New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall – 8:00pm
Philip Fisher, piano Boston Debut
Nielsen and Rachmaninoff
The best known of his symphonies, Carl Nielsen wrote of his 4th Symphony “ I have an idea for a new composition, which has no programme but will express what we understand as the spirit of life or manifestations of life…that which is Inextinguishable.” This moving work will be paired with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s towering Piano Concerto No. 3, featuring British pianist Philip Fisher.
LSO’s Community Partner is ATASK, Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence which is dedicated to preventing domestic violence and promoting hope among survivors.
June 12, 2010
Seiji Ozawa Hall, Lenox, MA – 8:00pm
Scheer, Nielsen, Debussy
Celebrating music, healing and the inextinguishable human spirit, LSO opens its Ozawa Hall debut with a performance of Albert Schweitzer Portrait by Gene Scheer (2009). This work was co-commissioned by Longwood Symphony Orchestra and the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship in 2009 to honor Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, musician, physician and humanitarian. The concert will also include Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 and Debussy’s La Mer.
LSO’s Community Partner will be Berkshire Children and Familes, a Pittsfield-based service organization that supports some of the most vulnerable families in Western Massachusetts through service, advocacy and education.
TICKETS
Season tickets for Longwood Symphony Orchestra’s concert series are $108-$120, on sale now online at longwoodsymphony.org, or by phone at 617.667.1527.
Individual concert tickets range from $20-$40 and are available online at longwoodsymphony.org or by phone at 617.667.1527.
The amazing connections and resonances continue! Weeks after Jonathan McPhee decided to program Gene Scheer's Albert Schweitzer Portrait on the LSO's annual Summer concert on August 19, 2009 on the Esplanade, this photo surfaced--Dr. Albert Schweitzer, 1952 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, attending a Boston Pops concert on the Esplanade in 1949. Our thanks to the BSO Archives for acquiring this photograph for us.
Albert Schweitzer Portrait will be narrated by Dr. S. Allen Counter, whose own life resonates with Schweitzer's work. He is the founding Director of The Harvard Foundation of Harvard University, Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Neurophysiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Following Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Counter took a group of students from the Harvard Foundation to Louisiana for a humanitarian mission.
Dr. Counter is also Consul General of Sweden for New England and was instrumental in helping LSO with its Nobel Violin Project.
I first met Allen in 1975 as my professor in Nat Sci 5, Harvard's pre-med Biology class. Our paths have continued to cross, at Harvard's Memorial Church, through our mutual interests in neurology, and through our mutual passion for humanitarian causes.
In July 1949, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of Chicago and his friend Walter Paepcke, also of Chicago, held a unique event of words and music to mark the 200th birthday of Johann von Goethe. The Goethe Bicentennial Celebration, held in the small mining town of Aspen, Colorado featured music inspired by Goethe performed by the Minneapolis Symphony under Dimitri Mitropoulos and speeches by great humanists of the time, including Dr. Albert Schweitzer.
This event was so successful that the tradition of gathering great music and great thought leaders in Aspen was begun that very year resulting in the founding of The Aspen Institute and Aspen Festival.
This weekend, the third part of "Albert Schweitzer Portrait’s" journey took us to Aspen, Colorado to join in their 60th Anniversary Celebration.
On July 11, 2009, the Aspen Chapel, the Aspen Music Festival and School presented “An Albert Schweitzer Portrait” which featured performances of Bach and the Aspen premiere of our Albert Schweitzer Portrait in its organ version.
The musical program was organized and performed by Aspen Chapel organist Susan Nicholson. The narrator was Irene Gubrud, who has been on the Aspen School voice faculty for 30 years.
Ms. Gubrud was eloquent in her reading of Schweitzer’s inspiring words.In 2008, Ms. Gubrud founded the Aspen Musician Peace Project, which “advocates using the unifying power of music to help bring peace and harmony to this world.”
Dr. Lachlan Forrow, President of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, Dr. Lisa Wong of LSO, Alan Fletcher, President of the Aspen Festival and School, soprano Irene Gubrud and organist Susan Nicholson gathered following the performance.
On Sunday, Dr. Forrow and Dr. Wong returned to Aspen Chapel to discuss Schweitzer and his legacy of music, medicine and service with a congregation of 50 Aspen residents. Dr. Wong offered solo viola works by Bach. The remarkable weekend ended with a visit to Dr. Albert Schweitzer's statue, prominently displayed in Paepcke Park.
In 1949, Dr. Albert Schweitzer traveled to Chicago to receive an Honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Chicago. On that day, Rockefeller Chapel was filled to its capacity of 2400. Another 2600 spilled out of the chapel onto the lawn to hear Dr. Schweitzer's words.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER An interpreter who has revived for his own generation the vision of greatness: as scholar, interpreting the works of Jesus; as musician, interpreting the works of Bach; as humanist, interpreting the writings of Goethe; as historian, presenting in philosophic terms the meaning of history; and as Christian medical missionary, rendering distinguished service to Equatorial Africa. --Original language conferring the honorary degree from the University of Chicago to Albert Schweitzer, July 11, 1949. As part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of Schweitzer's visit to America, on June 6, 2009, the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship presented "The Albert Schweitzer Legacy: A Gala Concert and Forum." The concert included works of Bach, Sandstrom and the World Premiere of Albert Schweitzer Portrait in its organ version, performed by Thomas Weisflog on Rockefeller Chapel's newly renovated Skinner organ. The text was read by Elizabeth Davenport, Dean of the Chapel.
The two versions, one for full orchestra, and the other for organ, are very different yet equally compelling. The hope is that each version will find its own venues for performance.
For all of the colors achievable by such a remarkable instrument, the organ version cannot capture the timbres of a full orchestra. Thus after the organ premiere, Jonathan McPhee, Thomas Weisflog and I met with Gary Fry, who had so brilliantly orchestrated both versions. Gary has now created a 3rd version, which adds a string quartet to augment the sounds of the organ and lighten the challenging score for the organist.
Dr. David Satcher narrates at the World Premiere on May 9, 2009
"When I hear a baby's cry of pain change into a normal cry of hunger, to my ears that is the most beautiful music."
This is what Albert Schweitzer said:
"Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter-- to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way."
He was born in a small town in Germany that after the war became part of France, and was awarded degrees in theology, philosophy, and music. An urgent appeal for physicians in French Equatorial Africa inspired him to study medicine and surgery at the University of Strasbourg. Schweitzer later wrote:
"I wanted to become a doctor in order to be able to work without words...My new occupation would be not to talk about the gospel of love, put to put it into practice."
In Africa, while traveling up the Ogooué River from his Lambaréné hospital, his thoughts crystallized into a new philosophy. He wrote:
"There flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase 'Reverence for Life'...The iron door had yielded. The path in the thicket had become visible...I knew that a system of values which concerns itself only with our relationship to other people is incomplete and therefore lacking in power for good. Only by means of reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this fashion can we avoid harming others, and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us..."
For contradicting the common wisdom of his time, Schweitzer was branded a radical. But the spirit to serve was the bedrock that sustained him. This is what he said. Albert Schweitzer said,
"One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life."
He urged young people to "grow into your ideals so that life can never rob you of them."
Albert Schweitzer received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 and in his acceptance speech this is what he said:
"We now know how terrible an evil war is in our time, and we must spare no effort to prevent its recurrence. Only through the spirit can this be done. A humanitarian spirit abides within all men like tinder ready to be lit, waiting only for a spark. May the nations, in their efforts to maintain peace, do their utmost to give the spirit time to grow and to act."
This is what Albert Schweitzer said, this is what he said:
"A human being is never a total and permanent stranger to another human being. We belong to one another. We can no longer live for ourselves alone. We must realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all life."
Established in 1982, the Longwood Symphony Orchestra (LSO) began as the dream of a few medical students and physicians and has grown into a symphony orchestra recognized for musical quality, innovative programming, and a unique business model of community engagement. Most of the LSO’s 120 musicians are drawn from Boston’s illustrious medical community. In addition to their dedication to music, the members of the LSO share a genuine commitment to community service. In 1991, the LSO made the significant decision to use its performances to raise both funds and awareness for various medical causes through its Healing Art of Music Program. Since that time, LSO has collaborated with 30 organizations, raising over $800,000 to aid Boston’s medically underserved. In recognition of its dual mission of community service and musical performance, the LSO received the 2007 MetLife Award for Excellence in Community Engagement from the League of American Orchestras.
st Dany Krause "at play" after performing at Shriners Hospital last spring
Midway through the rehearsal, we stopped to gather and each musician shared his/her experiences with music and the intimacy of playing music in a health care setting.
