Oakland Symphony Reflections, Friday, February 20, 2026

Reflections & Notes on Oakland Symphony, February 20, 2026

Program: https://audienceaccess.co/show/OEB-15692

In the program is the Board president's message, along with Masetro Armstrong and artist in residency, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and guest composers: Chen Yi and Reena Esmail.

Discipline of Hope...

Tonight is about the journey. Courage through the discipline of hope.

Intentional programming

Resist and persist 2026-2027

First half

Chen Yi 5 note scale opens concert followed by

Reena Esmail (1983 Chicago) raga plus classical music

Soundbath of hope....

Oakland symphony presents Reena Esmail's "She will transform you". The poem is by Neelanjana Banerjee, sung by the Oakland Symphony Choir.

"Homeland why do you elude me

Tease me?

There my ancestors don't know me

Here my neighbors say go back home to me

Homeland when will you let me name you claim you

Let me name you

Let me claim you

I know how it feels to be lost in space."

Remember the show? African Americans

"But now it is no longer about me--

"For this newborn child," Banerjee writes,

"I have a plea: Homeland, let this sweet child be,

Never torture her like you've done to me

Let her always find her way

Surface street and highways underpass and bike paths

She will transform you.

It's the same story

From concept to community from skid row to safe haven

She will transform you

With each milestone

Let her dismantle your distance

Until one day she arrives here

Palm tree shadow desert dust in her eyes

And smiles... she's home

Homeland she will transform you" (https://www.reenaesmail.com/catalog/she-will-transform-you-satb-flute/).

I agree. There is no going back

We change and are changed by space and place

Even gentle imprints are indelible.

Beautiful!

After an intermission is Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 10, Adagio. The story is, his heart is broken, which is harder on a person who suffers from angina or heart trouble. Full of both love and despair, Gustav writes this work yet dies before its completion. The version performed was approved by his widow before her death.

Roumain's World Premiere, America, US, is a public conversation. Members of the Oakland community join the orchestra and have their say. I laugh as I think about Peeler, filmmaker's "US."  Tracy Silverman's violin sounds like a rock guitar. He is amazing soloist on this work! I am moved beyond measure. I am so happy to be here. 

What a thoughtful program Maestro Kendrick Armstrong has assembled. The sorrow of the first work . . . heartbreak. The temporal nature of forgiveness. Nothing lasts, not even love's promises. Plans for a tenth symphony. Sometimes the body is not up to what the mind conceives. We make plans, and the universe nods, the muses smile, and then the flesh is unable to hold desired wishes.

I wonder where disappointment lives in Samsara . . . the after this space. I wouldn't call it life because life is an Earth term. Carefully laid plans are promises. We plan, yet God is the best planner. Muslims say Inshallah for a reason. Others say God willing.

The moon is new. Ramadan eclipses a fire horse lunar new year-- God willing . . . .

So we move from Heartbreak into hope, represented by Reena Esmail's sound bath of hope: a child born in a land not her ancestral locus. (It's a place that)The land pushes back as it expands to receive.

I wonder about space, reception, assimilation, grasping, belonging. On the 250 anniversary of this nation why or how do African Ancestors navigate insistent persistent animosity that greets our presence in a land we have made home away from homeland?

"America, US" composed by Daniel Romain, Haitian American, embodies histories . . . yes, inherited histories complexities, a six-string electronic violin with foot pedals . . . a solo voice in a wilderness of potential opportunities . . . freed Black people believed in the promise of democracy while aware of its contradictions. After all, white men enslaved Black people. White men voted to free Black people. Some white men didn't agree, and if they survived the war, they kept silent until they grew stronger and more powerful.

We feel their disagreement now.

The silence is deadly. There is a narrative that lives in silence. Eventually, it speaks.

There is a narrative growing in the silence now. These counternarratives simmer on back burners while the pots bubble over and sauces scorch, burn, stick, smell.

Yes, a score can hold change. It can nurture as it provides space to imagine the unimaginable. Hope lives in despair. Hope is living in a heart injured beyond repair. Hope is an autonomic nervous system that moves when thought is frozen.

Hope keeps the body alive until it is operational.

The Creator knew in its wisdom that this flesh creation could not rely solely on its mind to save it. Minds do not console. Reason is a treadmill that does not know defeat. It just short-circuits.

If we don't pay the power company, our utilities stop working. It is the same with reason. . . . Life is not reasonable. Life is bigger than what is reasonable. Reasonable is good, but reasonable is not reliable, because reasonable has no consensus.

There is no universal agreement on reasonable. In love, where there is agreement, doubt exists. Its erasure is inevitable as a new doubt takes its place.

Heartbreak is inevitable. We just learn first aid and hope we mend, get up from surfaces that hold immobility, and move forward.

Living in the past is easier. The past is a place we know. Sometimes surprises are unwelcome. . . it (surprise) is more than a broken heart can process.

I think my heart is broken. I gave myself a month to get better . . . it is now a year and a month later. Grief lives with me. I set a place for it at the table.

I can't have it leaning over my shoulder knocking over flower pots. I don't eat the flowers, but their beauty comforts me. I fertilize the plants and talk to them.

Their response is to keep growing. I don't pick them anymore. Nothing grows back and the stems are long and barren. Now I just appreciate their fortitude.

Perhaps there's a lesson here?

Upcoming:

This Friday, March 27, 8 pm at the Paramount Theatre, the Oakland Symphony presents a Hammond Organ Concerto. Art is a place to rest, recover, rejuvenate.