the Me2 Orchestras (US)

Subject: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Aug 20 - 11:44 AM

The New York Times printed a feature article combining two organizations:

the National Institute of Health's
Sound Health: Music and the Mind

with the
Me2/Orchestra.

I believe that
the year 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of the latter group,
founded by conductor Ronald Braunstein
first in Vermont and then in Massachusetts.
It is quite a story.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Aug 20 - 11:56 AM

More about the second Me2 group
which is located in
Boston, Massachusetts.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Aug 20 - 12:00 PM

... and this documentary has been filmed about
the organization with the Boston location.

Orchestrating Change

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 09 Aug 20 - 12:40 PM

With the success of three Me2/s in the New England region,
founder Ronald Braunstein and his partner, Caroline Whiddon,
had to change their relationship with the groups.

They remain, respectively, music director (Braunstein)
and executive director (Whiddon).

Braunstein and Whiddon met and married in Vermont,
co-founding the Me2/Orchestra there.
They have relocated to Massachusetts, however, and live
within the Greater Boston Metro area,
from which they continue their work with the orchestras.

It was decided that Braunstein would no longer commute to Vermont
to conduct his original ensemble there,
but would locate a new orchestra conductor
to lead the Burlington, Vermont rehearsals and performances.
Braunstein's Burlington replacement is a conductor
who identifies as female and uses she/her/hers,
and who has her own mental-diagnosis story.

Conductor Kim Diehnelt takes the podium for Me2/Burlington

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: leeneia
Date: 09 Aug 20 - 01:38 PM

Hi, keb. The New York Times article says that "Scientific research has shown that music helps fight depression, lower blood pressure and reduce pain."

I know that it also brings joy and promotes friendship. All good things, and the me2Orchestras seem to know it too.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Aug 20 - 03:28 PM

Elgar and the asylum band

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Aug 20 - 08:33 PM

Side by Side in Music with Caroline Whiddon is an episode of a music program;
Caroline Whiddon is the guest in this episode.

The video/episode is about 50 minutes long,
and it's a talking-heads interview.
Ms. Whiddon (Braunstein's spouse)
tells her own story relative to co-founding the Me2/ Orchestra.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Aug 20 - 06:30 PM

These ensembles have got Facebook pages
which are public, and even someone like me,
who is not on Facebook,
can have a look.
They have amusing photos and short video clips
of the groups, with conductors,
holding socially distanced rehearsals
outdoors, in somebody's grassy backyard,
with folding chairs and music stands in broad daylight,
wearing T-shirts, shorts, sandals, and
either baseball caps or sunhats --

and competing with the neighbors'
saws, nail guns, and weedwhacker noises!

The captions to these entries say that
the musicians need these rehearsals for their mental health,
to which I am tempted to respond,
don't we all.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 03:06 PM

This coming Saturday, 5 September 2020,
is the initial broadcast of the documentary
Orchestrating Change on the PBS Network (public television).

A number of affiliates of PBS, as individual stations,
have already scheduled repeat broadcasts.
So this Saturday will be the first broadcast,
but not the last.

This weekend, the broadcast will be scheduled twice:
first for the Eastern Daylight Time zone,
then a few hours later
for the more western (as in Pacific) time zones.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 08:17 PM

The actual broadcast is on what is elsewhere described as
a PBS "secondary station," in this case
PBS World.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 06 Sep 20 - 02:25 PM

If my formatting is incorrect, I hope a Mudelf will say or do something, but anyway,
this feature news story is too interesting to let pass.
Burlington, Vermont, is the home of the first Me2/Orchestra.
Rutland, Vermont, is well to the south of Burlington;
it is a large enough city to have its own newspaper,
the Rutland Herald, for which
Jim Lowe is a staff writer.
Lowe is the author of the article.

The Lowe Down: The Me2/Orchestra rebuilds lives -- and makes beautiful music

Jim Lowe, Rutland Herald online

Me2/ preceded the #MeToo movement by about five years. While the latter involves women's sexual mistreatment by men, the former refers to what is an equally insidious problem.
The Me2/Orchestra is a unique classical music performing organization created for people living with mental illnesses and the people who support them. It was founded in Burlington in 2011 by Ronald Braunstein, a world-class conductor whose own career was felled by mental illness.
Since, Braunstein and his wife, Caroline Whiddon, the organization's executive director, have built Me2/ Orchestras in Boston and, last year, in New Hampshire.
[ . . . ]

Unforgivably, I missed the beginnings of Me2, though I knew both Braunstein and Whiddon. When Braunstein came to take the reins of the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association in 2009, I had an excellent interview with him. Braunstein was the real thing, the first American to win the First Prize Gold Medal in the Herbert von Karajan International Conducting Competition in Berlin. He had conducted major orchestras around the world, and our conversation about music was just fascinating.
So when I heard that Braunstein was being fired the following year by the VYOA, I was astonished. Everyone in the know was tight-lipped, so I had no answers. Apparently, he had done nothing terrible, as he was asked to conduct for another month. When he and Whiddon started the Me2/Orchestra, the pieces began to fall into place.

I might have caught on earlier. His pedigree was more one of a top contender for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. He also was hyper-energetic during our interview, hinting at possible [?treated?] bipolar disorder, and I wondered how the staff would like that. (I had been a psychiatric crisis worker for Washington County Mental Health for 15 years; also, I'm one of three addicts in my family.)
My next meeting with Braunstein was later that year when he was generously giving conducting tips to Dan Bruce, music director of the Burlington Civic Symphony, so I knew he was well. And then the odyssey of the Me2/Orchestra began.

"Orchestrating Change" tells that story intriguingly and entertainingly, paralleling the lives of Braunstein and members of his orchestras. The interviews are refreshingly candid and the sense of hope through music permeates the film.
The film follows a young [string] bass player struggling through hospitalizations who finds sanctuary with the orchestra. A clarinetist learns lessons about his disorder, in part because of his desire to be with the orchestra. Inspired and given strength, a young Boston oboist gets the courage to go back to graduate school where she earns her master's degree.
The very raw interviews of orchestra members and their families are heart-wrenching and heartwarming.

Braunstein's expertise as a musician, teacher and conductor provide an unmentioned but important subtext. The Me2/Orchestras are un-auditioned community orchestras, attracting a wide variety of levels. In fact, the only requirement for membership is some connection with mental illness -- in short, all of us.
However, Braunstein is able to inspire performances from this wide level of players that are not only cohesive, but often nuanced. And the musical spirit and excitement are truly inspiring.
Braunstein described the process of filming a crucial point in his life -- and the life of the orchestra -- as freeing.
"I've been out about my condition for quite a few years now," he said, "and it's been the greatest experience to hear people's responses to the film, and the poignant questions they ask about me and the orchestra."
Whiddon hopes the film reaches broader audiences with a more positive idea about what it means to live with mental illness. "One woman in a test screening came up to us and said if her son had known a group like like Me2/ existed, he might have lived. There aren't enough positive stories of people living with serious mental illness."
The Me2/Orchestras prove that music can, and does, heal. And Braunstein and Whiddon facilitate and inspire.

September 5, 2020

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 07 Sep 20 - 08:08 PM

I watched the Saturday PBS broadcast of "Orchestrating Change"
with a small group of other people
-- yes, we were socially distanced,
in a large room, all our chairs spaced apart, before the screen.

The documentary of course was filmed and wrapped and everything
before the pandemic and the resultant lockdown.
It is that much more poignant, now, to see all the scenes
of rehearsal and performance with
as many as sixty people close together in a single large room.

I suspect I will be seeing a great deal more of this film,
but then, I have ordered a DVD copy, and such orders are to be filled
and delivered starting this week, following that initial broadcast on PBS.
There will be repeat broadcasts in many US locations;
there are some US locations / stations / affiliates
where the initial broadcast has yet to happen, and
is scheduled for later September or even in October in advance.

The Orchestras themselves are not scheduled to perform in person at this point,
although they are using ZOOM to the max
and on occasion filming footage of socially distanced rehearsals,
as when they made a virtual contribution of same
to a mental health / psychology congress meeting this month;
for this is an essential part of the Orchestras' mission.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 07 Sep 20 - 08:47 PM

Here are some later locations/dates for PBS showings.

The Akron/Cleveland, Ohio area:
Thursday, Sept. 10, 7 PM, on WNEO 'Fusion' channel

Colchester, VT area:
Sunday, Sept. 20, 10:30 PM, on VTPBS Plus channel

Eureka, CA area:
Sunday, Sept. 13, 10 AM, on KEET

Bemidji, MN area:
Saturday, Sept. 12, 9 PM, on KAWE

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 06 Oct 20 - 03:09 PM

Jane E. Brody, Personal Health columnist for the New York Times, has used her column in today's issue,
to present a review of Orchestrating Change,
the documentary about the Me2/Orchestra.

In today's printed paper, the article is titled:
"When Music Serves as a True Salvation."

Here's a link to the online version of Ms. Brody's review.
A New Film Looks at an Orchestra for People with Mental Illness

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Oct 22 - 08:48 AM

Ronald Braunstein is leading the Me2/Orchestra in a performance
during a fundraiser for the Brien Center (mental health professionals)
in Pittsfield, Mass., on October 22.

I hope to attend, and if I do,
I'll report back.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Oct 22 - 12:04 PM

From the Jane Brody article:

As he recalls in “Orchestrating Change,” an inspiring new documentary about his work with musicians living with mental illness, he realized as a young boy that something inside him was not right. “I would get very excited and then very, very sad,” he said. But not until age 30, when a crippling emotional crisis led to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, did he know what his problem was.

“It was a very dark time, and I had no one to help me,” Mr. Braunstein said of the period following his diagnosis. “Everyone in the business abandoned me.” Yet he was determined to conduct, and eventually was hired by Caroline Whiddon, then executive director of an orchestra in Burlington, Vt., whose own career as a French horn player had been sidelined by disabling panic attacks, anxiety and depression.

Despite medication for bipolar disorder, Mr. Braunstein didn’t last a year on the job before he again unraveled emotionally. Once stabilized medically, he proposed that instead of being judged and discriminated against, he form his own orchestra where he could be himself and recruit people like him, said Ms. Whiddon, who by then had become his wife. Together, they created a performance vehicle — the Me2/Orchestra he instructs and conducts — that provides unstinting support and a new lease on life for mentally ill young men and women who play instruments. Several participants have been able to move on to more conventional careers in music.

“I never knew an orchestra could be such a vehicle for change,” Ms. Whiddon said.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Oct 22 - 04:17 PM

https://nihco.org/cms/
The local NIH orchestra

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 16 Oct 22 - 06:31 PM

What strange
   Twisted
       Pretsels.

Sincerly,
Gargoyle
May you find peace

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 19 Oct 22 - 12:00 PM

I should like to point out something about
the Boston-centered Me2/Orchestra in particular.

This cause appeals to amateur musicians who also happen to be
professionals in the business of mental health care,
and so the orchestra has a fair number of members who are
psychiatrists, psychotherapists, social workers, nurses, medical technicians, and the like --
as they support the removal of the stigma from the mental health issue.
And Boston, as a major metropolitan center
and the home of so many colleges and universities,
has a particularly large number of such practitioners.

Subject: RE: the Me2 Orchestras (US)
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Oct 22 - 08:42 PM

Just came from the Me2/Orchestra's performance at a fund-raiser for
a community center for mental health and substance-use recovery,
the Brien Center in Pittsfield, Mass.

The orchestra performed Dvóřak's Symphony no. 8.
It had its wrong notes --
there are always wrong notes when this orchestra performs --
but they performed the whole thing, with spirit.

I got to say hello to Caroline Whiddon, the executive director,
so I'm pleased about that --
she and I have been in e-mail contact for two years now,
our first meeting in person.

(They were all thrilled to be in the Berkshires with autumn color still on the trees.)