Eleven-year-old José Sarango has been to a fair number of concerts in his young life in New Haven. A member of the All-City Honors Ensemble, he’d been exposed to big-name composers like Aaron Copland, Jean Sibelius, Beethoven, and Mozart, all before his 10th birthday.
But never had he heard how Alexander Borodin’s Symphony No. 2 in B Minor approximated folk music, early jazz, and work songs at its best moments.
Or received a free book about that tradition, tracing the work of 19th-century composers to Troy Andrews, known more widely as “Trombone Shorty,” wielding his horn through the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans.
That is, until last Sunday afternoon, when the New Haven Chamber Orchestra (NHCO) launched its new Literacy Through Music concert series in the auditorium of Fair Haven School. Drawn there by the promise of free music and free books, almost 70 families filed in for a program that included Modest Mussorgsky, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Borodin. Less then two hours later, audience members including José and his mom Gladys Rivera left with earfuls of music, and new literature on jazz.
Conductor Heejung Park.
The idea behind the series, a product of new funding from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts, and the National Endowment of the Arts, is to increase the NHCO’s commitment to musical literacy at each of its three annual concerts. As in years past, the group will perform three times a year — fall, winter, and spring — free of charge, asking listeners only for willing ears. But now, it can provide books at each of the concerts, something it was only able to do once a year if funding allowed.
“It broadens the whole relationship with intergenerational audiences,” said NHCO Board President and violinist Jessica Sack after the concert. “It used to be that maybe one of our concerts could have a book. Now this is dedicated to learning through different kinds of literacy, at all three concerts.”
Part of that is a revitalized sense of musical experimentation and community outreach that started with a young people’s concert in 2013, and has since expanded to include student participation and opera singers in full costume. Sack noted that she saw the series as a boon to attendance, up to around 200 people from slightly lower numbers around this time last year.
“The number of people and the range of ages was indicative of building momentum for the community,” she said. “It was so exciting to see people who’d come before and people who had never been, and this range of very young to people who had all kinds of life experience. We [the orchestra] love playing together, but it’s even more exciting when there’s an audience that’s equally enthusiastic. The kids were phenomenal, and there was such great energy.”
José and his mom.
Contributing to that energy from his place in the fourth row was José, who snagged a copy of Andrews’s Trombone Shorty during intermission and started reading it to his mom before the NHCO’s grand finale, a rendition of the Borodin that brought several young dancers to their feet. Listening to the concert while reading up on someone who had started so young, he said, was helping him realize the possibility of playing his own instrument, a one-year-old clarinet, on a professional or orchestral level. It also reminded him why he wanted to get better.
“I think that these people, they do a great job,” he said. “I think one day I might end up playing professionally. It inspires me to play … I guess I want to go home and practice.”
“I think it’s awesome,” said Rivera. “What they do and how they do it … everything we’re seeing, it’s very peaceful and yet there’s so much there. You get the whole story.”