Continental Harmony: Music that Builds Community

Speech by Linda L. Hoeschler to the New Century Club, April 2, 2003, St. Paul, MN

In 1998 the American Composers Forum, based in downtown St. Paul, was selected as one of six national organizations to launch millennial arts celebrations in partnership with the White House and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). These millennial projects were nationwide endeavors to involve many people in celebrating this country in the year 2000, expressed through original art works.

In the case of the Forum, our program, called “Continental Harmony” (a lovely name, I think), challenged communities around the nation to identify themes celebrating their history, a current issue or future dreams. A national panel picked the best project for each state, based on originality of idea, variety of coalition members, ability to execute, etc. The local project leaders then selected a composer from a host of applicants recruited by the Forum. The winning composer was in residence over 18 months and wrote a piece of music for the local band, orchestra or chorus (and sometimes all three). During the residency the composer gathered information and inspiration, as well as taught and spoke in local schools and civic institutions.

So how did a nice St. Paul group end up playing in these big leagues, particularly since all the other awardees were located in New York or Washington (Save our Sculptures, the Poetry Project, etc.)? Moreover, why was our project the one selected as the centerpiece presentation for the NEA’s annual meeting in 2000 (converting several Board members and bringing others to tears, by the way), and the subject of an hour-long special on PBS and a new PBS web-site. Also, why is Continental Harmony the repeat focus of talks at national conferences, and why is it still thriving around the nation five years later, with many new communities vying for admission and many veteran localities asking to continue the program with us?

The key to Continental Harmony’s popularity and legacy is that we empower communities to design an art project relevant to their history, their capabilities, their needs. We tell the communities that they know good art, and will know how to select not only a good composer, but also design a creative residency and project. We challenge project initiators to include coalition members who are not part of the usual power circle—minorities, immigrants, non-arts participants. 

And what do they get? They get a great piece of new music for their town or city, but more important, they build a stronger community through the process of participating in Continental Harmony. Ironically, the communities apply for the end product, but all find the process, the residency and community building, the most extraordinary aspect of the program.

And what does the Forum get? Not only unprecedented recognition and appreciation for the role composers can play in building community, but a pride that we have designed a methodology that can serve as a model for all arts organizations—from symphonies to community theater—as to how to become a vital, not peripheral or decorative, part of their locales.

Before I show you a short video about Continental Harmony that illustrates the principles and mechanics of the program, and describe some of the specific successes of this and other American Composer Forum programs, I’d like to describe how we came to design a Continental Harmony.

Composers Stephen Paulus and Randall Davidson began recruiting me to run the Minnesota Composers Forum in the fall of 1990. I had had a 13-year career in corporate management at Dayton Hudson and National Computer Systems, after doing 7 years of free lance arts reviewing, feature writing and editing. But along the way, my husband and I developed a passion for working with artists, particularly composers, whom we commissioned to write new music for various celebrations. In 1990 the Forum was faltering; the prior executive director had stolen large sums of money, and the staff was executing the same 15 year-old programs, much to funders skepticism. As a personal favor to Steve, I finally agreed to come to the Forum, just for a year, to help out.

What I found was a small service organization dedicated to helping composers, but with little thought of relating to the communities. At that time I was on the Jerome Foundation Board and had heard staff discuss the myopic view of the Forum’s programs, and whether the Forum deserved further funding. This sentiment was echoed by other foundations and organizations that I interviewed in my first months on the job in the summer of 1991. 

Having little to lose, we restructured and polished existing programs, and designed some totally new programs within the first two years. Among these experiments were the Faith Partners program and a College Residency program.

The first, Faith Partners, placed composers in an 18 month long residency of 3 Minnesota-area churches/synagogues, writing 6 pieces of shared music. Surprisingly, recruiting the churches and synagogues was quite easy—many of them were looking for ways to invigorate their congregations and to develop working relationships with other faith-based institutions in their community or in another part of the state. However, one of the hallmarks of the program which differentiated it from most other arts programs that export art and artists, was our insistence that the consortia each listen to composers tapes, interview and select the finalists. The Forum would recruit composer applicants, but wouldn’t do the selection.

From my corporate background, I learned that to get, and more important, to keep consumers, they have to make the choice-- in this case the choice of composer. I had no idea this was such a revolutionary idea in the arts, where the usual practice is for an expert panel or organization to put the imprimatur on the “good” art or artists and tour them around.

The Forum’s approach for Faith Partners, takes a lot of time and effort to execute: we have to solicit church and synagogue applicants, listen to their choirs, then match them into a suitable consortium. We then have to recruit and organize composer applicants from our regional members, and then coach the consortia through the selection projects, often trying to convince some of the Faith Partners participants that they really have good ideas and ears, and are more than capable of selecting a quality composer with whom they can work.

The benefit of the Forum’s approach is that, despite the long planning time, our partnerships never fall apart. Because the faith based institutions determine the partnership projects and chose the composer they want, they are committed to making the residency work. And, after all, these alliances don’t last but a year and a half, and we all know that almost anyone can make a marriage last that long!

Another lesson we learned from Faith Partners was that the program was most meaningful to rural churches and to Catholic churches. In the former, having an artist in residence was a big deal in a small town, and since we encouraged the composers to find ways to relate their host churches to the larger community, the composers learn to play a vital entrepreneurial role, and along the way garner widespread recognition that usually eludes them in Twin Cities. The Catholic churches, by the way, often welcomed some high art in settings historically rich, but reduced to guitar singalongs after Vatican II. (I can say this since I was raised Catholic).

At the same time, through the good offices of one of our Board members, we developed a College Residency program for composers. The idea here was that colleges would design an interdisciplinary residency, and composers across the nation would be invited to apply.  Our pilot was at Bemidji State University, where the college wanted a composer to design and execute a project to tie together their Native American population (Bemidji is located between 3 reservations), a Japanese paper exhibit at the College Museum, and their spring lake festival. No small task!

The winning application, by a Boston composer, Andy Vores, proposed several college wide creative activities, culminating in a music theatre performance centered on the retelling of the Orpheus myth through the stories and songs of various cultures: Western classical, Nez Perce Indian, Japanese Noh Drama and African folk tale. The final event, on Mother’s Day 1992, was a fabulous, two hour experience with original poems, music, dances and sets advancing this classic tale. The audience leaped up at the end and gave a standing ovation that went on and on, something almost never seen in new music.

But the most touching aspect of this project was the Dean’s introduction at the dinner preceding the performance. She said, her voice breaking, that in all her years at Bemidji they had never really engaged the large Native American population. The reservation students came to classes, but were not part of the college’s life. But through this residency, she said, Native Americans participated, for the first time, in a college-wide project. Moreover, to the astonishment of the University administration, the reservations had decided to hire several buses to bring residents to the packed performance.

The lesson for the Forum, that informed our other programs, particularly Continental Harmony, was that when all participants have substantial voice, when no culture is better than another, when each group can tell its story, the collaborative possibilities are enormous, far richer, far longer lasting.

Emboldened by the Bemidji experience, plus other residencies at Winona State and St. Thomas, and informed by the success of Faith Partners in rural communities, we decided to call 35 rural festival organizations in Minnesota to see if they would ever want a composer to work with them. To our amazement, everyone signed up. The problem was getting the money to fund this idea.

We finally got some Rockefeller Foundation money in about 1997 to pilot some rural Minnesota composer residencies. We would incorporate the fundamental lessons of Faith Partners and the College program into the design of a new Rural Commissioning Program: a host committee would represent several local institutions, the locality would define the project and pick the composer, and the composer would write for a local ensemble. The pilot projects were in Grand Marais (local ensembles played for inauguration of new hall), Grand Rapids (song cycle for Judy Garland Festival based on her poems) and New Ulm (town song for men’s chorus and band).

During this period NEA asked for ideas from many national organizations for ways to celebrate the millennium in all 50 states. They thought Faith Partners might be a suitable project for us to propose, but I advised them that with the NEA’s precarious funding situation, and the battles over church/state separation, this was not the program with which to lead. I talked with them instead about our new Rural Commissioning Program and they were intrigued.

The conversations with the NEA continued over the next year, and we learned that our idea was one of the dozen or so finalists. We agreed with the NEA that we would include urban underserved as well as rural communities among the applicants to meet their political needs. But we would not budge on letting the communities select the composers from an open application call; the NEA was very skeptical about letting communities do the selection—after all, how could the people in Podunk know what was good music. The NEA also urged us to develop an approved list of composers from which communities could choose one; again we would not compromise our principles, that seemed revolutionary to everyone else but us! 

In June 1998 we launched Continental Harmony with a reception for Bill Ivey, the new NEA chairman. Later that summer we mailed 12,000 applications to mayors, civic organizations and arts institutions around the nation (show poster). They were invited to outline a civic theme—an historical event, a current issue, or future hopes—to celebrate at the time of the millennium. We recommended that the premieres occur on July 4, 2000, so that we could maximize civic pride and publicity. The community applicants also had to outline composer residency activities to integrate this guest artist into their community. Within 6 weeks (despite a way too short timetable) we had 100’s of applications. We were thrilled that our approach was working on a national level.

We then convened a national panel of people who understood both music and community arts, and they selected the best project per state; a few more were recommended projects pending additional funding, which is why we ended up with 58 sites in all.

Late fall we mailed the list of funded sites to 5000 composers around the country. We received over 500 applications to the various sites; composers applied to a specific site or two, sending not only professional material and tapes, but an essay on what they would do to maximize the residency, and how they would approach writing the music. The communities then had about a month to review the materials, and interview the finalists in person or by phone. By March 1999 the partners were picked.

The first premiere was in Grand Forks, in late February, 2000. The project was to develop a choral work to commemorate the massive Red River floods and community rebuilding. Steve Heitzeg, from the Twin Cities, was the composer chosen by the North Dakota committee. As part of his residency he interviewed local folks about their view of the river; many later said that for the first time they could talk about their love, but also fear of their river, their fear that the river might destroy their community again. Steve also worked with school children and the wonderful University of North Dakota art museum. He found an old iron bed, and had the children collect driftwood, shells, flowers and grasses from the river banks that they then tied to this iron “river bed,” along with personal notes and small objects representing the possessions they had lost in the flood.

At the culminating concert, the chorus sang Steve’s touching work, “What the River Says,” that comprised three sections, with the last featuring a ballad about the river. After a lengthy standing ovation, the conductor turned to the audience and had them sing the ballad, whose words were taken from the residents’ interviews. Thunderous clapping was interlaced with tears and embraces. I was hugged by many unknown attendees, in what became a Pentecostal-like healing service. People thanked Steve for expressing their hopes and anxieties in music.

I was astonished, relieved and deeply moved. I knew that Continental Harmony was not just a good project, but that it could do something for these fragile communities that no government aid or social services could do. Continental Harmony was bigger than all of us. 

About that same time the Knight Foundation, another Continental Harmony funder, asked if we’d be willing to have a PBS documentary made of the program, since they thought Continental Harmony represented an extraordinary new model for the arts. Knight engaged our own local Twin Cities Public Television and a NY producer to make a one hour documentary, telling in-depth stories of five sites, with brief clips about 5 more. The documentary, which has been seen in millions of households, first aired in October, 2001; because it so closely followed the events of 9/11 it was had had a long life with its message of hope and healing. An accompanying web site, which I urge you all to visit, was developed primarily for students to learn how a composer works.  

I’d now like to show you a 9 minute tape which we developed from our video footage and from the PBS show, in order to explain the program to communities, composers, and of course, funders. The theme music in the opening and closing segments, by the way, is from the Fitchberg, Massachusetts orchestral performance.

Thank you. I’d like now to explain some of our findings from our assessment of this first round of Continental Harmony, and tell you about some of the current projects. You saw Dr. Patricia Shifferd in the video, the Director of Continental Harmony, whom we hired in June, 1998 to run the program. Pat, who would be with us here today but for elbow surgery from a recent fall at our North Carolina Continental Harmony site (our staff really throws themselves into their work), is a sociologist and anthropologist, and the former dean of Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin. Pat is not only an amazing manager, but is interested in measuring the impact of the arts on community building. When Rockefeller Foundation learned of her expertise, they asked if they could fund us to better document and measure this historic program.

Pat’s multi-part research involved the hiring of some independent measurement contractors so that we could guarantee honest evaluation (I’d be glad to provide more in-depth information on this for those who are interested).  The findings, now contained in a 125-page book, guided us in our fine-tuning the program after the Millennium celebrations, particularly regarding the makeup of the community coalitions, the project leadership, and various residency details. While I certainly don’t have time to list and elucidate the many conclusions of the assessment study, I’d like to talk about the community development aspects of Continental Harmony, for me the most thrilling legacy of this program.

In a nutshell, we learned from Continental Harmony that when you bring people together to celebrate their shared histories, their common values and visions, you often solve many underlying tensions and divisions. Most approaches to community divisiveness involve sitting the parties down and talking about their differing views and goals, then mediating compromise goals and behaviors. It’s a bit like marriage counseling: the airing of your frustrations and disappointments can often reinforce your underlying anger and alienation.

But in Continental Harmony we start by identifying our commonalities and celebrating them. And in the buildup to a final musical performance, a small group’s enthusiasm can sweep up others and translate into community-wide pride; particularly significant was Continental Harmony’s impact on rural youth who said that for the first time they felt a real pride in their home towns.

This invigoration of a locality often leads to solving problems well outside the arts arena, problems such as economic redevelopment, immigrant integration, racial healing, and on and on. And, to our amazement, many of the Continental Harmony coalitions continue, often commissioning their original composer, or venturing into new partnerships with new artists.

I could tell you scores of wonderful stories, but here are just a few. David City Nebraska, whose site coordinator you saw in the video, said that Continental Harmony gave his dying farm community hope they could save it (By the way over half the town attended the premiere, a choral setting of poems written for the occasion). 

In Farmington and Jay, Maine, an area divided ethnically and socio-economically, the French and Anglos were given money to build a new concert hall because a premiere attendee was embarrassed that they had to perform in a high school gym, and the community chorus formed for the project is still performing in both communities.

Fitchberg, Massachusetts wanted an economic revival theme song. The composer wrote a march within an orchestral work, performed numerous times since, celebrating this mill town’s ignored riverfront. Now the mayor is planning to build a band shell on the river banks and the arts are a key part in the town’s revitalization plan; in fact, the Continental Harmony coordinator is in charge of the city’s revitalization task force.

In Grand Forks Steve Heitzeg’s piece has become the community’s anthem. We are again working there to premiere a CH 2 orchestral work, with a residency which partners the surrounding reservations, the local symphony and the museum.

And the Grand Canyon project, a snippet of which you saw on the video, has had extraordinary results in 2000 and beyond. That site’s composer, Native American Brent Michael Davids, a Minneapolis resident, now teaches Arizona reservation children how to compose music (the music is performed to great acclaim, I might add). We would like to expand this concept to the reservation youth in Minnesota, pending funding.

We expect the same community building results with Continental Harmony 2, as we develop projects in 15 to 20 states a year, with ongoing support from the NEA, Rockefeller and Knight Foundations. Some of the most promising projects include Dearborn, Michigan where we have established a partnership with the Arab-American Community Center for Economic and Social Service and the University of Michigan Music Society to support Simon Shaheen, an Arab-American composer.  Shaheen is writing a composition for the opening of a new Arab-American museum.

The Forum plans to nurture this coalition, and to play an even larger role in the reconciliation of Arab and North American cultures.

In California’s Central Valley, generally considered a cultural wasteland, we are working with a Modesto community organization to train youth in the Mariachi tradition; they will perform with a local youth orchestra. In Long Beach, we are helping knit together the Anglo and Hispanic communities with a coalition between the Symphony Orchestra and Museum of Latin American Art. Two composers, one from Pennsylvania, the other from Mexico City, are collaborating on a symphonic work to be performed in both California and Mexico.  

In Minnesota, we are partnering with Abbott Northwestern Hospital to place a composer in residence. This composer would work with the caregivers and doctors, plus residents of the Phillips neighborhood, to write a work for the opening of the new Heart Hospital wing. We believe that this model can be developed into a national program for all medical institutions.

We are also developing a wonderful St. Paul project, “Rondo Harmony,” based on oral histories of this sundered neighborhood. The organizers want this project to provide a rallying point for the rebirth of community institutions and infrastructure along Selby Avenue. “Rondo Harmony”, for which we will be seeking funding, is a pilot of the kind of engagement and trust building the Forum needs to develop as we become, hopefully, a real player in community development.

We all expect the arts to elevate, entertain and, occasionally, enrage us. I hope I have also shown you how the arts can provide a catalyst for building community spirit, energizing the resigned, integrating the forgotten, all the while transcending age, color and religion.

Continental Harmony is but one model for making this a better, more optimistic, more cohesive country. We at the American Composers Forum will continue to do it the old fashioned way, one community at a time. Thank you.

Additional material, from New Yorker, September 2002

Auden, in a pregnant fragment, even glimpsed what may be the only rational theory of art in an open society: art, he writes, “is one of the most powerful means of transforming closed communities into open ones, in moving people from passion to desire.” Instead of inflaming a passion, an incoherent and irrational want, the artists disciplines it to a desire, something exact. He takes a feeling and makes it into a thought—or, at least, a though-through feeling. This is high sounding, but it is plain truth. Why were so many, after 9/11, drawn to Auden’s poems save that reading them helped us to make the overwhelming passions of the time—fear, rage—into specific desires: to have a voice, to affirm a truth, to speak to a friend, to love more wisely. “For art had set in order sense/And feeling an intelligence,/And from its ideal order grew/Our local understanding too.”