One of the new initiatives the New York Philharmonic rolled out last season, to coincide with the arrival of music director Jaap van Zweden (and Deborah Borda, the institution's president, as well) was "Phil the Hall," an unambiguously populist gesture in which first responders, volunteers, and other public-service professionals were invited to come to Lincoln Center, hear some very good music played by the city's flagship ensemble, and feel welcomed and celebrated.
The program – hosted by Miss America, Nia Franklin, and conducted by Van Zweden – was presented four times, with tickets priced at $5. A video featuring highlights from last year's events is available on the Philharmonic website. Tony Tommasini's New York Times review conveys many details and impressions—including praise for two of the composers, both 11-year-old participants in the orchestra's Very Young Composers program.
This year, it appears that "Phil the Hall" is happening only once, on Friday, April 3, at 8pm. There's no specification about types of professionals being invited to participate on the page for the event on the Philharmonic website, which simply states that Van Zweden and the orchestra "welcome our fellow New Yorkers to this special concert, back by popular demand."
There are a few new wrinkles. Along with the program announced in advance, audience members are requested to cast votes (here) for additional works to be played: the overture to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro or Rossini's William Tell, a splashy brass passage from Also sprach Zarathustra or Pictures at an Exhibition, and so on. Also stipulated this year: audience response will determine which piece gets an encore performance right there, on the spot.
What impresses me most, though, is that along with the Bernstein-era canon fodder, from Copland, Shostakovich, and Bernstein himself, the Philharmonic will present two works of more recent vintage—and more recent significance, too. Tread softly, by Nina C. Young, was the first of the institution's Project 19 commissions to be performed: a sequence of impressions, ruminations, and ecstatic expressions that materialize in sequence, then get cut off all too abruptly.
Young's piece is vivid, resourceful, and unpredictable, and makes its point imaginatively and poetically. And it's wholly likely that Tread softly will sound even more impressive in this context than it did among the odd-bedfellow works by Haydn and Mozart that adjoined its premiere. (I wrote a bit more about Project 19 and Young last month, here.)
The other recent piece on the "Phil the Hall" bill is Sweating Bullets, by Paloma Alonso—who was 12 years old when her work had its world premiere on December 7, 2019, during a Young People's Concert conducted by Van Zweden (his first), alongside pieces by Beethoven, Steve Reich, and Reena Esmail.
Alonso's composition, a cinematic evocation of jangled nerves, was a hit—and a highlight of the first YPC event I got to attend with The Girl, who was wildly impressed that the relatively small person she saw onstage could marshal such big, big sounds.
My hat's off to whoever selected the Young and Alonso works for this event. Both are effective, exciting pieces—and both make strong statements about representation and ability, too.
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