June 2020

Dear friends and patrons of the Phil,

Firstly, we sincerely hope that you are all well and in good spirits.

It is about 3 months ago now that we cancelled our Drawn to the Music and May concerts due to the Coronavirus pandemic, and since that time of course, around the world live music, and performing arts gatherings of any kind have come to a silent standstill. Just when perhaps we need them most, the arts have been unable to share - live - their messages of hope, confidence and redemption and inspiration. Plato said the following 2,500 years back: Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. So, without music, where are we? Certainly that’s worth thinking about. Where is our soul, where are our wings?

We, the Phil, want to let you know that we are thinking of you, dear patrons, and very much missing directly sharing our music with you. Not only are we thinking of you, we know that you also share our pain in not having a live orchestra to raise our spirits from time to time. (I imagine too that each player’s instrument is somehow lonely now, dormant in its case, cut off from participating in the symphonic and sylvan sounds of Beethoven and Bruckner, Mozart and Mahler… Our horns and trumpets, flutes and violas, trombones and cellos; they too anticipate the ride to the hall, the communion with their fellow instruments!)

Personally I am brimming with confidence that the music of the Phil will ring out again, more true, more sure, more harmonious. That we will answer, with your help and participation, Martin Luther King’s challenge: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’ “

The Phil (and I think you sense this when we perform) is a community of friends. Friends who love to play and share their music. Is there a person on the planet who does not love music of some kind? Music – and especially live music - has the capacity not only to enervate and lift up, but also to help heal divisions and bring together folks from the most diverse backgrounds. After the assassination of President Kennedy, the conductor and composer of West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein, wrote: “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” The Phil unreservedly embraces Lenny’s and MLK’s call…

You will find our program for next season on our website. You’ll see there music for everyone, from the at once pensive and wild Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, to the rarely heard Gaelic Symphony and Piano Concerto by New Hampshire’s own Amy Beach; to more Nutcrackers, and our Holiday Pops.

We so look forward to connecting with you again, to sharing our passion with you. Live!

Mark Latham

Music Director