Good morning on this frigid Wednesday.
This month, we asked readers to nominate candidates for New York Today’s New Yorkers of the Year, our annual celebration of citizens who have made a difference in the city over the last 12 months. We received more than 100 submissions, and this week we are highlighting a few of our exemplary neighbors.
When the elevator opened on the fourth floor, the hallway was filled with the sound of a concerto.
Kelly Hall-Tompkins was in her practice studio in Washington Heights, warming up for a performance that weekend with the Westchester Philharmonic. But the closet-size room, filled with sheet music, framed inspirational quotes and James Baldwin novels, is not the only place you can find the renowned violinist rehearsing. Once a month she visits local shelters to perform the scores of Beethoven, Bach and other classical masters for homeless New Yorkers.
Ms. Hall-Tompkins earned acclaim last year as the fiddler in the Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.” But more than a decade ago, well before she could have imagined landing the coveted violin soloist gig, she was playing chamber music in soup kitchens.
It was 2004. Ms. Hall-Tompkins was preparing for a one-woman show but found herself struggling to focus after the death of a close friend. In need of company, she took to a shelter near Lincoln Center and began making her way through Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major. Twelve people listened to the same notes she would soon play before an audience of 1,000. Some tapped their feet, laughed or smiled. Others, who told the violinist they had never heard classical music before, cried.
“You can reach people in this situation on a deeper level, sometimes, than ticket-buying audiences,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said. “Of course, the nature of my career is playing concerts for ticket-buying audiences, but there’s something more profound reaching people with these pieces at this time in their lives.”
Continue reading the main storyThe next year, Ms. Hall-Tompkins founded Music Kitchen — Food for the Soul, a program that lifts the spirits of homeless New Yorkers through live classical music recitals. The intimate performances, which take place not on celebrated stages but in worn community rooms of shelters, have become a therapy of sorts for those who listen.
“It’s a teeny-tiny program, but it’s been doing very impactful things,” said Ms. Hall-Tompkins, who has since inspired nearly 200 chamber musicians, including Emanuel Ax, to join her for Music Kitchen performances in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Paris. “It’s hard now to see where my career ends and Music Kitchen begins.”
She has transformed the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen in Chelsea into a 19th-century concert hall with Brahms. During one performance of his sextet in G Major, “they were cheering like it was a sports game,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said of the roughly 1,000 people in the room. “By the time we actually reached the end, they cheered like it was the winning point at the Super Bowl, and it was incredible.”
Classical music can reach people in a way that other genres cannot “because it has a bigger harmonic palette, and a harmonic palette corresponds directly to every emotion that we feel as human beings,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said. “Classical music will take you through so many different iterations of all of the complexities that we feel as human beings.”
Homeless adults are an underserved audience, she added. “A lot of programs we have cater to children — they’re still coming up and there’s still hope for them — but there’s a bleakness and a sense of hopelessness that sometimes people take on in the shelter” as adults, Ms. Hall-Tompkins said. “It’s really important that they have the opportunity to be so moved.”
Photo
At one recent concert in an immigrant educational center in Brooklyn, Ms. Hall-Tompkins led a singalong for the famous “Fiddler” number “Sunrise, Sunset.”
“How many people have ever been to a Broadway show?” she remembered asking the audience. Only one person out of a room of 70. “How many people have ever heard of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’?” (Just one, the same man.) “How many people have ever heard classical music before?” (Again, just one.)
She passed around the lyrics and sang the words while playing the melody. Those who watched her hesitated at first.
“It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said. “You could hear this little din that started, and by the time we got to ‘Sunrise, Sunset’” — she interrupted herself, singing and swaying to re-enact the moment.
“People from completely different, non-Western cultures really connected with the timelessness of those words — it just transcended time, place, culture, everything,” she said.
“I played that show for 13 months and I never quite connected with the words and how profound they are until that moment.”
Here’s what else is happening:
Weather
° ° °If you’re curled up next to the fire as you read this, you may want to stay there.
The city is warning New Yorkers to prepare for extreme cold: It will feel as bitter as 10 degrees today; even with a stretch of sunshine, it won’t get warmer than the mid-20s.
Tomorrow should be equally clear, but even chillier.
In the News
• Ride-hailing cars are often driving on the city’s busiest streets with no passengers — in effect, creating congestion without any benefits, a new report finds. [New York Times]
Photo
• Despite millions of dollars in donations, construction on the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at the World Trade Center site has ground to a halt because of unpaid bills. [New York Times]
• In Eric Schneiderman’s seventh year as New York attorney general, his office has become a center of resistance against the Trump administration. [New York Times]
• The superintendent of Newark public schools has resigned, the latest move in a series of steps designed to return New Jersey’s largest school district to local control. [New York Times]
• A Connecticut man whose yard has been overtaken by bamboo believes he is being unfairly targeted by government officials. [New York Times]
Photo
• The New York guide to disposing of your Christmas tree. [New York Post]
• A Brooklyn woman who runs the business Happy Dead Rats claims she’ll kill any five rats for $15, or five rats in your neighborhood of choice for $25. [Moneyish]
• Health problems derailed a young Bronx woman’s plans, forcing her to take time off from work and school. Now, she is slowly getting her life back on track. [New York Times]
• Today’s Metropolitan Diary: “Always Running”
• For a global look at what’s happening, see Your Morning Briefing.
Coming Up Today
• Novice, intermediate and advanced jumpers can join an annual double Dutch tournament at Lost Battalion Hall Recreation Center in Queens. 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. [Free]
• “Frozen” fans can dress up as their favorite characters, join a costume parade and singalong, and watch the film during family movie night at St. George Theatre on Staten Island. 6 p.m. [$20]
• Families can celebrate Kwanzaa with several days of festive activities — including arts and crafts, story time and more — at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in Crown Heights. Times vary. [$11]
• Looking ahead: On Friday and Saturday, adults can see the Holiday Train Show after hours — with cocktails and live music — as part of “Bar Car Nights” at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.
• Devils host Red Wings, 7 p.m. (MSG+2). Islanders host Sabres, 7 p.m. (MSG+). Rangers host Capitals, 8 p.m. (NBCSN). Knicks at Bulls, 8 p.m. (MSG). Nets at Pelicans, 8 p.m. (YES).
• Alternate-side parking remains in effect until New Year’s Day.
• For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.
New York Today is a morning roundup that is published weekdays at 6 a.m. If you don’t get it in your inbox already, you can sign up to receive it by email here.
For updates throughout the day, like us on Facebook.
What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.
Follow the New York Today columnists, Alexandra Levine and Jonathan Wolfe, on Twitter.
You can find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.
Continue reading the main story Source: http://ift.tt/2l6I0FL
0 comments:
Post a Comment