I know I should pay more attention to the music.  However, my mind wanders during performances and I think of many things – some of which make sense. In last night’s New World Symphony concert featuring Elgar, Mendelssohn and Repighi, the music produced was truly wonderful even discounting the fact that our seats were free. One of the meandering aspects of my visual attention span was to count the numbers of musicians in each instrument, the number of female performers and, by facial features, the “race” of eleven.  By my inexact count (Asian names were among the listed performers and that made it easier) there were nine people of Asian background, one light mocha lady with frizzy hair whom we have seen before, but placed over to the right and to the back and in the far right corner, one brown African.  As I said, this is inexact.  Most of the Asians were in the first violin section with one in the second violins.

Race has nothing to do with ability to play instruments. The concert was notable for the fact that this was the first full orchestra with an almost all new student/performer body. At the end, with the rousing conclusion of Repighi’s “The Pines of the Appian Way”, the audience stood and cheered the conductor and all the musicians - deservedly so.

                                                       ON MERIT                          

These student/performers could be from all over the world.  They were selected on merit (the competition is fierce) and therefore are perhaps the best in the world playing at the beginning of their first semester in the Lincoln Theater in Miami.

I got to thinking about all the school orchestras I have heard over the years and how similar they all sounded. Instead of expensive instruments they could have all have been made out of tin.  These were neighborhood kids in elementary and secondary schools whose parents thought they had talent or who pushed them to get some culture by learning to read music and play an instrument.  There have been only a few such orchestras where outstanding students have been found.  I would guess that most of the graduate students in the NWS had private teachers for incipient talent that was identified either at home or in school.  I would also guess that they didn’t stay long in school orchestras.

                                 HARP, GROGGER & SHOFAR                                     

Carol noticed it too.  There was one instrument where a clacker was used for one of the effects in the Respighi piece.  It looked identical to the grogger employed to make sounds drowning out the name of the infamous Haman during Purim celebrations.  This led me to think of a wholly Jewish orchestra composed of harp (Jews’ Harp, of course – by more politically correct people it is sometimes referred to as “Jaw Harp”) and the rams horn or shofar.  I could include the jingling of coins in pockets, as the accompaniment Jews are supposed to be so good at because of the economic libel that the best things Jews do is collect money.

It is ridiculous to speculate about a Jewish orchestra with only Jewish instruments.  The instruments mentioned in the Bible tell part of the story but all peoples blew into flutes made of animal bones, blew conch shells or rams horns, plucked sinews attached to bows, beat drums and rubbed sticks together to make interesting sounds. One of the best instruments is the human voice and that was missing in this performance.

One group, race, people or gender does not have a monopoly on musical talent.  It is not possessed solely by the rich or poor. It is distributed unevenly and only sometimes is it nourished and cosseted to the point where an individual gifts the rest of us with beautiful sounds.