Longwood Symphony and Berkshire Children and Families at Tanglewood

Longwood Symphony Orchestra will partner with Berkshire Children and Families for an extraordinary two day collaboration beginning with a symposium focusing on Inspired Prevention, child education and literacy featuring Drs. Eli Newberger and Kerby Alvy. The highlight of the weekend will be our June 12th Ozawa Hall debut under the baton of Artistic Director and Conductor Jonathan McPhee featuring the works of Debussy, Nielsen and American composer Gene Scheer.

SYMPOSIUM - The new relationship between Longwood Symphony Orchestra and Berkshire Children and Families has sparked the creation of a symposium on Friday, June 11th. The symposium, Inspiring Prevention: will represent the intersection of the two organizations' respective missions around music and medicine, and early education and literacy in the context of parent child relationships for children. It will be held at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, and will intertwine notable speakers with musical performances to give emphasis to the rich opportunities for healing and healthy development for children. We are extremely fortunate to feature Eli Newberger, M.D., internationally renowned pioneer in the field of child abuse and neglect, accomplished musician and part-time Lenox resident aKerby Alvy, Ph.D., founder of both Center for the Improvement of Child Caring, Dr. Carolyn Burns, Executive Directo. For r of Berkshire Children and Families and a string quartet of pediatric experts from Longwood Symphony Orchestra. For more information, or to register, click here.

MUSIC - Celebrating music, healing and the inextinguishable human spirit, Maestro McPhee will lead the orchestra in a performance of Albert Schweitzer Portrait by Gene Scheer (2009) narrated by State Representative Daniel E. Bosley. 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 moving Symphony No. 4 “The Inextinguishable” and Debussy’s epic La Mer. Purchase tickets here.

PARTNER - Berkshire Children and Families is the most comprehensive family services agency in Western MA improving the lives of children by helping families build their future through effective, innovative programs including parenting services, early care and education, family literacy, foster care and adoption. Founded in 1887, BCF is headquartered in Pittsfield, MA.

LSO and BCF are pleased to announce an Honorary Event Committee featuring Governor Deval L. Patrick, Eugene A. Dellea, Mayor James M. Ruberto, Senator Benjamin Downing, State Representative Smitty Pignatelli, State Representative Daniel E. Bosley and State Representative Denis E. Guyer.

We hope that you will join us for this weekend of thrilling events! For tickets to Ozawa Hall, please click here.

For any questions, contact Jillian Scales at 617.667.1527 or info@longwoodsymphony.org.

Philip Edward Fisher makes his Boston Debut

100 years ago, on November 28, 1909, in New York City, Sergei Rachmaninoff himself performed the first performance of his Third Piano concerto, a work of brooding beauty and complexity. The New York Herald predicted that “it will doubtless take rank among the most interesting piano concertos of recent years," but that "its great length and extreme difficulties bar it from performances by any but pianists of exceptional technical powers.”

On Saturday evening in Jordan Hall, the brilliant 29 year-old British pianist, Philip Edward Fisher, will demonstrate just the sort of exceptional technique the New York Herald critics referred to a century ago. Rehearsals have been thrilling; a chance for great collaboration between Fisher, conductor Jonathan McPhee and musicians of the LSO.

McPhee has paired the Rachmaninoff with Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 4,"The Inextinguishable" a work that was premiered only seven years later in 1916. Nielsen himself described this monumental piece as “a sort of symphony in one movement, which is meant to represent all that we feel and think about life in the most fundamental sense of the word, that is, all that has the will to live and to move.”











Following the performance, Fisher will be on hand to sign his newly released CD. For tickets and information, go to www.longwoodsymphony.org

LSO receives Community Health Pinnacle Award from Mattapan Community Health Center

[On April 24, 2010, Dr. Lisa Wong accepted the 2010 Community Health Pinnacle Award on behalf of Longwood Symphony Orchestra at Mattapan Community Health Center's 14th annual "Rock the Boat" Gala]

I am proud to accept this award on behalf of Maestro Jonathan McPhee and my 120 colleagues in the Longwood Symphony Orchestra. We are practitioners of music and medicine and Heal our Community through Music through three major programs:
• By playing in shelters, hospices and senior centers
• By giving lecture performances that demonstrate creativity at the intersection of the arts and sciences
• AND our signature program: By sharing our concert stage at Jordan Hall with outstanding local nonprofit organizations such as Mattapan Community Health Center to help them build new relationships, get the word out, and grow. Since we started this program in 1991, we have worked with 38 different organizations, and have helped raise nearly $1 million dollars for our community’s health.

About six years ago, I met Greg Bulger and Richard Dix, who many of you know well. Back then, they shared with me their vision to support health and the arts in our community—a vision from which they have never wavered. It was Greg who suggested that I get to know Mattapan Community Health Center.

I have been a pediatrician for over 25 years. One thing I love about my profession is that special feeling and electricity that you feel when you walk into any well-run healthcare organization—an energy that radiates from people who care--people who are working to make a difference: in the life of a child, in the life of a family, in the life of a community

This is an energy that is palpable.
THIS is the energy I felt when I walked into Mattapan Community Health Center the very first time and when I met Dr. Azzie Young.
It is the energy I feel every time I visit the health center.

Azzie’s vision was to use our Longwood Symphony concert together to announce the start of a new campaign – a campaign to build a much-needed new facility to meet the health needs of the people of Mattapan. It was a huge success.

Since then, I have watched Mattapan with pride and have attended every Rock the Boat event—I’ve even played violin at some of the VIP receptions—and now I applaud you as your dream of a new facility becomes a reality.
I am proud to have played a part in the remarkable work of Mattapan Community Health Center and I am proud to be part of the medical and musical fabric of our Boston Community.

I’d like to close with a few words to live by from my pediatric and my musical world. First, I’d like to quote from Robert Fulghum’s “All I Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten”,
• Play fair.
• Share everything.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together
• Warm cookies and cold milk –and a good gala--are ALL good for you.

To these I’d like to paraphrase two thoughts from “All I Need to Know I learned in Orchestra Rehearsal” taken from last week’s rehearsal with conductor Jonathan McPhee.

• When there is more than one musical idea going on in the music, if everyone only thinks about his own part and plays it loudly, it won’t sound very good. Listen to each other’s ideas first, then put the music back together. Now you will listen for each other and hear how the parts are in harmony.

• When you are looking at a difficult passage, don’t look up to the note and wonder if you will get there—your fear will hold you back; instead, aim beyond that note and you’ll be sure to land on it--squarely, securely --and in tune.

Don’t look back, Mattapan Community Health Center – keep on striving, reaching beyond your notes and being in tune with the community.

Thank you again for honoring me and the Longwood Symphony Orchestra with the 2010 Community Health Pinnacle Award.

Nourishing our Communty Through Music

The month of March was National Nutrition Month. Throughout the month, Longwood Symphony Orchestra participated in a number of musical/medical/service activities to raise awareness for hunger relief and nutrition.

Healing Art of Music: The Food Project
LSO's March 13, 2010 concert was in collaboration with the wonderful organization, The Food Project (www.thefoodproject.org), which serves the greater Boston community as a community building, youth leadership, and hunger relief organization. During the summers, hundreds of young people participate in tending acres of farms, building raised neighborhood gardens, and making fresh produce accessible to those in the inner city through TFP-staffed Farmers Markets. The concert was attended by 800 people, 325 of which were from The Food Project. Donors who could not attend the performance underwrote tickets so the young people could. At intermission, TFP volunteers shared packets of lettuce seeds with the audience.

LSO on Call: playing for hunger relief organizations

In keeping with its mission to bring music to those who might not otherwise hear classical music, LSO musicians spent a day in three hunger relief organizations for homeless: Women's Lunch Place, Pine Street Inn, and Haley House. Each has found unique and inspiring ways to feed our community's hungry while maintaining their dignity and helping them to move forward.

[Here, Drs.Caroline Kann and Gwendoline Thornblade played duets in the Haley House Cafe on a sunny Saturday afternoon.]

Orchestras Feeding America Food Drive

As members of the League of American Orchestras, Longwood Symphony added its contributions to the second annual Orchestras Feeding America Food Drive. Members of the orchestra and concergoers joined forces to collect 457 lbs of food, including a very generous donation of drinks from Ocean Spray. This food was delivered to the Greater Boston Food Bank for distribution to members of our community. Here are neurology researcher Caroline Kan (violin) and pediatric psychiatrist Dr. Andrea Spencer (viola) delivering food to the food bank.

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."