September 11, 2001: The Artists Respond

By Susan Elliott

Performing artists open their hearts each night onstage. It should have come as no surprise, then, that so many of them, both here and abroad, responded so generously to the events of September 11, 2001, to bring comfort and hope to a horrified world.

Leontyne Price came out of retirement to perform in a memorial concert at Carnegie Hall. Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino answered telephones in a telethon that raised over $150 million. Paul McCartney, whose father was a firefighter, organized the first of an extraordinary string of concerts with a four-hour live benefit in New York on October 20. The next day, an eight-hour rock concert featuring such stars as Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, and Ricky Martin was given at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C., with all proceeds going to the Relief Funds of the American Red Cross, the Pentagon, and the Salvation Army. Several record companies, reeling from their own financial crises, dipped into their pockets and contributed millions of dollars.

At first after the attacks, the arts and entertainment industries stood still: Disneyland shut down, so did Las Vegas; Broadway went dark; the Latin Grammy Awards were canceled; the Emmy Awards were postponed twice and at deadline reportedly considered the airtight security of a California military base as a last-ditch effort. Industry conventions such as NEPAC (the Northeast Performing Arts Council) and the AES (Audio Engineering Society) were either rescheduled or canceled. The New York City Opera and the Los Angeles Opera postponed their opening nights.

A number of orchestras were scheduled to open their seasons that week, and most proceeded (to half-empty houses), hastily changing their programs. Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings had never sounded so gut-wrenching; "The Star Spangled Banner" became even harder to sing-through tears. When the Richmond Symphony eschewed Brahms and Stravinsky for Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (and solicited donations for the Red Cross in the process), the orchestra's chorus director James Erb told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "[This piece] is right for the occasion because it reminds us there's still hope. That hope may be Beethoven's greatest contribution to Western civilization."

In the days and weeks that followed, as New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani urged us all to get on with our lives, we sought to overcome our feelings of helplessness, to satisfy our burning need to do something. And, as an industry, we did.

Across the U.S. and in cities as far away as Christchurch, New Zealand, orchestras, opera companies, and individual performers opened up their hearts and gave generously of their time and talent, not only to raise money for the victims of the terrorist attacks and their families, but to honor their memories and provide solace for a bruised and saddened nation. Countless opening nights were transformed from benefits for the presenters to benefits for the Red Cross. The Colorado Symphony raised $8,750 from its opening benefit (September 12) with Yo-Yo Ma; the Metropolitan Opera raised $2.5 million by turning the dress rehearsal for its gala opening with Plácido Domingo, Deborah Voigt, and the like into a fund raiser (September 22), with orchestra, chorus, staff, and stars all waiving their fees.

It seemed a day didn't go by without yet another example of musical largesse. The major orchestras of Cleveland, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Nashville, Louisiana, Louisville, Phila- delphia, and Minnesota-among others-organized benefit concerts, many of them at the behest of their musicians. The Philadelphia Orchestra raised nearly $68,000 in its free concert at the Mann Music Center; Cleveland came in with $64,000; Atlanta almost $50,000. The orchestra, chorus, staff, and soloists of the New York City Opera waived their fees and put on a special performance of The Flying Dutchman for the victims, families, and rescue workers affected by the disaster. Lincoln Center donated $100,000 to the families of the 12 lost firefighters from Engine 40/Ladder 35, whose station house is on the Lincoln Center complex.

In Camden, Maine-population 5,000-local musicians including bagpipers and a children's choir performed a benefit at the Camden Opera House and raised $9,000. In Hollywood, where the stakes are considerably higher, superstars such as Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Wonder joined forces and put on a telethon that was broadcast on over 35 channels, watched by 90 million viewers, and raised over $150 million. Michael Jackson announced he would raise $50 million through sales of his as-yet recorded song "What More Can I Give." The 19-year-old pop star Britney Spears said she would raise $2 million for the children of the firefighters and police officers killed in the attacks by donating $1 from each ticket sold for her fall tour. Esteemed R&B producer Nile Rogers gathered a huge group of singers, actors, and athletes in a Hollywood studio to record the 1979 Sister Sledge song "We Are Family," the gross sales of which would be donated to the Red Cross. "It's a relief to have something positive to do in the face of so much hatred," said singer Jackson Brown, one of the participants.

The October 2 John Lennon Tribute at Radio City Music Hall was turned into a fund raiser for the terrorist attacks; McCartney, whose father was a fireman in Liverpool during World War II, organized a benefit in New York for the firefighters, postponing a tour to Russia to do so. Julia Roberts personally donated $2 million; Sandra Bullock $1 million; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences $1 million; Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen-the three principals of DreamWorks SKG-$1 million each; the National Association of Theatre Owners $5 million. Most of the major record labels and their parent corporations got into the act as well: Sony Corp. pledged $4 million; Vivendi Universal $5 million; Bertelsmann $2 million (even as layoffs continued unabated at BMG); and AOL Time Warner $5 million.

The spirit of cooperation among otherwise competing entities was without precedent: the television networks joining together to pull off the aforementioned telethon; the Broadway unions taking a 25 percent pay cut to keep shows open that otherwise would have closed; the Nashville Symphony musicians organizing a benefit during a week they were to have been on break; the three major Berlin orchestras-the Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle of the Deutsche Staatsoper, and the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper-performing an unprecedented joint concert at the Berlin Philharmonie "in memory of the victims of the cruel terrorist attack in the USA and in heartfelt solidarity," with Simon Rattle (whose official contract signing as Berlin Philharmonic music director was postponed because of the attacks), Michael Gielen, and Christian Thielemann sharing conducting duties.

In London, the BBC Symphony's landmark Last Night of the Proms concert on September 15, traded in its traditional jolly closing numbers "Rule Britannia!" and "Land of Hope and Glory" for the Barber Adagio; Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time, and the finale from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Leonard Slatkin, in his first Last Night as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony, explained, "What we are doing is in the spirit of this tragic time."

Slatkin showed up not long afterward on his National Symphony podium, conducting the Kennedy Center's benefit for the United Way Relief Fund on September 24 with three major local choruses and Frederica von Stade, Harolyn Blackwell, James Galway, Billy Taylor, and other luminaries. "Music has been called the speech of the angels," said First Lady Laura Bush to the audience of 2500, "and it brings special comfort now to our nation." A week later came Carnegie Hall's "Concert of Remembrance," with Leontyne Price, Yo-Yo Ma, and James Levine, which turned into a wild, celebratory homecoming for the 74-year-old Price, last heard from at the Met Opera in 1985.

Beyond the special events, there were the heroic attempts made by musicians who had been stranded or delayed as a result of the attacks. Mariss Jansons missed two rehearsals with the Pittsburgh Symphony when his flight from Frankfurt to Pittsburgh was diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia, on September 11. As of the morning of September 14, he was still stranded there, and the concert was scheduled for that evening. "We will rehearse whatever time is necessary," concertmaster Andres Cardenes told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "If Jansons comes in at 5 p.m., we will do it then. We are going to be like doctors, on-call all day." Jansons arrived in time for the concert, with one last-minute rehearsal.

Kent Nagano also had the misfortune to board an airplane the morning of September 11. The principal conductor of the Los Angeles Opera and music director of the Berkeley Symphony and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester hopped a flight from Berlin to Frankfurt, enroute to conduct the opening of the Opera's new production of Lohengrin. The intention was to then go from Frankfurt to L.A., but it was not to be. After being forced to land and then turned back in Alberta, the plane stopped to refuel in Iceland. The rest of the trip, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, reflects the conductor's iron-clad determination: "Iceland-Frankfurt; Frankfurt-Leipzig; Leipzig-Munich; Munich-Frankfurt; Frankfurt-Mexico City; Mexico City-Guadalajara; Guadalajara-Tijuana (where a bomb scare created a two-hour delay at the border); San Diego (by car) to Los Angeles."

Yo-Yo Ma found himself in far less glamorous surroundings. After playing concerts in Colorado Springs, Denver, and Phoenix during the week of the attacks, he traveled 50 hours by bus to return to Boston. Artists of every stripe seemed to feel the need to carry on, to ply the trade they had trained for, to appease their own grief as they sought to appease that of their audiences. The determination of the stranded, the generosity of time, talent, and money-these are the best legacies of our post-terrorist times. The story of Edward Polochick, artistic director of the Concert Artists of Baltimore and music director of the Lincoln Symphony, in Nebraska, perhaps sums it up best: After traveling 35 hours by bus to get to a rehearsal for opening night in Lincoln, he told the Associated Press: "I would have crawled on my hands and knees across broken glass to get here. As musicians we have an important tool at our disposal to help the country move forward. That tool is music."

Susan Elliott is the editor of MusicalAmerica.com.