Grandma says: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Yesterday I was attending a Pittsburgh Symphony performance. Although I know better I did not check to see what else was going in the downtown area of Pittsburgh. Soon, traffic – lots of very slow moving traffic – alerted me to the fact that something was going on other than the symphony. Eventually I became aware that many of the downtown streets were closed off. In addition to the Symphony performance there was a ball game, the gathering of hockey fans even though the game was being played elsewhere, the last day of the Pittsburgh Arts Festival and Gay Pride events. Individual men, women, teenagers, same sex and opposite sex couples, many dressed in rainbow costumes and even rainbow dyed hair, vibrant music, and the many sounds of “We are here. We are proud.” filled the streets of Pittsburgh. I was also aware that today, Monday, the 12 is the first anniversary of the shooting in the gay nightclub, Pulse in Orlando, Florida leaving 49 dead and many grieving partners, family members and other friends. That shooting could, in another era, have been a reason to run back to the closet; to allow fear to deny one’s existence. Yet, in many places in the world, there is no longer a race back to the closet. Even in countries where members of the LGBT community may be killed, jailed, or otherwise abused, there is an increasing awareness of the presence of same sex love as well as transgender, and bisexual individuals.
Once I finally was able to get to Heinz Hall and seated, I looked around at the diversity of the members of the symphony and the audience. Pittsburgh is not the most racially diverse city compared to a city such as New York, Los Angeles or even some Texas border cities, but is it increasingly more representative of the larger culture. Pittsburgh has always been a diverse city in terms of ethnic groups. There is Polish Hill, Squirrel Hill, and the South side which welcome immigrants who would join and often lead the labor union. It has taken longer for the white and African communities to come together, famous leaders such as August Wilson notwithstanding.
Over the years that I have been blessed to attend cultural events in Pittsburg I have done my best to notice who was represented in both the audience and the body of the performers. It seems to me that it has markedly changed in terms of race, nationality (when one can tell), age and sexual orientation. Thus, I noticed that the two men sitting next to me were apparently Asian. Not far off were African Americans. In front of me were what appeared to be a couple who had been part of the gay pride celebration.
I also noticed that the percussion section of the orchestra had two females. This seems to be more consistently true recently. Although difficult to tell from my relatively inexpensive seat in row T way up near the top of the balcony, it also seemed that the orchestra is increasingly even more diverse.
Finally, it was time to attend to the performance. The guest conductor, Vasily Petrenko, was the tall, slender, 41-year-old man from Russia who is currently the conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. The guest pianist joining the orchestra to play Piotr Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 23 was the 26-year-old “child” Behzod Abduraimov, from Tashkent , Uzbekistan. The orchestra was amazing as usual. The conductor insured that the orchestra did not drown out the piano. In fact, he seemed to have, during the brief rehearsal time, brought the pianist, himself and the orchestra together in a way which reminded one of a perfect marriage which has reached that point of love which blends together as one and, yet, honors the individuality of each.
My first thought of the pianist was that he was a child who could know nothing of the richness and depth of the passion this composition both expresses and draws out of each member of the orchestra, the pianist and the audience. The tall, slender, “child” (Remember I am old and anyone younger than 70 is a child.) from Uzbekistan connected his long fingers to the keys. There was an instant melding of the two as there is with the earthy passion of this young man which flows through his fingers to the keys of this grand piano. This passion has fingers which now extend to every member of the audience - a hall of electrifying fingers – reaching in to the depths of the being of each of us. It is a perfect, terrifying intimacy which one cannot resist. All too soon, it is over and we are exhausted with the intensity of the intimacy. Finally, we claim our hands and our voices and we, the audience, has soon surpassed the sound of the gay pride celebrants outside the hall.
Somehow this child has become a wise old man who has reached the age of one who has lived a life worthy of the passion Tchaikovsky poured into the music eliciting the dance of flying Cossacks .
As I settle back into myself I am reminded, yet again, how the arts, including music, demands that we own the universality of our shared humanness. All those lies we learn about our alleged differences are just that. Lies. It is quite simple really. There is no us and them. There is just us. I again reflect of how I have yet to learn the depth of the lies I have internalized and wander if I have enough time to unlearn them.
I think of Grandma Fannie and her advice, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The cover is often racism, ageism, sexism, religious prejudice (or is that self-righteousness, physical appearance, wealth, and costumes. We are not our covers. No one is their covers.
Written June 12, 2017
Yesterday I was attending a Pittsburgh Symphony performance. Although I know better I did not check to see what else was going in the downtown area of Pittsburgh. Soon, traffic – lots of very slow moving traffic – alerted me to the fact that something was going on other than the symphony. Eventually I became aware that many of the downtown streets were closed off. In addition to the Symphony performance there was a ball game, the gathering of hockey fans even though the game was being played elsewhere, the last day of the Pittsburgh Arts Festival and Gay Pride events. Individual men, women, teenagers, same sex and opposite sex couples, many dressed in rainbow costumes and even rainbow dyed hair, vibrant music, and the many sounds of “We are here. We are proud.” filled the streets of Pittsburgh. I was also aware that today, Monday, the 12 is the first anniversary of the shooting in the gay nightclub, Pulse in Orlando, Florida leaving 49 dead and many grieving partners, family members and other friends. That shooting could, in another era, have been a reason to run back to the closet; to allow fear to deny one’s existence. Yet, in many places in the world, there is no longer a race back to the closet. Even in countries where members of the LGBT community may be killed, jailed, or otherwise abused, there is an increasing awareness of the presence of same sex love as well as transgender, and bisexual individuals.
Once I finally was able to get to Heinz Hall and seated, I looked around at the diversity of the members of the symphony and the audience. Pittsburgh is not the most racially diverse city compared to a city such as New York, Los Angeles or even some Texas border cities, but is it increasingly more representative of the larger culture. Pittsburgh has always been a diverse city in terms of ethnic groups. There is Polish Hill, Squirrel Hill, and the South side which welcome immigrants who would join and often lead the labor union. It has taken longer for the white and African communities to come together, famous leaders such as August Wilson notwithstanding.
Over the years that I have been blessed to attend cultural events in Pittsburg I have done my best to notice who was represented in both the audience and the body of the performers. It seems to me that it has markedly changed in terms of race, nationality (when one can tell), age and sexual orientation. Thus, I noticed that the two men sitting next to me were apparently Asian. Not far off were African Americans. In front of me were what appeared to be a couple who had been part of the gay pride celebration.
I also noticed that the percussion section of the orchestra had two females. This seems to be more consistently true recently. Although difficult to tell from my relatively inexpensive seat in row T way up near the top of the balcony, it also seemed that the orchestra is increasingly even more diverse.
Finally, it was time to attend to the performance. The guest conductor, Vasily Petrenko, was the tall, slender, 41-year-old man from Russia who is currently the conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. The guest pianist joining the orchestra to play Piotr Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 23 was the 26-year-old “child” Behzod Abduraimov, from Tashkent , Uzbekistan. The orchestra was amazing as usual. The conductor insured that the orchestra did not drown out the piano. In fact, he seemed to have, during the brief rehearsal time, brought the pianist, himself and the orchestra together in a way which reminded one of a perfect marriage which has reached that point of love which blends together as one and, yet, honors the individuality of each.
My first thought of the pianist was that he was a child who could know nothing of the richness and depth of the passion this composition both expresses and draws out of each member of the orchestra, the pianist and the audience. The tall, slender, “child” (Remember I am old and anyone younger than 70 is a child.) from Uzbekistan connected his long fingers to the keys. There was an instant melding of the two as there is with the earthy passion of this young man which flows through his fingers to the keys of this grand piano. This passion has fingers which now extend to every member of the audience - a hall of electrifying fingers – reaching in to the depths of the being of each of us. It is a perfect, terrifying intimacy which one cannot resist. All too soon, it is over and we are exhausted with the intensity of the intimacy. Finally, we claim our hands and our voices and we, the audience, has soon surpassed the sound of the gay pride celebrants outside the hall.
Somehow this child has become a wise old man who has reached the age of one who has lived a life worthy of the passion Tchaikovsky poured into the music eliciting the dance of flying Cossacks .
As I settle back into myself I am reminded, yet again, how the arts, including music, demands that we own the universality of our shared humanness. All those lies we learn about our alleged differences are just that. Lies. It is quite simple really. There is no us and them. There is just us. I again reflect of how I have yet to learn the depth of the lies I have internalized and wander if I have enough time to unlearn them.
I think of Grandma Fannie and her advice, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The cover is often racism, ageism, sexism, religious prejudice (or is that self-righteousness, physical appearance, wealth, and costumes. We are not our covers. No one is their covers.
Written June 12, 2017
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