California Department of Transportation
Going
Public
by Jennifer Melick
From crowdsourced and outdoor symphonies in Toronto, San Francisco, and Berlin to citywide celebrations in Cincinnati and New York, largescale music events are bringing together orchestral musicians and the public as never before.
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o paraphrase a well-known expression, sometimes it takes a city to make a symphony. “An orchestra is at the heart of each city,” says composer Tod Machover, who has written a fulllength work for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, using input from the Toronto community as musical material. For Machover, the logic of a collaboration between a whole city and an orchestra is self-evident. “An orchestra is not just a major cultural institution, it’s a magnet, it’s a place where all this expertise exists, it’s a place that can convene people, and it’s a place that can make a big sound. You can make a sound that’s worthy of a whole city, and inviting people to participate is great.” For Toronto Symphony Music Director Peter Oundjian, Machover’s crowdsourced symphony was a way to capitalize