One remarkable and positive aspect of the horrendous experience we’ve been living through has been the almost universal feeling of a need to respond. Besides the volunteering of service and donating of resources, there has been the outpouring of letters to the editors of the nation’s newspapers, exceptionally positive and constructive, in the main. Performers feel the same need, to dedicate what they do in response, and the musicians finally had their chance Sunday, in Oakland’s Paramount Theater.

Although originated and located in the East Bay, the Hearts United, Lives Remembered musical memorial drew musicians from the entire region. Unified in one grand symphony were players representing every orchestra in the Bay area, excepting only two that had previously scheduled conflicting performances, the conductor Michael Morgan announced. Morgan, in conjunction with Sherlyn Chew and the Purple Silk Music Education Foundation, had gotten this memorial together on short notice, putting out the invitation for players and singers to volunteer their services, and organizing the whole thing.

There was no hurry, it might have been argued. This was already almost three weeks after the inconceivable tragedy; a little more time and even normal publicity might have drawn three times the audience and filled the Paramount. A little more planning might have better encouraged the donating in the lobby to a fund for the victims. But... spontaneity also was important, urgent to give musicians who have been brooding and anguishing the same as everyone else, their chance to do something, to join with colleagues and make a statement. And, as we all know, in the weeks, months and years ahead, almost everything we do will in some way or other be touched and affected by September 11, 2001-- all music played, all songs sung, all poems read, and so on, and on.

It was good then to have this entirely musical memorial. There were no political leaders in evidence, much less delivering tributes. Morgan did what announcing needed to be done and did it well, setting the tone by saying that the point was not the size of the audience (perhaps 1000), but the musicians’ being able to respond to their need at this time. This was reflected in generous performances. Quiet City, captured Copland’s characteristic feeling for space and solitude, in this piece with a shadowing sense of melancholy, the composer David Burkhart playing the trumpet solo and Barbara Midney playing the echoing English horn. With a long songful line, Bonnie Hampton played the solo cello eloquently in Fauré’s lyrical and touching Elégie, the orchestration sounding almost too much for the elegance of the piece.

The major offering was movements from Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem: the serene assurance, "How lovely is they dwelling place," "Ye now therefore have sorrow," conveys a deep maternal sense of comforting, the soprano line lofted finely by Katya Roemer, and the concluding "Blessed are the dead..." with its softening, consolatory blessing. There is no more appropriate work than this.

Morgan completed the program’s symphonic half conducting "Nimrod," from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a performance reflecting the players’ deep familiarity with the noble and intimate qualities of this tribute.

Thereafterit was an only-in-Oakland tribute. First, the Piedmont Choirs under its director Robert Geary, sang a Polish song, Pax in Terra, and Amazing Grace handsomely and clear. Thirty young students trooped on bearing Chinese instruments to perform two Chinese works: Sherlyn Chew’s Lincoln School Purple Bamboo orchestra (a project of the program’s co-sponsoring Purple Silk Music Education Foundation) together with the Laney College Great Wall Youth Orchestra, Pei Kun Xi conducting. Very impressive. Next, some 15 members of Trente Morant’s Oakland Youth Chorus sang a gentle and evocative "Alleluia" and an energized song after the gospel tradition.

A surprise came when Morgan introduced the Georges Lamman Ensemble of three Palestinian brothers and a friend who played works from Egypt and Lebanon, on individually amplified accordion, violin, oud and North African percussion. The Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir was the stirring closer. The National Anthem and "America the Beautiful" framed the program.

This was an affecting memorial, music uniting and remembering, as Morgan and Chew brought people of one mind and feeling together. There will some day be a musical memorial in San Francisco. The major organizations there, the Symphony and Opera, have properly begun their seasons, their audiences finding relief and renewal in those performances. Some day, they may even break a long-standing barrier and stand and work together to produce a great memorial in music, or perhaps even an annual tribute. The healing and the consolation may be very slow in coming, but we have time, and in art, the spiritual resources.

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