Classical Cool: Ich Bin Ein New Yorker: Orchestral Concert for Young People

[Main image: Graffiti on the west side of the Berlin Wall. Top left: Amos Gabia. Bottom left: Garrett Keast, Photo by Kiran West]

Classical Cool is the festival’s annual concert for children and families and this year, with Ich Bin Ein New Yorker, it honors the New York spirit and the East Village community at its heart. Hosted by Nina Bernstein Simmons, the program features excerpts from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, and his "Ode to Freedom" from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, performed at his Christmas concert in Berlin in 1989, a year of hope and peaceful revolutions. Classical Cool also features premières by Shoko Suzuki, and William Kentner Anderson. Community African drummers under Amos Gabia and local choral ensembles join The Village Trip Festival Orchestra, conducted by Garrett Keast of the Berlin American Academy of Music. Featured soloists include the winner of our Concerto Competition, and soprano Curtlyn Ifill.

The premise of Ich Bin Ein New Yorker is that New York City is not the United States. It is an island, literally and culturally, as self-contained and singular as West Berlin once was — surrounded, watched, improbable; fiercely itself. At a legendary Christmas concert in 1989 celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, Leonard Bernstein changed just one word of Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” — replacing Freude (joy) with Freiheit (freedom) — but it meant everything. Schiller's original 1785 poem promises rescue from tyranny's chains, declaring that beggars will become brothers of princes — lines dropped from Beethoven’s version. Freedom was always there – but edited out. Bernstein put it back.

To perform Bernstein's "Ode to Freedom" here — in this city, in this moment, in this anniversary year of American Independence — is to ask what “Freiheit” means when the wall is not made of concrete. Leading The Village Trip Festival Orchestra in a program rooted in the neighborhood's immigrant experience is Garrett Keast, Artistic Director of the Berlin Academy of American Music, whose work between these two cities makes him the ideal conductor for today’s concert. We'll hear excerpts from Bernstein's West Side Story, as well as Shoko Suzuki’s Chess Players Observe, which celebrates young Nigerian refugee and New York chess champion Tani Adewumi; William Kentner Anderson presents a fresh take on beloved American folk music. Community African drumming under Amos Gabia and local choral ensembles bring the neighborhood onstage. Soloists include our Concerto Competition winner and soprano Curtlyn Ifill.

Ich Bin Ein New Yorker is in the East Village tradition that democracy is a practice worked out night after night in clubs, churches, and community halls. A fitting finale to ten days of arts, activism, and ideas.

• Nina Bernstein Simmons, host
• Garrett Keast, conductor
• Amos Kwaku Gabia, community African drummers

Now Ensemble

• Soprano Curtlyn Ifill, soprano
• Joan Forsyth, piano