George Mathew, whose benefit concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York have raised money for international humanitarian causes, will visit Southern Connecticut State University Wednesday to discuss and rehearse a movement of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for String Orchestra in C major, Op. 48, “as a way to illustrate how choice determines people’s direction in life and also in any given moment,” according to composer and SCSU professor of music Mark Kuss.
George Mathew
Mathew, an Indian national born in Singapore, is the founder of Music for Life International, which, according to the organization’s website, “was created to conceive and present musical concerts and related events to promote the awareness of significant international humanitarian crises and other public interest issues in the United States and throughout the world.”
His concerts have raised money in relief of the 2005 earthquake in South Asia, the conflicts in Darfur and Chad, and the spread of pediatric HIV.
As part of that organization, Mathew developed the Ubuntu-Shruti Orchestra, “an exciting new professional training orchestra of young, empowered musicians and distinguished mentors creating inspired music and programming focused on immigrants, community and education through music,” the website indicates.
During a visit last year to SCSU, Kuss said, Mathew discussed the role music can play in conflict resolution by way of leading a reading of Kuss’ Lament, a cello concerto on Jewish themes, which Mathew performed with the Ubuntu-Shruti Orchestra as part of last year’s New Year’s Eve Concert for Peace at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City.
“In just 10 minutes, he had everybody really engaged,” Kuss said. “He created a narrative about how that piece described ways of interacting.”
Mathew’s visit to SCSU is part of a curriculum designed to address first-time students’ uncertainty about what they’re doing at the school and why they’re there. Students, as part of the program, read Wes Moore’s The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, which describes how the lives of the author and another youngster with the same name took decidedly divergent paths.
The book, Kuss said, relating the reading assignment to Mathew’s visit next week, conveys that “an any given point, people have a choice … but these choices aren’t determined by them alone.”
Mathew’s rehearsal of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for String Orchestra in C major, Op. 48, will involve the participating musicians as well as the audience, as all involved will examine “the process of rehearsing and decision-making,” Kuss said.
George Mathew will be at Southern Connecticut State University on Wednesday, October 19. At 1 p.m., he’ll lead a lecture-rehearsal titled “Ensemble Music as An Engine for Social Transformation.” The program is open to the public.