Philharmonic Reaches Out

“Have the Arts Helped Heal L.A.?” That provocative question served as an ambitious premise for your April 27 Calendar article. However, the report barely scratched the surface for an answer. Measuring the local arts community’s impact on social consciousness one year after the riots, with only the yardstick of projects underwritten by the city Arts Recovery Fund, is like taking a thermometer from the medicine cabinet and venturing onto the front porch to gauge the sun’s heat.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic was omitted from your article, as were the efforts of other artistic groups that neither asked for nor received recovery funds. I found the report’s view somewhat myopic. For example, it totally ignored the role that music in general, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, could (and does) play in the healing process.

We acknowledge the inroads we still need to make in order to shed our image as the big symphony on the hill that caters to the elite. But, I also want to point out that long before the riots shook this city to its core, we have had programs in place to make orchestral music more accessible to all the people of Los Angeles.

The Philharmonic’s Community Advisory Committee, made up of professionals from the nonprofit sector, international business, law, the media and entertainment, undertook in its mission statement four years ago “to increase involvement between the orchestra and the multicultural constituents of Los Angeles for the mutual enhancement of all.”

Since then we have built and continue to strengthen ties with inner-city churches and community groups through our free, Neighborhood Concert programs that feature the orchestra with local choirs and soloists.

Just after the riots, our musicians volunteered their services for concerts of healing at St. Brigid Church in South-Central and at the Wilshire Ebell for the Korean community, with whom we had established good contacts prior to April 29, 1992.

We had already played at Tamarind Avenue Church in Compton, at Young Nak Presbyterian Church, at Watts Towers and at the Korean Community Center.

Ensembles perform in hospitals and retirement homes as part of our “Meet Us for Music” program. “Symphonies for Youth” are designed especially for toddlers and elementary school students and are signed for people who are deaf and hearing-impaired, indicating such qualities as loudness or softness of the instruments.

We offer all students $5 seats to our season performances and annual fellowship awards to aspiring orchestral musicians who come from underserved areas of Los Angeles.

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This month we will visit schools in Lynwood, Baldwin Park, San Gabriel, Cerritos and Canoga Park, presenting free, “Live on Campus” concerts. As public school music teachers receive layoff notices and music education gets dropped from curriculum, we are able to give young people perhaps their only opportunity to explore life’s possibilities through great orchestral music.

In March, orchestra members performed at Westchester High School, which no longer has a music program. We received a letter from a social studies teacher who forwarded the comments of her class. Here are the words of one of the students, typical of the feelings expressed by all of them:

“Before I entered the auditorium I was first feeling embarrassed because I thought the school was going to be acting foolish. But I think everybody was inspired this afternoon. I think the music was interesting. As I was sitting in my chair, I was feeling all the stress leaving my body. As I was closing my eyes, not to be rude, I had my imagination go wild. Thoughts of the future ran through my mind. I never thought I would ever be slightly interested in the music I listened to today.”

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One would be hard-pressed to argue the fact that artists, although the majority struggle unsupported, involve themselves in a higher purpose that has no valuation. The significance is personal, just as Belmont High School student Elathen Walton discovered with the animated abstract bubble he found himself illustrating in art class after the riots, as described in the April 27 article.

And, in attempting to measure impact, doesn’t it make sense to ask the people of our community why they turned to the music, plays, books, paintings and other displays of art in order to find some meaning and solace after the unrest that had tragically burst so many bubbles?