“For any parent or caregiver to someone with autism, Tourette’s, or any number of other afflictions … the concert hall is a place of tenterhooks and dueling impulses,” writes Peter Dobrin in Friday’s (9/29) Philadelphia Inquirer. “No worries, the Philadelphia Orchestra declared Thursday with what was billed as its first sensory-friendly full-orchestra concert…. The evening would be ‘shush-free,’ as orchestra president Allison Vulgamore put it…. What was so liberating about Thursday’s concert was that no one had to explain anything to anyone. My own seatmate Thursday lives with intractable epilepsy, autism, and a highly selective range of intellectual peaks and valleys…. He also happens to be very much the music critic’s brother… He easily identified with … just about everything … the orchestra played…. Many others also looked rapt.… [In] the ‘Hoe-Down’ from Copland’s Rodeo and Strauss’ ‘Radetzky’ March … listeners [waved] the ribbon-tipped batons they had made earlier…. [In] ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’ one boy … air-conducted with his plastic ice cream cone, and vocalized at the top of his lungs. The music seemed to fill every inch of his body, and anyone who didn’t hear his song as a moment of absolute harmony was simply missing the point.”
Posted October 2, 2017
In photo: The Philadelphia Orchestra performed its first sensory-friendly concert Thursday night in Verizon Hall.
