Daily Cheer For Frontline Workers To Go Musical In NYC

Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty – The Big Applause
New Yorkers participate in the nightly 7 p.m. cheer for workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus crisis on April 16.

Cities throughout the world have made nightly cheers for frontline workers a ritual during the coronavirus crisis, leaning from windows and taking to roofs to applaud the personnel putting themselves in harm’s way to battle the pandemic.

Now, the 7 p.m. cheer will take on a musical dimension in New York City. On April 29, more than 1,000 performers will play the newly composed symphonic fanfare “For Our Courageous Workers” across the Big Apple – and residents throughout the city are being encouraged to join in.

Composers Frank London (The Klezmatics) and Hajnal Pivnick and Dorian Wallace (Tenth Intervention) penned the piece of music “to bring the city together in a communal music project to honor the efforts of those risking their own health for the benefit of all,” according to a press release.

“The score has been arranged so that everyone in the five boroughs can take part from the safety of their windows, rooftops, and doorways, be they professional musicians or amateur pot-bangers,” the release continues. “There are parts for all: musicians of any and every level — beginners, young musicians, amateurs, professionals on voices, strings, brass, winds, keyboards, drums — as well as for all the people of the city who can sing, bang on pots and pans, or just make a general racket.”

A graphic (see below) further details how people can participate. At 7:00 p.m., non-musicians should clap, cheer, and bang on pots and pans, as they’ve been doing, while wind players should “triumphantly” play notes of a concert Bb major chord as low instruments and keyboard players riff in the same key. At 7:03 p.m., non-musicians should “breath, listen, and reflect,” while toned instruments improvise in the key of concert D natural minor. At 7:06 p.m., the piece turns to its “catharsis” stage, with all participants encouraged to “play anything” in “a full-blown glorious, jubilant, ecstatic, cacophonic, sonic catharsis,” and at 7:09 p.m., for the “gratitude session,” instrumentalists should play a unison concert Bb while everyone else sings “ah.” The work concludes after 11 minutes at 7:11 p.m.

Numerous co-sponsors have already signed on to participate, including Greenwich House Music School, Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance, YNY Yiddish New York, City Windery, Kaufman Center, Sing in Solidarity, HONK NYC!, Slavic Soul Party!, Make Music New York and Brooklyn Conservatory.

For more information, visit Tenth Intervention’s website.

Courtesy of Tenth Intervention – For Our Courageous Workers
Instructions for the “For Our Courageous Workers” piece to be performed during the nightly 7 p.m. cheer on April 29 in New York City.