Dallas Symphony Orchestra violinist Bruce Wittrig and violist Dan Wang perform outside Marsha Jackson’s home in Dallas, February 26, 2021. Photo: Juan Figueroa.
“It took nearly two months and 12-hour days for a convoy of bulldozers and trucks to remove an enormous pile of toxic roofing debris [in Dallas] called Shingle Mountain from the side of Marsha Jackson’s house,” writes Darryl Fears in Friday’s (2/26) Washington Post. “On Friday … the only thing rising outside her front door will be the sound of music. About 2 p.m., a concert truck with a piano on the flatbed will arrive near where the 100,000-ton pile of waste once stood in south Dallas. Quincy Roberts, whose bid won a city contract to clear away the shingles, will team with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to present a tiny concert for Jackson and her neighbors. Roberts also happens to be a trained operatic tenor who sits on the orchestra’s board of directors. His friend and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brother, [tenor] Lawrence Brownlee … plans to sing ‘All Day, All Night (Angels Watching Over Me).’ … The intent, Roberts said, is to do what the city of Dallas did not—apologize to the community that was forced to endure toxic pollution for years, and to say to Jackson, in particular, that she’s appreciated.”
