Nick
26, San Francisco, U.S.A
“Meet me at the artists’ entrance at 9.45.” Nick’s message was cryptic.
I was on time despite the pouring rain, waiting in front of the tiny red door at the base of the imposing San Francisco Symphony Hall. Musicians and staff came in and out wearing dark winter jackets, black suits and dresses, carrying instruments and colourful umbrellas. Nick appeared behind me and grabbed me by the shoulder. “Let’s get inside,” he said tapping his badge against the security door.
He was soaked, wearing a faux prehistoric tiger fur, with fake bullet straps printed on it. His trombone bag dripped on the guard’s desk as he wrote my name in the guest book. He looked so different from his colleagues that I assumed it was a statement — but I couldn’t tell what it meant.
He guided me through the backstage corridors where musicians were warming up their instruments, shirts unbuttoned, leading me to a balcony inside the main hall. He introduced me with unexpected deference to Elisabeth, standing with authority near the door. She looked 70. “Hicham, this is one of our great volunteers who makes sure things run like clockwork around here. Elisabeth, would you mind if Hicham sat somewhere here during the concert?” “Actually, I am staff.” She replied without a smile. “He can sit in the back row.”
I had met Nick a few years earlier via the San Francisco Global Shapers, and quickly understood he was obsessed with making classical music accessible. The concert he invited me to was a morning educational session for the kids of San Franciscan primary schools.
Except for a few teachers, I was the only adult in the audience, towering over a sea of small agitated heads.
The orchestra entered the stage, adjusting their seats and stands, waving at the kids. It was all a happy joyful mess, with children teasing each other, reading comic-strips aloud and playing hand clapping games.
This is what Eden must have sounded like, I realised, full of babies and music instruments.
Martha, a school teacher from Marshall Elementary in the Mission District wasn’t trying to control her third-graders anymore — who were happily trampling on the conventions of the Philharmonic. In the midst of this chaos, I felt Elisabeth’s presence over my shoulder. “Your phone should be off.” She said in a firm voice. “Thank you, it’s on silent.” I replied a bit surprised. “No, it should be totally off. Didn’t you hear the recorded announcement?”
At that moment, the conductor, Christian Reif, entered the stage. Everyone clapped, but continued talking. “How will they get these kids to stop screaming?” I wondered. It felt impossible to control this life, overflowing from the rigid space. One by one, long “shhhhs”” started emerging from the teachers in the audience, then from the kids themselves, until it became the new noise, with laughing “shhhhhs” echoing each other across the hall.
As soon as the music started — Clair de Lune by Debussy — the silence became religious. Everything fell back in its natural place. Elizabeth took her seat near the door, watching over the crowd. The kids got absorbed in the conductor’s movement — visibly wondering “Why are you here?”
Between every piece, Christian gave some context to the music, illustrated by popular culture references. “Did you know music can tell a story?” he asked rhetorically to a crowd that screamed “Nooooo” back.
I found myself wishing all concerts were educational.
The next piece was a percussion-only composition by Lou Harrison: Song of Quetzalcoatl. “White men in suits, playing a white composer’s piece, about Mexican mythology, to Mexican-Americans,” I caught myself thinking looking at the audience. I didn’t know if this thought hailed the universality of music or was a critique to its appropriation. Regardless, it was the only piece that got a standing ovation.
Halfway through the concert, Nick appeared from a secret door at the back of the stage and joined his seat within the orchestra. He waved at the kids and threw a hip-hop pose my way after spotting me, seconds before picking up his trombone to join a fiery symphony.
An hour later, Nick and I sat for breakfast in The Grove, the official hangout of the orchestra’s musicians. Christian stopped at our table, tie undone. “I’m surprised we finished this one on time,” he said. “41 minutes — we might have broken a record.”
“We can’t go overtime.” Nick explained once Christian had left, catching the glimpse of incomprehension on my face. “The musicians are unionised, so any minute after 10.50 am would have to be paid overtime. On the other hand, it doesn’t protect the musicians I play with in bars. We got paid 25 dollars per person for playing four hours at Revolution Café. Something’s broken in this system.”
Nick had been struggling for a while to combine his prominent position in the SF Symphony Orchestra with impact in the community. He loved teaching, gave concerts for kids and organised concerts with ShelterTech for the homeless. But this only scratched the surface.
“I’m starting a new union,” he said with shiny eyes, ”for street musicians. Because a city that doesn’t have street music is dead! Did you know many musicians in San Francisco are homeless?”
I didn’t, and I was thrilled to hear him explain his new idea, chewing on a plate of huevos rancheros, hiding from the pouring rain.
Nick never dwelled nor complained about the long hours, the hard work and dedication that were required by the job. At barely 25, he had managed to get tenure in one of the most prestigious orchestras in the country. And yet, it felt like just a start.
A few months earlier, he had cooked dinner for a few of his friends to come and talk about music — and how it could improve the lives of San Franciscans. Cramped in his one-bedroom apartment, a few blocks from the Symphony Hall, I imagined myself in Montmartre a century earlier. Halfway through the evening, someone knocked at the door. “It’s him.” Nick said, erratically putting dishes away. Cutting a swathe through the room, Michael Tilson Thomas — or MTT, the symphony’s director and one of America’s star composers — sat on the couch between Jason and a pile of clothes.
I was having the same gut feeling now in The Grove that I had then: the feeling of being a part of something I didn’t fully understand, trusting Nick to make sense of it all for me.
“And that way, we’ll be able to collect funds that will be redistributed to the musicians!” Nick concluded, ending his pitch with an energy that pulled me out of my daydream.
A notification on his phone interrupted our conversation. It read “Concert”. Nick rushed through the end of his plate and threw his case back on, promising to tell me more next time we’d meet. I watched him cross the street under the rain, towards the small red backdoor of the Symphony Hall. His next concert started in five minutes — the same songs, the same jokes and secret backdoor, for another few hundred kids.
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