Thursday, September 10, 2009

The September Concert: Approaching 9/11 - Memories and Beyond



"After silence, that which comes nearest
to expressing the inexpressible is music."


This year, whether owing to the passage of time, the changes or responsibilities in my own life, or all of the above, there actually was a period when I realized that the events of 9/11/01 were not weighing on me, a pressing, continuing, painful and disturbing memory, as they had in the past.

Perhaps it was late August when I thought, oh, 9/11 is coming round again. Although, like many New Yorkers, I was personally acquainted with someone who died in the towers, it was in no way a close, personal connection such as those who lost a family member, loved one, or co-worker. But the reality is that for most New Yorkers, among others, 9/11 will remain in our history and collective memories, and -- if we allow it, and pull away the miasma and tissue and movement of time – in our hearts for a long time to come.

Last year, at work, I took a walk at lunchtime, and wandered on a string quartet performing in the plaza in front of Brooklyn Borough Hall. This turned out to be part of a special continuing performance, “The September Concert” which remains a unique, international, shared musical experience of 9/11.

Inspired by the above words of Aldous Huxley, The September Concert was born in 2002 on the first anniversary of 9/11. Since then, on each anniversary The September Concert’s message of peace through music has spread further and further.
In 2008, The September Concert group organized 222 concerts throughout the world with close to 10,000 performers. 46 US cities from coast to coast joined in, including Brooklyn, NY, Oakland, Philadelphia, Santa Barbara, Forth Worth, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

Globally, The September Concert partners with Sister Cities International and all other Global Affiliates helped to spread the event to 33 cities around the globe, in countries ranging from Italy, Spain, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, India, Great Britain, Ghana, Germany, Haiti and the Czech Republic.

All concerts adhere to three basic principles:
• * Freedom: All venues and musicians are free to design
and organize their own concerts.
• * Equality: All music and all musicians are treated equally,
regardless of genre or background.
• * Accessibility: All music is offered free of charge.

Brooklyn concerts 2009 include:

Brooklyn Borough Hall: 12 noon , Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra Quartet
Bar 4, 444 7th avenue: 7 PM, pop/rock
Grand Army Plaza- 2:30 PM – 5 PM, Jazz
South Oxford Space, 138 S. Oxford, 8 pm – 11 PM, Jazz, other
Spread Art, 104 Meserole, 8 PM – 11PM, Jazz
Target Community Garden, 931 Bedford, TBA
The Commons @ Metrotech, 12:30 – 2 PM, The Dubs

More Details on Brooklyn venues, click here.
For more information on The September Concerts, including schedules for other boroughs, cities and countries, or information on this organization, and how you can help in the future please click here.

9/11 has been designated by President Obama as a National Day of Prayer, Service and Remembrance. If the spirit moves you, and you wish to connect either with the feelings stirred by that day, or simply connect with the beauty of the human spirit as expressed through music, this is a wonderful way to do it.

"On behalf of all Brooklynites, I salute Haruko Smith and the extraordinary board of directors of The September Concert - who represent some of the world's most brilliant contributors to the field of arts and letters - for their collective effort to create a poignant urban soundtrack from which our sense of peace and brotherhood may be restored...I am grateful to all those present for filling New York City with the sounds of hope and love."

Marty Markowitz,
President of the Borough of Brooklyn
May 2006

Peace.

--Brooklyn Beat

Current Reading

  • Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War- Tony Horwitz
  • A Sultan in Palermo - Tariq Ali
  • Hitch-22: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens
  • Negropedia- Patrice Evans
  • Dead Funny: Humor in Nazi Germany - Rudolph Herzog
  • Exile on Main Street - Robert Greenfield
  • Among the Truthers - A Journey Among America's Growing Conspiracist Underworld - Jonathan Kay
  • Paradise Lost - John Milton
  • What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Thinking the Unthinkable - John Brockman
  • Notes from the Edge Times - Daniel Pinchbeck
  • Fringe-ology: How I Can't Explain Away the Unexplainable- Steve Volk
  • Un Juif pour l'exemple (translated as A Jew Must Die )- Jacques Cheesex
  • The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
  • Pale King - David Foster Wallce
  • David Bowie: Starman bio - Paul Trynka
  • Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat - Andrez Bergen
  • The Future of Nostalgia -Svetlana Boym
  • Living in the End Times - Slavoj ZIzek
  • FIrst as Tragedy Next as Farce - Slavoj Zizek
  • How to Survive a Robot Uprising - Daniel Wilson
  • Where is My Jet Pack? -Daniel Wilson
  • Day of the Oprichniks - Vladimir Sorokin
  • Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
  • First Civilizations
  • Oscar Wilde -Andre Maurois
  • The Beats - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • SDS - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • The Unfinished Animal - Theodore Roszak
  • Friends of Eddy Coyle
  • Brooklands -Emily Barton
  • Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahme-Smith - Entertaining and historical
  • Dictionary of the Khazars - Pavic
  • Sloth-Gilbert Hernandez
  • War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
  • Charles Addams: An Evilution
  • Life in Ancient Greece
  • Time - Eva Hoffmann
  • Violence - S. Zizek
  • Luba - a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez
  • Life in Ancient Egypt
  • Great Apes - Will Self - riveting and disturbing
  • Lost Honor of Katherina Blum - Heinrich Boll - could not put it down
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed (author deserving of new wide readership)
  • Living in Ancient Mesopotomia
  • Landscape in Concrete - Jakov Lind - surreal
  • 'There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby'-Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - creepy stories - translation feels literarily "thin"
  • Mythologies - William Butler Yeats (re-read again & again)
  • How German Is It ? - Walter Abish
  • The Book of Genesis - illustrated by R. Crumb - visionary
  • "Flags" - an illustrated encyclopedia - wish I could remember all of these. Flag culture
  • Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
  • Ubik - Philip K. Dick
  • Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo
  • Hitler's Empire - Mark Mazower
  • Nazi Culture - various authors
  • Master Plan: Himmler 's Scholars and the Holocaust - Heather Pringle
  • Eichmann in Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt
  • Living in Ancient Rome
  • Traveling with Herodotus -R. Kapuszynsky
  • Oblivion - David Foster Wallace - Some of his greatest work
  • Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - still wrestling with this great book
  • Netherland - Joseph O'Neill - staggeringly great read
  • Renegade - The Obama Campaign - Richard Wolffe
  • Mount Analogue - Rene Daumal
  • John Brown
  • Anathem - Neal Stephenson - love Stephenson but tough slogging first few chapters
  • 7 Deadly Sins
  • ALEX COX - Alex Cox
  • FIASCO by Thomas Ricks
  • I, Fellini - Charlotte Chandler & Federico Fellini
  • Best of 20th century alternative history fiction
  • Judah P. Benjamin - Eli Evans - Confederacy's Secretary of State & source of the W.C. Field's exclamation
  • Moscow 2042 - Vladimir Voinovich - Pre-1989 curiosity & entertaining sci fi read; love his portrayal of Solzhenitsyn-like character
  • Gomorrah - Roberto Saviano - Mafia without the It-Am sugar coating. Brutal & disturbing
  • The Sack of Rome - Celebrity+Media+Money=Silvio Berlusconi - Alexander Stille
  • Reporting - David Remnick - terrific journalism
  • Fassbinder
  • Indignation - Philip Roth
  • Rome
  • Let's Go Italy! 2008
  • Italian Phrases for Dummies
  • How to Pack
  • Violence - Slavoj Zizek
  • Dali: Painting & Film
  • The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight - Jimmy Breslin
  • The Good Rat - Jimmy Breslin
  • Spook Country - William Gibson
  • A Blue Hand - The Beats in India - Deborah Baker
  • The Metaphysical Club - Louis Menard
  • Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard
  • Physics of the Impossible - Dr. Michio Kaku
  • Managing the Unexpected - Weick & Sutcliffe
  • Wait Til The Midnight Hour - Writings on Black Power
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed
  • Burning Down the Masters' House - Jayson Blair
  • Howl - Allen Ginsberg
  • Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Palace Thief - Ethan Canin
  • John Adams - David McCullough
  • The Wooden Sea - Jonathan Carroll
  • American Gangster - Mark Jacobson
  • Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Gawker Guide to Becoming King of All Media
  • Jews and Power - Ruth Wisse
  • Youth Without Youth - Mircea Eliade
  • A Team of Rivals - Doris Goodwin
  • Ghost Hunters -William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death - Deborah Blum
  • Dream -Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy - Stephen Duncombe
  • Love & Theft - Eric Lott
  • Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
  • Studio A - The Bob Dylan Reader

Current Listening

  • Alexi Murdoch Wait
  • Wilco Summer Teeth
  • Wilco The Album
  • Carmina Burana - Ray Manzarek (& Michael Riesmann)
  • Polyrock - Polyrock
  • 96 Tears - Garland Jeffries
  • Ghost of a Chance Garland Jeffries
  • Yellow Magic Orchestra
  • Mustang Sally Buddy Guy
  • John Lee Hooker
  • Black and White Years
  • Together Through Life - B. Dylan
  • 100 Days 100 Nites - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
  • DYLAN: 3 disc Greatest...
  • Glassworks - Philip Glass
  • Wild Palms - Soundtrack -Ryuichi Sakamoto
  • Dinah Washington - Best of..
  • Commander Cody& His Lost Planet Airmen Live at Armadillo