Bringing The Music Back
Bringing The Music Back
Temple Contemporary's Symphony for a Cleaved Orchestra project repaired and returned ane,000-plus musical instruments to Philly students. Now it'southward spreading its mission nationally
Jul. 25, 2019
It sounded likewise good—or too crazy—to be true.
Back in 2016, when Temple Contemporary Managing director Robert Blackson came upwards with his vision for Symphony for a Broken Orchestra , a chorus of SDP teachers were—understandably—skeptical.
In reaction to the school district cut its almanac music budget from $ane.3 million to $50,000, Blackson—a bona fide visionary , under whose helm the whole thought of community museums has been flipped on its caput from being mere showcases to being meaningful, interactive, community-driven vehicles—had dreamed up an entirely original solution: Collect all of the broken, unusable instruments wasting abroad in schools; tap Pulitzer-winning composer David Lang to create a piece using the instruments in their unrepaired land; invite the public to "prefer" the instruments with donations; utilize the funds raised to hire good repair-people to restore the instruments to their total functionality; and render them to schools for students' employ.
"Before Symphony for a Broken Orchestra came forth, we had closets full of broken instruments," Baker says. "We were scrounging for ways to gear up them, and and then Robert came along."
"No one had ever done anything similar that before, and Robert was challenged," recalls Ernie Baker, who for the last 17 years has taught music to 4th through eighth graders in 5 Southwest Philly schools. "Some music teachers raised their hands and said What if while we're waiting for a year or more than for yous to become this whole projection going , the School Commune gets money and we could've had our instruments repaired? Why should nosotros even trust y'all?" Their language may have been more diplomatic, Baker acknowledges, only the sentiment was the same.
Baker, all the same, immediately saw Blackson'due south proposition as "manna from heaven."
"Before Symphony for a Cleaved Orchestra came along, we had closets total of cleaved instruments. For some of us, virtually half of our inventory was damaged in some way because the school district had been going for years without a budget for instrument repair," he says. Some teachers used their own money to embrace the costs; others, like Baker, got support from groups like local churches. "Nosotros were scrounging for ways to fix them, and so Robert came along."
Undeterred by skeptics, Blackson ultimately pulled off his multi-part mission with success: In December 2017, Symphony for a Broken Orchestra performed at 23rd Street Armory, raising just over $179,000 through individual donations from as fiddling every bit $5 up to $v,000; they as well receive support from foundations like The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and The Barra Foundation .
The project spoke to Blackson'southward mission at Temple Gimmicky, to curate art that takes its cues from, and engages with, the urban center around Temple, rather than hanging objects on a wall and inviting the customs in. Other Temple Contemporary projects have included 2014'southward reForm, which asked students from the soon-to-be-shuttered Fairhill School to tell its story through objects they brought to the museum; and Funeral for a Home, in which artists Billy and Steven Dufala and Jacob Hellman staged a memorial service for a building about to be demolished in Mantua, as a way to talk nearly neighborhood change.
In December 2017, Symphony for a Broken Orchestra performed at 23rd Street Armory, raising just over $179,000 through private donations from as little as $5 up to $5,000.
Symphony for a Broken Orchestra accomplished what it set out to do last school yr, when Temple Contemporary returned just over 1,000 instruments to metropolis schools. In May, they released a free recording of the functioning. And this upcoming school year, they're preparing to deliver instrument repair kits to all schools, to address the main reason nigh of the district instruments were deemed irreparable in the first place: teachers only didn't have the tools or materials to make small-scale repairs. Blackson says that when a educatee comes in with, say, a stuck valve on a trumpet, the teacher will now be able to immediately unstick that valve and give it right dorsum to the child. "And that volition keep the majority of instruments that nosotros discovered through the process of this project in the students' easily all the time," he says.
Now, Temple Contemporary is embarking on a new chapter birthday, going beyond Philly to help bring music dorsum to schools nationwide, with the launch of Symphony for a Broken Orchestra Foundation. "In doing our research, nosotros recognized that Philly wasn't lonely, and that you could look at Baltimore or you could wait at Chicago or you lot could wait at Milwaukee or you could await at Boston and yous would see this same design of cities with large populations trying to accommodate students from a variety of backgrounds and that in many ways unfortunately their budgets were falling short of their aspirations in terms of educational activity students music," Blackson says.
The initiative will be helmed by Devin Greenwood and Arun Pandian, music producers who'd overseen the recording of the 2022 performance, organized rehearsals, and led recordings of the cleaved instruments that live on the grouping's website.
The goal is not to export and replicate the Philly model, simply to adapt information technology to suit the culture and needs of other cities. "Chicago is a different metropolis than Philadelphia—and the students are different, the challenges are different, the instruments are probably different. And so because of that, we want to be as flexible and receptive and really empathetic listening to Chicago's situation," Blackson explains.
Wherever the Foundation does its work, there's no denying the potential music admission could have on the lives of children who need it about.
"The students I teach don't have a lot of other cultural back up," Baker says. "When I sign an musical instrument out to a child, it'southward a very exciting matter. Nigh all the children I teach are culturally deprived. And information technology's a little encroachment, a little step, to bear witness them something cultural, artistic, and social. So I see what I do as very, very important."
Thankfully, so does Symphony for a Cleaved Orchestra.
Photo via Cleaved Orchestra 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/bringing-the-music-back/
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