Tenor and skid-row resident Don Garza with conductor Zanaida Robles in
the the Street Symphony "Messiah Project" Friday afternoon at Midnight
Mission. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Zanaida Robles
(Los Angeles Times)
John Malveaux of
writes:
"The Messiah" was conducted by Maestro Zanaida Robles a second
consecutive year at the Mission on skid row. See LA Times article
The Los Angeles Times
By Mark Swed
December 11, 2016
Handel’s “Messiah” — by far the finest and most sophisticated of any
Christmas staple, whether carol, ballet, poem, painting, cartoon or
Jimmy Stewart movie — has always been a people’s musical messiah. The
oratorio arrived on the scene to help the needy. Its 1742 premiere in
Dublin was a benefit concert for the infirm and the incarcerated in
debtors prison.
Today, however, you can have your own “Messiah”
however you want it: as a fancy concert experience, a spiritual sacred
occasion in church or homey sing-along. Should you have trouble finding
exactly what you are looking for in a “Messiah” this time of year,
unlikely as that may be, you can find recordings galore.
Last week there happened to be something remarkable: two different
(and they couldn’t have been more different) performances of Handel’s
oratorio oriented around the one percent — the top and bottom one
percent, that is. On Wednesday, Trinity Church Wall Street — built a
half-century before the “Messiah” was written and now encircled by hedge
funds and a few paces from the New York Stock Exchange — brought its
noted Trinity Baroque Orchestra and Choir to the Valley Performing Arts
Center in Northridge for a historical Handel.
Two days later on skid row in downtown Los Angeles, Street Symphony — an ensemble made up mostly of members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic
and Colburn students performing outreach at jails, homeless shelters
and mental-health institutions — offered its second-annual “Messiah
Project” at Midnight Mission.
You shouldn’t be surprised to learn which “Messiah” mattered more,
which souls are easier to save. The Midnight Mission event included
Street Symphony Chamber Singers, core of members from the Los Angeles Master Chorale along with amateurs, as well as Urban Voices Project, whose members are part of the skid row community.
Only
a few excerpts of “Messiah” were given. Tenor Don Garza, a Desert Storm
combat veteran who is a longtime skid-row resident, made every word in
“Comfort ye” intense. When he got to “that her iniquity is pardoned,”
his conviction was such that there were shouts of affirmation from the
audience and members of the chorus had to put down their scores to dab
their eyes.
That alone made this not only the most relevant
“Messiah” in my experience but also the most historically authentic. At
the Dublin premiere, a reverend, moved to tears by one of the singers,
declaimed for all to hear: “Woman, for this, be all thy sins forgiven.”
The “Hallelujah” Chorus, played and sung by superb musicians and
filled out with the richest assortment of beautiful and broken voices in
the audience, soared with unimaginable power.
I am always
reminded upon hearing the “Hallelujah” chorus of a time when, after
railing against it, John Cage was approached by an offended woman who
asked, “Mr. Cage, don’t you like to be moved?”
“Yes,” Cage answered, “I just don’t like to be pushed.”
There
was no pushing Friday at Midnight Mission, none whatsoever, just a need
to connect, a need to make “Messiah” something to hold on to. Zanaida
Robles, an educator who also works in film and television, conducted
with a sense of mission.
Street Symphony’s founder, L.A. Phil
violinist Vijay Gupta, told the crowd that “the musicians were walking
away with a far greater gift than we can ever hope to give back to the
community.” Musician after musician thanked the skid-row community for
being their more most rewarding audience. However suspiciously this
might sound like TED talk, the fact is that even a “Messiah-ed”-out
visitor could hear every note anew.
There were no huddled masses
of homeless to maneuver through to get to Valley Performing Arts Center,
and there was obviously no way Trinity could come close to creating the
indescribably valuable sense of occasion that Street Symphony did. And
to be fair to Trinity, which clearly has the resources to support an
active music program that is widely hailed by the New York press, the
church has an admirable and extensive outreach program. Moreover, VPAC
goes out of its way to serve Cal State Northridge and the Valley with
reasonably priced tickets.
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