Forgotten Voices
Song Cycle Commissionied by Music Kitchen
With Support from Carnegie Hall
Celebrating 30,000 Homeless Shelter Clients,
100 Concerts
and The 15th Season
~ Featuring Comment Texts by Homeless Shelter Clients
Set By 15 Composers ~
Premiering One Song Each Month
for 15 Months in a Selected Shelter
Through May 2020
Like many around the world, I have watched in horror and dismay the
murder of yet more unarmed African Americans, George Floyd, Ahmaud
Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. Their names are only the most recent on a
list going back generations in America and the senseless taking of their
lives is part of a long history of systemic racism that this country
has yet to fully address. On personal level, the events of the last two
weeks are simultaneously heartbreaking and very affirming as I have
witnessed the groundswell of national and worldwide response that seems
to finally declare enough. I was proud to join the musical call to
action by my friend and colleague Anthony McGill, principal clarinetist
of the New York Philharmonic and posted the tribute video below on
social media with the hashtag #TakeTwoKnees. That effort has now been
joined by hundreds if not thousands of musicians worldwide, from other
members of the New York Philharmonic and Billy Hunter and Weston Sprott
of the Metropolitan Opera, to Berlin Philharmonic Concertmaster Noah
Bendix-Balgley, soloists Elena Urioste, Melissa White, Alisa Weilersten,
Stewart Goodyear and many others. I was also honored to join as a
featured speaker and performer for the worldwide vigil event on June
3rd hosted by Democrats Abroad, initiated by my friend, Global Chair
Julia Bryan, and attended by over 3,000 people from Fiji to Amsterdam,
Japan to Australia.
As an African American and as the founder of Music Kitchen – Food for the Soul, we know that Black Lives Matter. We stand against racism and for the
fair, respectful and just treatment of all of our fellow human beings,
especially those who have been so egregiously harmed and systematically
excluded from America’s promises. Without action, those are just
phrases. Music Kitchen has been walking the walk and doing the work for
15 years. I founded Music Kitchen as the pioneer program of its kind
and I remember having to fight for the idea that the poorest among us
deserve access to finest that the arts have to offer, along with our
ticket-buying audiences. I remember the early fights for funding where
potential donors rejected and pushed back against the idea that
musicians who play for such people should be paid at all. It is easy
for good people to look at the video of what happened to George Floyd
and say that it is horrible. But such events do not happen in a vacuum
and the harder work is to look deeper. They are fueled by the myriad
decisions a society makes, from what schools deserve better funding to
who gets the best medical care to who gets bank loans, who gets raises
(or hired in the first place), who is placed in leadership roles with the
support of the company being lead, what statues we erect in the town
square, whose names we emblazon on our school buildings, who is
celebrated in the curricula, who speaks up when injustice is on
display. In our beloved classical field, it comes also to questions of
which artists get engaged, what music is played, who is conducting
etc. How we spend our budgets and our programming goes a long way in
saying which lives matter, and not just through diversity programs which
have limited shelf-life before going back to business as usual, but
regular programming that is simply inclusive of the fullest array of
talent. Music Kitchen has never advertised itself as a diversity
initiative, but if you look carefully at the artists we have engaged
over 15 years, in addition to the people we reach, and now the artists
and composers of the Forgotten Voices project, you will see a
larger array of voices than are typically heard in any other arena. If
the groundswell is serious and this turning point is real, I hope we
will see meaningful change. If you are reading this message, you are
part of the solution and we appreciate your support; Collectively we
join together to use our time on this earth to make a positive impact on
the world. Many have asked me and others what they can do. In this
unprecedented time of awakening, I call upon each of us to see how we
can do more, anywhere from within our own families to broader
civic-minded action somewhere in our society. Change begins with us.
Thank you for your support of Music Kitchen – Food for the Soul.
Sincerely,
Kelly Hall-Tompkins
Music Kitchen New York City - Photos by Jaime Yaela
Forgotten Voices World Premiere
Presented in Association with Carnegie Hall
Zankel Hall
~Coming Soon ~
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