Music in Troubled Times

Like everyone in Los Angeles, when the fires first started, we all wondered what was going to happen to us personally, to our families and friends, to our jobs, and the groups and organizations to which we belong. And like many, those of us who were fortunate enough to escape immediate harm reached out to our friends, coworkers, and colleagues, to offer food, showers, and places to stay, which were badly needed.

As we started to take a somewhat longer view of what was happening around us, it became apparent that despite the tragedy in our midst, there were ways to help try to provide some solace and comfort to everyone around us, even those who had not directly suffered losses. There is a reasonable body of evidence which shows that music of all sorts can have therapeutic effects on human emotions and wellbeing. And it was to this end that we were able to support our community as musicians: through the very act of making music together, in one voice, in this challenging time.

We were able to support our community as musicians: through the very act of making music together, in one voice, in this challenging time.

I am music director and conductor of Orchestra Nova LA, a community orchestra on the Westside, just a few miles south of the devastation from the Palisades Fire. Some of our 75 members come from great distances to play in our weekly rehearsals, and at least one of our members lost her home early in the fire, escaping the flames as she made her way down Palisades Drive. Ironically, she is a luthier, and although she managed to rescue several of her violins and violas, she lost all of her tools and supplies of irreplaceable, long-aged wood needed to make new stringed instruments. And like other orchestras in the area, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, some of whose members also suffered enormous losses, we immediately cancelled our scheduled rehearsals. But from what I had heard from our musicians, it was clear that we needed to get together to rehearse as soon as we could do so safely. And so, seven days later, we gathered at a church in Santa Monica to play for the first time in the New Year.

We greeted each other with hugs, some with tears in our eyes, and as we began to work on the Shostakovich Festive Overture, it was soon apparent that something special was happening. For those unfamiliar with the work, it starts with a fanfare in the brass, which gradually includes the entire orchestra, and suddenly bursts into a fast flurry of notes in the clarinets, which metamorphosizes into one loud and playful finger-breaking exercise for everyone at a presto tempo. When we finished, and the musicians started to look up from their parts, I saw smiles on their faces, smiles which had not been there before we started. As the evening progressed and we worked on the Dvořák Sixth Symphony, a certain lightness seemed to emerge from the orchestra, an ease of playing and a comfort at being able to rehearse a major work once again, together as friends, and as a musical family.

Although I had not planned to work on it initially, as we will play it as a short encore at our February 22 concert, we brought out the Edward Elgar Salut D’Amour, a shamefully romantic chestnut from the standard orchestral repertoire, and began to play. While the work stands on its own as a popular showpiece for violin and piano, in the orchestral version, on this particular evening, with smoke and ash still in the air, it seemed that the lush harmonies and rich orchestration cast an especially warm light on the orchestra, and the musicians played with a very different sound than they did just a few hours before. We finished our rehearsal with renewed energy and spirit, and realized how grateful we all were to be able to do what we had just done.

Music can be a powerful force, perhaps not as powerful in the immediate sense as the wind-whipped inferno which consumed over 10,000 homes and other structures in Southern California in a short time, but music can do what no disaster can do, and that is to heal. Music cannot replace the material things in life which we cherish, or cannot imagine life without, but it can afford us a means to restore our emotional equilibrium, to rebalance the forces in our lives which we cannot always control. Music offers us more than just a respite from our daily lives, as it can serve as a means to bring us back to some sense of normality, a sense of stability, even a sense of security in knowing that the basic elements of melody, harmony, and rhythm provide us with means to start life over again in a changed world. Music cannot bring back what has been lost, but it can help us begin to build life anew, realizing that it is intrinsic to our very being and survival as sentient beings. Music truly allows our lives to go on.