Word: mehta
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dared to play the almost unbearably poignant Danny Boy and, through sheer musicianship, let the beauty, not the tears, flow. Not all the celebrants had to perform. Onstage by the evening's end were many more revelers: Joan Mondale, New York City Mayor Edward Koch, Walter Cronkite, Zubin Mehta, Lady Bird Johnson, Sarah Caldwell, Burt Reynolds et several...
...course, irrepressibly, ubiquitously, impossibly Isaac Stern-a natural force not to be explained. As he approaches his 60th birthday on July 21, he still has not slowed down enough to be closely observed. "We do not know how many hours Isaac lives in a day," says Conductor Zubin Mehta. "We only know that it must be more than...
...orchestra had been to South Korea, the Soviet Union, every place in the world, and not to Harlem," says Conductor Zubin Mehta. "It was scandalous." Mehta has long championed the idea of special programming for minority audiences. During his years as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he took the orchestra out of the concert hall to such locations as the all-black Trinity Baptist Church and the federal prison on Terminal Island. The Abyssinian Church, a social and cultural landmark of Harlem, seemed an appropriate starting point for a similar effort in New York. The Philharmonic...
Exuberantly conducted by Mehta, 90 of the orchestra's usual 106 musicians -all that would fit on the church stage -played an expansive, brassy program well suited to the occasion. To show off the 125-voice chorus (65 from the church's own choir, the rest from other Harlem groups), there were several selections from Handel's Messiah, two of them featuring Tenor Seth McCoy. To give the church's five-manual, 4,000-pipe organ a workout, Organist Leonard Raver and the orchestra galloped through the finale of Saint-Saëns' Symphony...
...Mehta and the church originally planned to make admission to the event free. But hoped-for corporate contributions were not forthcoming. Extra money had to be raised, and the church was forced to charge from $5 to $25 for tickets. Despite the financial obstacles, Mehta is eager to go into other neighborhoods, especially in the city's large Puerto Rican community. "One thing we know," he says. "We are going back to Harlem next year, that's for sure." As one enthusiast shouted from the Abyssinian balcony after the Hallelujah Chorus...