Concerts around the city Saturday delayed their start for a few seconds to allow time to reflect on the wounded spirit of Pittsburgh. A moment of silence, a chance to collectively consider tragedy and loss, to look mortality in the eye and to ponder life’s deeper questions and mysteries, and to nod to that final silence we’ll all one day face.
And then, music filled that silence.
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This weekend was sorrowful and heavy, to say the least. I woke up on Saturday morning to the news of this terror attack occurring a mile down the road from where I was sitting. Almost a week later, I still cannot fully comprehend that eleven people are gone from this world. Coping with the tragedy has been a different process for everyone, but being at CMU, especially in the School of Drama, has shown me that some of the best ways to heal are through togetherness, art, and conversation. I can only imagine the solemn blanket that fell over the crowd at the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s performance Saturday evening during their moment of silence. Stopping to reflect in such a large crowd of people, complete strangers to one another, likely made their audience feel a sense of togetherness and humanity. PSO’s surprise performance of the song “Eli Eli” was a thoughtful way to honor the victims’ Jewish faith and the Tree of Life congregation’s strength as a whole. I have mounds of respect for PSO and their acknowledgement of their community’s human need for understanding, reflection, and healing.
This article re-emphasizes the importance of the healing power of music. I see great value in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s (PSO) decision to take a moment of silence to acknowledge the tragic shooting in Squirrel Hill. This shows how music is not simply being used as a way to forget about the past, but rather to help heal from it. Certain tunes and melodies have the incredible power to elicit emotions and memories engraved in our minds. When I attended the vigil at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, classic prayers such as the Mourner’s Kaddish and Mi Sheberach brought me back home. The music touched me in a way that words not always can. This article also describes the fundraiser to raise money for new pianos for Heinz Hall through having pianists to pay music. This goes to show how humanitarian the PSO is as an artistic institution, which supports the importance of art in a world that is currently very broken.
This weekend was incredibly difficult to go through. I had no idea how to process what had happened, no idea what “processing” actually meant. I found that the most healing moments where ones where we did have a moment of silence. Just being able to sit with the fact that eleven people had been murdered for no reason except for their religion was the closest I was able to come to understanding what I was feeling. This concert seems like it was done beautifully and thoughtfully; being able to sit with a large group of people, who are all experiencing the same kind of pain while listening to the same music sounds incredibly healing and powerful. Music, if done well, has the ability to connect people and evoke incredible emotion from people. There is no way to know what to do after something like this happens, but art always seems to have the ability to connect people and provide some kind of solace. After such a horrific tragedy, this concert must have been remarkably healing for those in attendance.
Pittsburgh was shaken to its core this past Saturday by violence and it is going to take some time to heal. I am glad that this process has started and this goes to show the healing power that music has. The road to healing is long and different for everyone. The silence that fell over Pittsburgh last weekend is very real and still present for most people till now. I appreciate that people were given time to grieve through those performances and they didn’t serve as a form of distraction. Personally, I haven’t come fully processed the events of last weekend because I have kept busy to avoid doing that but as I create art with my colleagues, I find myself healing even when I don’t expect it. Art helps in the healing process and I am proud to be part of a community that creates and gives people an avenue to heal.
As an artist the notion “art heals” is so familiar. In a world filled with constant acts of hate and bigotry art has been instrumental in allowing the world to recover. The shooting of eleven innocent pittsburgh residence within minutes of home strikes a saddening chord within us all. I loved reading how moved the writer was by this concert. His short stand alone sentences represented the feelings within us all as the music heals. If I were to try to explain the concept of “art heals” I would simply put those short paragraphs together. “There is power in silence… And then, music filled that silence… Healing music.” Poetic in nature the writing style clearly conveys the mood of the article and in expansion the concert. I commend the Pittsburgh and CMU community for coming together through arts including the benefit concert at Heinz Hall, Friday's concert in CFA and of course Purnell's own night of art tonight.
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