Portland, Maine

September 26-28, 2024
Presenter: Portland Ovations
Population: 69,568

Gather Hear Maine, our seventh tour, opened with a multi-day residency at Portland Ovations. Portland Ovations is a multi-genre performing arts organization who presents artists ranging from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to Bluey, the puppet version of the beloved children’s cartoon dog. They are also deeply invested in making the arts accessible to everyone in their community, and this is where we came in.

To have a partner like Ovations, who thought critically with us, and dreamed with us, about what it looks like to forge connections between disparate communities within a city - designing a plan that fit the specific needs of their city - made for some truly impactful and artistically innovative days. They challenged us to try new things, and we challenged them the same.

The residency included a visit to a homeless shelter, performances at the youth detention center, and a culminating public performance with a grand piano in downtown Portland. To kick off the residency, we were interviewed live on CBS:

Day 1: Preble Street Elena's Way homeless shelter

Our first performance was at Elena’s Way, a homeless shelter. Portland has a large homeless population, some of whom I would see in tents with their belongings in shopping carts on my daily runs along the waterfront.

At the shelter, I was set up in a common area, but not many of the residents gathered around the piano. Instead, most stayed at their beds. The sleeping area was right on the other side of the piano behind dividers, all within an open space. Their murmurs and sparse applause confirmed at least some were listening, and I hope to have provided some moments of peace. For better or worse, I felt like I was placed at the center of the going abouts of shelter life. While I was playing, a resident was experiencing some sort of episode, screaming loudly about his belongings being stolen, bursting with anger. I had happened to be playing something relatively dramatic, inadvertently providing stage music for this man.

Most striking was this man pictured here with his very good dog; he came up to me as soon as we arrived, with a big binder with pages of sheet music (pictured on the piano). He had a question about Pachelbel’s Canon which he was learning on ukulele. I asked if he wanted to bring his ukulele over so we could work on it together, but he said it was broken.

I thought about when so much is taken from you, you turn to the arts to hang on to your humanity and your sense of self. It took me back to my residency in Alabama with InToto Arts, who is fostering love, care, and community within the homeless population through the arts.

Day 2: Long Creek Youth Development Center 

The next day, we headed to Long Creek Youth, Maine’s only youth detention center. I had never been to a youth detention center - Google searches about Long Creek yielded results about budget and staff shortage woes, and incidents of kids escaping. I was skeptical of a system that puts kids behind bars.

My afternoon at the detention center gave me a new point of view and much-needed insight that is not readily available to the public. First of all, there are fewer than 40 kids at the center - down from close to 200 just a few years ago, as a result of a state-wide effort to keep children out of the carceral system and instead provide social support. It was described to me that the kids at the center are those who really “need to be there” - otherwise they would be living in harmful situations, or are at risk of harming themselves/others. The staff to youth ratio is very high, they have school every day, can receive their degrees at the center, and the compound is a safe space. Plus, they have access to extracurriculars and even things like a classical musician coming to perform for them - something not even “regular” kids might have the opportunity, a staff member noted. Most importantly, I got the sense that the staff truly cares for the well-being and future success of these youth.

I had three sessions with the residents, ages 13-21, divided into small groups. The demeanor of the kids ranged from withdrawn, “normal” (whatever that is), to hyper-energetic. When I finished performing Chopin's Barcarolle, a girl exclaimed, “Now THAT’S the kind of dramatic music I need in my life!!!” and asked me how she could go about requesting the warden to download a mp3 file to put on her audio device. I wrote down the composer and title for her on a notecard.

Day 3: Public concert in Congress Square Park

After months of planning, it was finally time for the special day - putting a Steinway grand piano smack in the middle of downtown! 

Audience notecards from Preble Street and Long Creek Youth were recited during the concert, as a way to feel their presence although they were not able to attend the concert. Hundreds of new audience cards were collected at this concert, for me to recite at the next tour stop in rural Maine.

Perhaps the most special moment was our collaboration with Listen Up!, a music program for adults with intellectual uniqueness. While I played the solo piano piece "Meditation on 'America the Beautiful'" by composer Huang Ruo, the Listen Up! musicians improvised to it on guitars, synth, and recorder, which perfectly enhanced the mood of Huang Ruo's piece. 

It was a perfect fall day, sharing time and space and beauty with 500 audience members and 26 (!!) dogs. Thank you, Portland Ovations and Friends of Congress Square Park.