Nourishing our Community through Music with The Food Project

On March 13, 2010, Longwood Symphony Orchestra and The Food Project will present Nourishing our Community through Music: a concert focusing on Community Nutrition and Hunger Relief to benefit The Food Project

Through a competitive application process, LSO chooses four LSO Community Partners each year. Beyond the music, each concert becomes an opportunity for a nonprofit health-related organization to tell its story to the wider community. The weeks leading up to the concert raise community awareness, through outreach and education programs.

On a sunny summer day in August 2009, Michael Barnett and Lisa Wong met with Polly Reeve of The Food Project at its urban farm site in the heart of Dorchester, The 2-acre farm is one of the many sites of The Food Project, LSO's March 2010 Community Partner. Michael, a Yale Music School-trained oboist and now 4th year Harvard medical student, is Chair of LSO's Community Engagement Committee. Polly Reeve is TFP's Director of Development.

The Food Project: Building community, feeding our community

Since 1991, The Food Project (www.thefoodproject.org) has built a national model of engaging young people in personal and social change through sustainable agriculture. Each year, the program engages hundreds of young people and thousands of volunteers who farm 37 acres in eastern Massachusetts in the towns and cities of Beverly, Boston, Ipswich, Lincoln and Lynn.

Not just an urban farm
What is remarkable about The Food Project is that its interest is not only in growing food, but in growing community spirit and growing young people. Through the creative hard work of farming, they learn cooperation and leadership.

We consider our hallmark to be our focus on identifying and transforming a new generation of leaders by placing teens in unusually responsible roles, with deeply meaningful work.

Let's Move
The Food Project has been working in the community for nearly twenty years. Over time this conversation on community hunger relief has become increasingly pressing and relevant.

Just a few weeks ago, First Lady Michelle Obama unveiled her "Let's Move" initiative, a multi-pronged program that addresses childhood obesity through increased exercise, school nutrition programs, as well as increased accessibility to fresh foods.

More than 23 million Americans, including 6.5 million children, live in low-income urban and rural neighborhoods that are more than a mile from a supermarket. Lack of access to proper nutrition is one reason why many children are not eating the recommended levels of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Food insecurity and hunger among our children is even more widespread. A recent USDA report showed that in 2008, an estimated 49.1 million people, including 16.7 million children, lived in households that experienced hunger multiple times throughout the year.

For more information visit the Let's Move website

Reaching out to the community
There is a seeming incongruence between the lush greenery of The Food Project's Dorchester farm and the stark rowhouses in the surrounding neighborhood. But the Food Project provides an oasis that is symbolic of the vision of the organization itself.

Through all of our youth programs, people of all ages bridge communities through farming and food and discover their interdependence with each other as well as with those who purchase and receive their produce.

Fifteen year old Eva of The Food Project writes: My goal is to someday reach out to people from all sorts of communities and backgrounds in a way that helps them become as caring as I am about the topic of society and have them feel inspired to break down barriers between communities. Have them reach out to others. Whether it be with loved ones or to the greater community. The more that people become united, the better the world will be.

Once the food is harvested, The Food Project shares its crops with the community through Farmer's Markets and with local hunger relief organizations.

Throughout the month of March, Longwood Symphony and The Food Project will raise awareness and catalyze conversation about community hunger.

1. On March 6, 2010, LSO on Call will perform in three of the hunger relief organizations who are recipients of The Food Project's fresh produce Women's Lunch Place, Pine Street Inn, and Haley House

2. On Friday afternoon March 12, 2010, LSO's violin soloist Tai Murray will visit The Food Project to meet the young people and give a brief performance

3. On the evening of March 13, 2010, Mayor Thomas Menino and Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz will join supporters, staff, and young people at NEC's Jordan Hall to celebrate the work of The Food Project.

4. From March 13-31, Longwood Symphony will continue its month-long focus on hunger relief by joining the League of American Orchestras national Food Drive, Orchestras Feeding America.

Longwood Symphony Orchestra is proud to present its March 2010 LSO Community Partner, The Food Project, and invites you to its concert on March 13, 2010 to benefit this remarkable organization. www.longwoodsymphony.org



Violinist Tai Murray will visit The Food Project

Words of thanks from Partners In Health

From Paul Farmer

Dear Lisa

Although we are all scattered about these days, we are all aware of your ongoing efforts to support earthquake relief, and other PIH programs, through the LSO. We heard about the beautiful program and wish only that we had been there to hear it and remember the beauty of music. But even though we weren't there, the beauty of human solidarity comes through loud and clear.

Gratefully, Paul


From Ophelia Dahl

Dear Lisa,

I can only echo Paul's words. We feel your warm and supportive embrace. Suzanne was moved by all she saw and heard that evening. Thank you to all of the groups that came together to provide support and relief for Haitians.

In Haiti, the work that continues hand to hand, day by day, in the face of such suffering is inspiring. Sometimes I feel that music is the best medium by which to convey both the magnitude of the catastrophe and the love and tenderness shown by countless others as well as the convergence of disparate groups to aid so many. Truly, there are no words that could do as eloquent a job as you all did that evening.

I hope our paths cross again soon and please convey our gratitude (on top of Paul's and Suzanne's) to the musicians and all involved in such a beautiful evening.

With warm wishes, Ophelia

Images from Symphonic Relief for Haiti concert

Today Longwood Symphony Orchestra and New England Conservatory joined together for "Symphonic Relief for Haiti," a concert that brought out the best in all of us, to raise funds for Partners In Health and the people of Haiti. Thanks to all the hard-working people at New England Conservatory and The Rendon Group.

• 150 musicians graced the stage of Jordan hall, spanning in age over six decades, from student to seasoned professional
  
• Student musicians representing The Boston Conservatory, Boston University, Longy School of Music and New England Conservatory played side by side with members of A Far Cry, Jupiter String Quartet, and Longwood Symphony Orchestra
• Star emcee Joyce Kulhawik added sparkle, heart and passion to the performance
  
• Haitian Consular General Gabrielle Dupiton and State Representative Linda Forry spoke on behalf of Haiti
• Suzanne Battit, Director of Development for Partners In Health spoke on PIH's behalf
• Dr. Allen Counter, who has recently returned from a humanitarian mission to Haiti, read the words of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, to "grow into your ideals so that life can never rob you of them."
  

From this concert, hundreds more have learned about Partners In Health, and learned about what's going on in Haiti.

From this concert, we have raised nearly $90,000 and are still totalling today's proceeds.

Angel 1

On Friday, Haitian-born Jean Bernard Cerin, who opened the concert with a moving rendition of "Grief," shared with us how important this concert was to him. It was an opportunity, he said, to do something for his people in Haiti. In the audience today was his mother. She had just flown in from Haiti to hear her son's performance. After the concert, Mrs. Cerin described the day of the earthquake. She said she was just entering a supermarket when the ground began to shake and the market itself began to undulate. She spoke of a hand of an angel, the woman next to her, who grabbed her arm and made her run back outside. A minute later, the market was flattened. When they could see again ("I was blinded") as the dust settled, her thoughts went to her daughters, who were at home. She returned home to find that half the house had collapsed during the quake. Miraculously, the family was in the other half of the house. All had survived. It was for these who survived and those that were lost that Jean Bernard sang...about weeping angels and the promise of a white dove.

Angel 2

This morning, just as I was leaving for the concert, the phone rang. It was Jonathan McPhee at the airport in Toronto, where delays and security snafus had caused him to miss the flight that would have brought him to the concert hall in time for the performance (The Boston Ballet had just performed in Ottawa's NAC the night before). Could we ask Larry Isaacson, the cover conductor for the day, to step in for this concert?

Larry was terrific, and ran a superb rehearsal, but after all that we had put into creating, organizing and producing this concert, not to mention Albert Schweitzer Portrait itself, it would still not be quite the same without Jonathan.

But Jonathan himself had just met an angel named Naresh in the Toronto airport's baggage claim. Having heard the story of our remarkable concert, and how important it was for our Maestro to be there, Naresh made phone calls, smoothed paperwork and facilitated arrangements so that Jonathan was suddenly on the next plane to Boston. Thirty minutes before LSO was to walk onstage, Jonathan McPhee touched down at Logan Airport and led the Albert Schweitzer Portrait after all.

Once again, the words of Albert Schweitzer resonate:

"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."

Symphonic Relief for Haiti: Words of a song that speak volumes

In keeping with its mission to Heal the Community through Music, Boston-based Longwood Symphony Orchestra and New England Conservatory present Symphonic Relief for Haiti at NEC’s Jordan Hall, Sunday January 31, 2010, 12:30—2 p.m. Artistic Director Jonathan McPhee will conduct LSO, an orchestra whose membership is comprised mainly of health care professionals representing nearly every medical institution in the city, and musicians from NEC will perform.

Among the performers are two with Haitian backgrounds: baritone Jean Bernard Cerin, a Master's degree candidate at the Conservatory whose family survived the Haiti earthquake but is living outside of the home in fear of aftershocks; and 17-year old Haitian-American violinist Aurélie Théramène, a student in Project STEP whose family in Haiti has also been deeply affected by the disaster. Aurélie will offer a work by J.S. Bach.

Jean Bernard will sing "Grief" by William Grant Still, with words by Langston Hughes:

Weeping Angel on pinions trailing and head bowed low in your hands.

Mourning angel with heartstrings wailing for one who in death’s hall stands.

Mourning angel silence your wailing and raise your head from your hands.

Weeping angel on your pinions trailing the white dove promise stands!

Proceeds will benefit the Stand With Haiti initiative of Partners In Health, the non-profit, Boston-based health care organization created in 1987. Longwood Symphony has had a longstanding relationship with PIH, which was one of the orchestra's Community Partners in 2006.

All musicians are donating their time and expertise to this ambitious effort because of their beliefs that music builds human capacity, elevates the soul, and prepares students for lives that enhance the public good.