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Alton Northup

Staff writer

Political divisions in the United States, while deep, are not the cause of modern societal chaos, argued Walter Russell Mead.

“I believe we are living in a time of near-revolutionary transformation and upheaval, comparable to the Industrial Revolution and perhaps greater than that revolution in scale and scope,” he said.

Mead, who serves as the James Clarke Chance Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and the Ravenal B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, discussed the rise of the Information Revolution and its implications for American society at 10:45 a.m. Thursday in the Amphitheater, bringing his perspective to the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Three theme, “Can the Center Hold? – A Question for Our Moment.”

The Industrial Revolution radically changed society. It saw the rise of novel political systems, powerful methods of war, destruction of the environment, class struggles and the creation of the modern city. It fundamentally changed the way humans live, Mead said, and the Information Revolution will be no different.

“It will challenge our institutions, our culture, our international relations and everything else as profoundly, if not more so, than the Industrial Revolution,” he said. “It’s happening faster, and I think ultimately the changes it will bring about will be deeper and farther reaching.”

Many of the challenges of the 19th and 20th centuries are still relevant. As the United States “confronts the storm of the Information Revolution,” particularly the rapid development of technology, it can look to its ability to embrace the changes of the Industrial Revolution while remaining connected to its cultural roots.

As during the Industrial Revolution, the jobs people expected to have are now disappearing as they scramble to adjust to a change they did not want. Manufacturing and clerical work account for less than 20% of the American workforce, Mead said, compared to nearly 50% in the 1970s. This rate of decline, he said, is equal to the decline of farming during the Industrial Revolution.

A greater threat to Americans’ traditional way of life, he argued, is fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that companies discovered 50% of the population could stay home and the economy will still work, “the form of the industrial age city – that downtown, that vast conglomerate of people around so many of our political and economic institutions – is no longer necessary.”

Urban civilization faces a rapid decay threatening its tax structure, educational institutions and infrastructure, Mead said.

“It creates a level of dissatisfaction in society and instability that affects our politics and culture in all kinds of ways that are hard to measure,” he said. 

He compared the current era to the period between President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 and President William McKinley’s assassination in 1901, a time when large cities developed rapidly across the Plains amid a “great crisis of American ideology” in the shadow of reconstruction, policy failures and scandals.

Mead is hesitant to say society is near the end of that crisis – in fact, it might get worse – but there is the potential for new ideologies to emerge. Our current conception of the center is linked to the Progressive movement and upper-middle class reformers that came out of the Industrial Revolution, he said.

The general idea behind the Progressive movement was the conflict in an industrial society between the plutocrats, people of great wealth; and the proletariat, or working-class people. Reformers argued that if left unchecked, the plutocrats would wreck society with their greed. Likewise, the proletariat posed a threat to the order of society as uneducated rural farmers moved into urban centers for work.

Upper-middle class citizens wanted to lift the proletariat up through public education and regulate their behavior through policies such as Prohibition, while they pruned back plutocrats to avoid a power crisis that could lead to revolution.

“The hope was to sort of do better governance, take politics out of government and replace it with administrative governance by credentialed experts,” Mead said.

That structure worked. And it worked so well, he said, many think it is the only way society can work. But what was right for an advanced industrial society might not fit an early information society.

Plutocrats, he argued, have lost patience with the restraints imposed by economic regulations as American businesses scramble faster against international competition.

The proletariat has become less deferential. In the early 1900s, the working class was largely composed of first-generation Americans who relied on teachers, not their parents, to teach them about society and its values. As these families assimilated, this reliance on institutional figures dissipated and now “the mass of American society no longer wants experts telling it what to do – even, perhaps, in those cases where they would be wiser to listen to those experts,” Mead said.

Americans have also developed a largely individualistic society. As Americans enter the Information Age, people have linked their identities to what they consume rather than their careers, as work became repetitive and unfulfilling. And coupled with the automation and offshoring of industrial jobs, a once-powerful voter class that could single-handedly affect the economy is fading.

“The industrial working class was a different thing,” he said. “… The industrial working class as an entity that can kind of bring the country to a halt no longer exists, and instead our politics is kind of more around identity groups and smaller interest groups.”

It is difficult for the vital center to work without the gravity of working class interests in politics, Mead argued. And the fragility of this center, he said, will only get worse as novel problems fluster experts.

In the 1960s, experts were convinced they could not just predict but control the stock market. The dot-com bubble, 2000s housing bubble and the following Great Recession have proved them wrong.

Additionally, climate change will remain a consequential problem in the decades to come. And while the issue should not be politicized, Mead said, it is almost impossible for such a far-reaching, complex topic to avoid debate in Washington.

So where does this leave a place such as Chautauqua, full of people who believe public service and diligent thinking matters? Mead urged Chautauquans to answer the call of Abraham, urging them to venture into new lands of thought.

“This is not the time for us to cling to the certainties of the last 100 years,” he said.

James Buckser
Staff writer

Tim King wants to change the way we think about addiction. 

Having lived with addiction himself, King is now author of the book Addiction Nation: What the Opioid Crisis Reveals About Us and a senior fellow at Clergy for a New Drug Policy, where he works to “reframe our moral discussions about addiction, drugs, people who use drugs and drug policy.” To King, helping our country’s problem with addiction starts with cultural attitudes toward drug use, which he says is connected to faith.

King will discuss his perspective on addiction, its public perception, and its connection to faith at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy as a part of the Interfaith Lecture Series’ Week Three theme “Health and Faith: Considering the Center of Wellbeing in America,” in partnership with Interfaith America.

“I think most people, whether they are religious or not, have religious beliefs about drugs,” King said. “That has significantly hindered our ability to address problems of addiction.”

King said that part of the problem with our discussions of addiction was that “we’ve got our categories flipped.”

“What we’ve done is declared a war on drugs, when in reality, drugs are an inert substance,” King said. “When you declare war, it’s not on the drugs themselves, it’s on the people who use drugs.”

The war on drugs is not against common substances like wine, beer and chocolate, King said; it’s on drugs being used by “people who are often othered.”

“By declaring that war, we have taken what is fundamentally an issue of health and of human flourishing, and put it into a category of criminality,” King said.

The “religious” treatment of drugs is tied into ideology and rhetoric, which people talk about “as if chemicals are inherently morally evil” and must be defeated, he said. Instead, the purposes of drugs are far more varied.

“In my case, I needed to be on opioid pain medication because the condition that I was suffering from was so painful, my body might not have survived otherwise,” King said. “Fentanyl helped save my life.”

Fentanyl is one of the leading causes of overdoses in the United States, which he said stems not from the drug itself, but because people don’t know how much they’re taking or what else might be in it.

“People are dying from lack of education, from ignorance, and a lack of quality control around a substance that can be used safely and for the purpose of healing in the right context, in the right situation,” King said.

He advocates for an interdisciplinary approach to drugs, embracing the “messy intersection of faith, science, drugs and addiction,” as it says on his website, without going too far in any one direction.

Thinking of humans as “biological machines that are filled with chemical reactions” makes us miss the root causes of the overdose crisis, King said. On the other hand, if we reduce everything to the spiritual, that can make people “forget our physical realities,” and interpret drug use as “simply decisions of individuals.” At that point, we don’t see the social, historical and political “realities” that have created the current situation.

“I think that addiction has often been misunderstood,” King said. “What it is probably closest to, that a lot of people do have experience with, is faith.”

Both faith and addiction, King said, involve “persistence in a particular direction” despite negative consequences. The difference is that persistence –  when evolved into addiction – is constricting, while that same persistence channeled into faith is not.

“(Addiction) continues to shrink the circle of our attention, and eventually enwrap us in only a minute focus towards that object of our addiction,” King said. “While faith, when well-lived, continues to widen that circle out as we begin to see more and more opportunities to live out and love in our lives. But that process is incredibly similar, and people who have experienced both, I think, have an insight that not everyone else has.”

King said he hopes Chautauquans will see themselves as “part of the solution,” and see people who use drugs with more empathy, like the doctor he feels saved his life.

“(Addiction is) one of the few issue areas where the simple presence of knowledge and compassion — as opposed to judgment and stigma — has a tremendous transformative power,” King said. “I would be one of those tragic statistics today if I didn’t have someone who saw me first as a human deserving of dignity, and not first as a drug user.”

Julia Weber
Staff writer

As inflation rises and continues to take a serious toll on Americans, how long can the middle class hold on, and how does the United States’ rapidly changing economy impact its role at a global level?

Walter Russell Mead, a foreign policy expert and strategist, will provide his insight into the economic state of the country during his lecture at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater.

Mead is set to discuss the impact of the country’s ever-evolving economy on the middle class, what that means for other countries and what that means at a global level for the United States’ power.

The lecture aptly fits this week’s theme “Can the Center Hold? — A Question for Our Moment.” While other lectures focus on issues including the political landscape and family structure, Mead shifts the day’s focus to that of the economy – and by extension, the middle class. Jordan Steves, interim Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, believes that Mead will bring an important philosophical perspective to Chautauqua Institution.

“We’re examining the center, but really trying to get beyond what a lot of people think of when you say center, which is politics,” Steves said, and the hope is that this week’s programming encourages people to consider a more expansive view of the center at a conceptual level.

“Does it mean average, does it mean stable, does it mean status quo?” Steves said. “Should we be anchored to it? Should we not be anchored to it, in some cases?”

The American middle class is frequently viewed as a driving force in the United States and a grounding presence, or center of sorts, within the economy. 

Mead will bring a statesmanship perspective to a well-covered and heavily-discussed issue, providing a fresh perspective on the broader ramifications of the economy in the United States.

Mead serves as the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow at Hudson Institute and the James Clarke Chase Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.

At The Wall Street Journal, Mead writes for “Global View,” a foreign policy column. Through “Global View,” he often discusses domestic strategy and policy and offers commentary on countries including Russia, China, Britain, Ukraine, Japan and Israel.

As an author, Mead has written Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, and God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World.

Most recently, Mead wrote The Arc of A Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People, which was published last year.

In an interview with historian Harry Kreisler, Mead said while the country is sometimes reluctant to change, the economy propels America forward.

“Our economy is a transformative revolutionary force, and our democratic ideology is a transformative revolutionary force,” Mead told Kreisler. “So we are changing everything with the one hand, and with the other we’re trying to keep everything the same.”

Through his insight into the domestic economy and its broader ramifications on the world stage, Mead will examine the relationship between economics and domestic policy, international relations, what it means for us as a country and how we can maintain balance in an increasingly precarious world.

Sarah Russo
Staff writer

Principal Symphonic Conductor Rossen Milanov and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra are looking forward to saxophonist Steven Banks’ visit to the grounds for several reasons. Together, Milanov, the CSO and Banks will embark on a work so new, this evening’s concert will be one of its very first performances.

That work is composer Billy Childs’ Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, written for Banks and co-commissioned by Chautauqua Institution, and it’s on the program for the CSO’s concert at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater.

Since Childs’ concerto exploring aspects of the African American experience is so new, Milanov said, the orchestra has no recording to reference, only the score.

“I just have to wait for (Banks) to come here and see what he does with the piece,” Milanov said, adding that the CSO will have the opportunity to make changes and interpretations together at rehearsal. “It’s still a living piece.”

Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra is the centerpiece of tonight’s program, which opens with Sergei Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes and closes with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 1, Op. 13.

Composed in 1919, Overture on Hebrew Themes premiered to positive reactions, making Prokofiev known as one of the few non-Jewish composers to capture the essence of Eastern-European Yiddish music.

The piece includes a playful dance tune, introduced and expanded by the clarinet, before featuring a second melody, a melancholy lament by the cello. 

Next, the program fast-forwards to this century, showcasing the Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra.

With an “ambitious blend of feelings and sounds,” Banks’ playing portrays a “deep intimacy” and “sense of vulnerability,” according to The Cleveland Classical.

This performance will bring Milanov and Banks together for the first time, even though the pair have two other future collaborations already planned for the fall.

Milanov is “really looking forward to making music with (Banks)” and “establishing a collaboration,” he said.

“It’s kind of a unique species on its own to have the collaboration of a jazz composer and a saxophone that is sort of used in a less traditional way in the orchestra,” Milanov said.

A musical poem, the piece explores the paradigm of the forced Black American diaspora through the experience of a Black man in America. 

When Banks approached Childs, a five-time Grammy-winning jazz pianist, about creating this piece, the first thing they discussed was the narrative for the work, according to Childs in his program notes for the piece’s world premiere in February with the Kansas City Symphony. 

Inspired by the work of poet Aloysius Bertrand in Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit,” the concerto also follows three separate movements: Motherland, If We Must Die then And I Still Rise.

Motherland, based on “Africa’s Lament” by Nayyirah Waheed, creates a sense of well-being and security, felt by Africans living on the continent, before the saxophone takes an urgent tone as a battle begins. 

The second section, If We Must Die, is based around the poem of the same name by Claude McKay, and imagines the journey of people now forced to become slaves. For example, a back-and-forth between the alto saxophone and orchestra aims to convey confusion, rage and terror as families are broken apart. At the same time, themes of self-love, self-worth and self-determination are still present.

To close the Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, the Maya Angelou-influenced And I Still Rise, represents Black empowerment. A focal point for black political and cultural activism, the church is a “sanctuary providing psychological and emotional relief from the particular hardships of Black life in America,” Childs wrote. So, the final section begins with a hymn-like phrase similar to one heard in the first section’s melody. 

As the third section continues, a march featuring “victorious fanfare” concludes the concerto and signifies, as Childs wrote, that “Black people cannot and will not be held to a position of second class citizenship – we will still rise.”

To close the program, the CSO will perform Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 1, which premiered in 1897 but was not heard again for 48 years. Milanov said this is a lesser-known symphony by a familiar composer meant to complement the “symmetry” of the other two.

“The third piece is just like an archaeological discovery,” he said. “(This) particular work is sort of like a little hidden treasure.”

Alton Northup
Staff writer

As a longtime political scientist, Norman Ornstein is used to the dysfunction of Washington – the same cannot be said about the republic.

Ornstein, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, continued the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Three theme, “Can the Center Hold? – A Question for Our Moment,” at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday in the Amphitheater, replacing previously announced speaker Eric Liu, co-founder of Citizen University.

He agreed with Monday’s speaker, Bill Kristol, that the United States is a deeply divided nation. However, he disagreed with Kristol’s labeling of the issue as polarization. Tribalism, Ornstein said, is a better term for the country’s division.

He recalled the relationship between the liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy and conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch – an odd couple who had developed a personal relationship and crossed the political aisle when they felt legislation was above partisanship, most notably the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides healthcare coverage to children of low-income families.

“Polarization means that you have very different political views — but it doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to compromise, come together, and make something happen,” Ornstein said.

In the past, politicians understood that while they disagreed with their colleagues, they were still decent people trying to do the right thing for their country. Now, “it would be, ‘You’re evil and you’re trying to destroy our way of life,’ ” Ornstein said.

He attributed the rise of political tribalism to Newt Gingrich, who — years before he was Speaker of the House — was a newly elected representative for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in 1979. At the time, Democrats held a majority in the House for 27 consecutive years – something Gingrich wanted to change by “convincing people that the system was so awful and corrupt, anything would be better than what they had.” 

“That’s now metastasized from what we saw in Washington — and what I lived with for decades — around the country to states and to the public as a whole,” Ornstein said.

The result of that, he argued, is a nation living in two different worlds with two sets of facts that inform two sets of policies. In polling, the top issues for Democrats vary widely from the top issues for Republicans.

“We don’t agree on what issues are important, and we don’t agree at all on what the solutions are,” he said. “In a broader sense, we’re moving even more apart.”

At America’s founding, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists disagreed over what power national government should hold. The Federalists won, Ornstein said, and the Constitution reflects that.

Prior to the Civil War, Southern states wanted to remain in the Union, but with the freedom to enact their own policies without concern for the rest of the country. When they pushed the country to war, they lost.

“Frankly, in many ways, the Anti-Federalists and the Southerners and the Confederacy … are now winning,” Ornstein said. “We are seeing the development of separate states moving in very different directions, and the whole concept, which is essential to our society of equal protection under the law, is dissipating.”

He pointed to states now showing a “willingness to punish those who decide to go to other states to get what they believe are their rights.” In April, Idaho became the first state to pass a law restricting out-of-state travel for abortions.

This division further complicates Congress’ ability to craft laws that reflect public consensus, Ornstein said. When the nation’s framers decided the country would have a congress, instead of the familiar parliamentary system, it was because the word’s origin in Latin means “come together.”

The Founding Fathers hoped people from different backgrounds would come together, debate, then organically arrive at an agreement. This system, Ornstein said, is not possible without a common set of facts and agreed norms for disagreement.

Previously non-political issues such as disease prevention, immunizations and climate change have become political, resulting in death threats against experts such as Anthony Faucci and Peter Hotez, who now require personal protection because of their work.

“We’re not in a place where it’s simply, ‘I disagree with you,’ or ‘I  don’t think this issue is important,’ or ‘I don’t believe that there’s anything like climate change,’ ” Ornstein said. “It’s ‘If you promote that idea, we’re going to come after you.’ ”

Following the 2020 election, 23 million Americans supported installing former President Donald Trump by force if need be, Ornstein said, and 63% of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was illegitimate.

The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was not the culmination of these beliefs, Ornstein said; he thinks it will only get worse as tribalism spreads throughout American society and institutions.

The Supreme Court has made a string of controversial decisions overturning landmark rulings in recent years, garnering allegations of a politicized bench. 

“It is not good when you reach a point where you can predict the votes of justices of the Supreme Court based on which president nominated them,” Ornstein said.

He is also concerned with growing income inequality in the country. The top one-tenth of 1% of earners in the United States hold as much wealth as the bottom 80%, and the 400 wealthiest families in the country pay a lower effective tax rate than the bottom 50%, he said. Inversely, the bottom 50% hold just 1.6% of the country’s wealth.

“In any society, think back to Juan Perón’s Argentina, where you have such an enormous gap in what those at the top have and what those at the bottom don’t, it seeds for authoritarianism to arise,” he said.

Ornstein offered a solution in a program that would establish a $5,000 fund for every child that would help build retirement savings, relieve Social Security and give people a stake in society.

At an estimated cost of $4 billion in its first year, Ornstein said the program is a small price to pay in a trillion-dollar economy to give people a chance.

“If you give them a foothold in society they’re going to be less likely to say ‘let’s burn the whole thing down because it’s not going to cost us anything,’ ” he said.

Regional divides and structural issues are also causing tension in the country, he said, and would have regardless of whether Trump won the 2016 election or not.

There are dramatic political differences between metropolitans and rural areas, he said, but economic dynamisms also differ. Metropolitan areas account for two-thirds of the country’s gross domestic product and often have greater economic growth and opportunity, which can lead to political resentment in poorer areas that demand the very funds they vote against.

Soon, Ornstein said, 70% of Americans will live in just 15 states. Without a change to the current electoral system, 30% of Americans will elect 70 senators – more than the number required to override a presidential veto. That 30%, he said, does not represent the diversity of the country.

“What does it mean to be in a republic? It means that voters vote for representatives who represent them,” Ornstein said. “What happens when you have a system where increasingly people vote and they’re not represented? The outcomes do not reflect that larger public desire.”

Even without the divisions of tribalism and “Trumpism,” the country is headed toward a crisis of legitimacy, Ornstein said, and needs to seriously rethink what kind of structures are needed for the rest of the 21st century.

“If we project ahead, it’s Armageddon,” he said. “Now, I can’t say we won’t be at that point, but we’ve had a lot of resilience in this country. And frankly, it’s upon all of us to try and do whatever we can to make sure that the outcome is a very different one.”

Arden Ryan
Contributing writer

The streets of New Orleans, rich in musical tradition and heritage, were formative spots for Rodney Marsalis and the beginnings of his original brass band. The mixture of styles he was exposed to early on, and the city where he started his musical journey, continue to inform his music making and inspire the brass that Chautauquans will hear this evening.

“Growing up in New Orleans, you’re surrounded by influences from a lot of different cultures,” Marsalis said, “not seeing big borders between styles of music.”

Taking its bold yet graceful sound to the stage at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater is the Rodney Marsalis Philadelphia Big Brass, the continuation of the group Marsalis founded in Jackson Square 35 years ago. The band plays a repertoire echoing the diverse music Marsalis grew up listening to, flowing through styles with dexterity.

That blend will weave its way into the band’s selections tonight. Beginning with New Orleans jazz and moving into Baroque classical, the ensemble incorporates everything from Broadway hits by Leonard Bernstein to patriotic marches by John Philip Sousa — a wealth of styles wrapped up in one concert.

Marsalis said he marvels that the band can be playing Bach in one moment and Earth, Wind & Fire in the next, all with a positive audience response. In the end, all music aims for the same goal, he said, to “inspire you, or to move you to feel a certain way.”

Playing music is “something that we can all do as human beings, a very international language,” Marsalis said. “I first experienced that in New Orleans, and now when I travel, it’s what I try to share with the rest of the world.”

For Marsalis, the step toward becoming a musician was a natural one. He ended up playing the trumpet by virtue of his uncle, Ellis Marsalis, famed jazz pianist, music educator and patriarch of the musical Marsalis family. 

When it came time for him to choose an instrument at age six, his mother reached out to Ellis, who advised him to play the trumpet for its high stylistic versatility. Marsalis took that advice and has played trumpet ever since.

Marsalis studied under his cousin Wynton Marsalis from age 11, who continues to be “a big source of inspiration” for him. Marsalis describes his cousin Wynton as the first serious trumpet teacher he had, the first to show him the hard work and perseverance it would take to achieve mastery on the instrument. 

Marsalis said he feels fortunate to have built a “solid foundation” studying under his cousin, who “didn’t water it down.”

Leading his band beside the St. Louis Cathedral in the heart of the French Quarter, Marsalis came to know the importance of a collaborative culture in music. Naturally, the band couldn’t play forever — a 45-minute set was typical. As soon as his group came to a stop, he would signal across the plaza to another cooperating band, which would start right away so as not to lose the crowd. Marsalis’ band played a mixture of classical and marches, while its counterpart played traditional New Orleans music.

“We just would do that all afternoon. Everyone made money and people heard this huge variety of music,” Marsalis said. “(Music is) how we come together without the burden of race and religion and gender. It’s the one place where we can all connect as human beings.”

​​Marsalis said his band is thrilled to be returning to Chautauqua, a place he describes as able to foster musical connection between people, and where the group’s long pandemic isolation came to an end.

“We hadn’t performed together in 18 months, and the very first time I got to play again musically with my colleagues was when we rehearsed at Chautauqua. It’s a very special place for us,” Marsalis said. “Emerging from the pandemic and being able to collaborate again feels almost like a renaissance of the arts. It’s really wonderful to be a part of it.”

A major tenet of Marsalis’ work is to thoroughly incorporate diversity into the brass ensemble, which he said is not a hard task. 

With “so many qualified and amazing musicians of all different walks of life… I reach out to people and see who’s available, and the band just always looks like a cross section of America,” he said. “To me, that’s natural.”

James Buckser
Staff writer

After travel delays and schedule changes, Eboo Patel will speak today at 2 p.m. as a part of the  Chautauqua Institution’s Interfaith Lecture Series and its Week Three theme “Health and Faith: Considering the Center of Wellbeing in America,” held in partnership with Interfaith America.

Patel is the founder of Interfaith America, an organization aiming, according to its website, to “unlock the potential of America’s religious diversity,” and is collaborating with the Institution to host this week’s Interfaith Lecture programming. Patel was set to open the week on Monday; Wendy Cadge delivered that day’s Interfaith Lecture instead.

An author and an educator, Patel is a former member of President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Faith Council and longtime friend of the Institution. 

Melissa Spas, vice president of religion at Chautauqua, called this relationship “incredibly productive.”

Patel will address public health, mental health and “individual experiences of wellness and illness” as they relate to Interfaith America’s mission, Spas said.

“It’s sort of a broad topic,” she said. “But all focused on that intersection of faith or spirituality with health-related concerns.”

While Spas said this talk will be Patel’s only public event, Chautauqua Institution is playing host to a group of representatives this week from Interfaith America, who are having their own discussions on the intersection of faith and health.

The partnership between the two organizations has been valuable, she said, “not only in programming this week together, but sort of more broadly, in expanding our network and helping us to think creatively about some of the frontiers or edges of faith and health work.”

Kaitlyn Finchler
Staff writer

To build a society with a strong center, as Norman Ornstein sees it, Americans need to consider inequality in all sectors, rather than jumping to a willingness for violence when they feel their way of life is threatened.

Ornstein, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, will continue the conversion begun by Bill Kristol and Angela Garbes for Week Three of the Chautauqua Lecture Series, “Can the Center Hold? — A Question for Our Moment.”

A frequent Chautauqua Lecture Series and Everett Jewish Life Center contributor, Ornstein will deliver his lecture at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater, replacing Citizen University co-founder Eric Liu, who was unable to attend.

“I’m going to go through some of the deeper causes of political dysfunction and societal division we have at the moment that go beyond the political polarization and tribalism,” Ornstein said. “I’ll talk about the historical structural issues that we have that go beyond the current situation that would be there if Donald Trump had never been around.”  

Agreeing with Kristol’s sentiments in Monday’s lecture, Ornstein said “horrible” things can happen and the country is at an “existential moment” when solutions are needed to ameliorate these problems.

The United States has become a “modern society that creates situations where voting doesn’t reflect what people are voting for,” he said, which reinforces that the country “is a republic, not a democracy.”

“We’re going to see that expand more and more over the next decade,” Ornstein said. “Even if we didn’t have some of the cultural dysfunction that we have right now, we would have a crisis of legitimacy in the political system.”

The problem at this point, he said, is a cultural one where “two different societies” have two different sets of facts, priorities and “a belief that the other side is evil.”

“That has to be dealt with, but it’s really hard to do,” Ornstein said. “You have to start with some structural reforms and then … deal with the problems of income and wealth inequality that could create at least a little bit of a better balance.”

There is “some reason for hopefulness,” Ornstein said, with people on both sides of the political divide who “don’t want to see this society collapse into a civil war.”

An “overwhelming” majority of people agree on similar issues across the political spectrum, Ornstien said in regard to Garbes’ Tuesday lecture, and they agree on another problem to work on solving.

There cannot be a strong and successful political center without “significant political reform,” he said. Whenever people try to move toward this goal, Ornstein said there’s “enormous, centrifugal forces” that pull them apart.

As an expert who writes about Congress, and who has many friends in Congress, Ornstein has had to contemplate whether or not he would “call them out” in his columns.

“So much of the problem we have with modern-day journalism is both sides,” he said. “You’re going to be very reluctant to call out one side, even if they are the root of the problem, without trying to show balance.”

Since he’s immersed in the political system, Ornstein said it’s easier to “take a step back and see what it takes to make something work or not.” He was heavily involved in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act with former U.S. senators John McCain and Russ Feingold.

“What we realized is that the original McCain-Feingold Bill … didn’t have a chance of being implemented into law,” Ornstein said. “My little group put together a package which we called ‘Five Ideas for Campaign Reform.’ ”

Ornstein then went to McCain and had to tell him his “signature bill” wasn’t going to work. 

“I was afraid he’d throw me out of the office,” Ornstein said. “But he said to me, ‘OK, I don’t want just an issue. I want a law. What do we do?’ ”

He then worked with both McCain and Feingold to add elements into the bill to be more “practical,” with a greater likelihood of passing “court muster.”

Back when the Supreme Court was “fairly reasonable,” Ornstein said citizens “blew up” over the bill in a targeted and “miraculous” way. 

While working at AEI, Ornstein said he had “complete freedom” to do and say what he wanted. 

“I’m sure I gave (AEI) a lot of heartburn,” he said. “But I was able to still do what I thought was right.”

Alton Northup
Staff writer

Angela Garbes is on a mission to redefine motherhood and domestic work.

“I believe that raising children, caring for the elderly, caring for the disabled – I don’t see those things as individual responsibilities,” she said. “I see them as social responsibilities that we all have a stake in.”

Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, discussed her views on motherhood and caregiving, and how they are central to society, at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday in the Amphitheater for the second day of the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Three theme, “Can the Center Hold? – A Question for Our Moment.”

Garbes, the child of Filipino immigrants, grew up with an up-close perspective of care; her mother was a hospice nurse and her father was a pathologist. 

She remembered the late nights her mother worked, sometimes taking shifts as long as 14 hours, and the people her mother helped. Her mother still receives cards from her patients’ family members; some have credited her with helping them overcome their fear of death.

“I think it is just holy work, to take care of people in their most vulnerable times, to give dignity and choice to what they’re doing,” she said.

With two parents in healthcare, their home centered around care. When Garbes had a sore throat, her father would spring to get tests done at his work, and both of her parents discussed death regularly at home.

“Their work democratized human bodies,” she said. “I saw that no matter how much money you have, … no one escapes illness; no one escapes death.”

When Garbes became a parent herself, she said she finally understood the sacrifices her parents made to raise her. After she started writing her book, which tells the history of caregiving in the United States, she learned how her family contributed to it.

In 2020, Garbes joined more than 1 million women who left the workforce, according to Fortune, deciding to care for her children as preschools and daycare centers closed across the nation.

“While I believe that was the most important thing I could be doing, keeping them safe and keeping our community safe, I felt this tension,” she said. “It wasn’t enough for me.”

At a time where they were needed the most, it seemed caregivers had become invisible. With her book, Garbes said she wanted to understand the reasons behind this feeling.

While researching, she found that Filipino nurses accounted for more than 25% of COVID-related nursing deaths, despite making up just 4% of the U.S. nursing population. After digging further, she discovered minorities and immigrants often took healthcare positions that white nurses did not want, such as those in critical care units. Each statistic reminded Garbes of the sacrifices her mother made for her family and her career.

But the issues for care workers, a profession largely made up of minorities, did not start with the pandemic; child care and domestic workers in the United States are three times more likely to live in poverty than the rest of the population, Garbes said.

“We devalue care and domestic labor and the women who do that work,” she said. “It’s a direct result of American slavery.”

Domestic care, Garbes argued, is central to a functioning society. But the ending of slavery, and the later rise of feminism, never solved the issue of domestic labor. Instead, she said, it just outsourced the work to people of color for low wages.

With little systemic support or economic initiative, these caregivers are quickly leaving their jobs. There are now 400,000 fewer elderly care workers in the country, 100,000 fewer childcare workers and 12,000 fewer childcare centers since the start of the pandemic.

“Our country hasn’t set us up with the structures to value care work,” Garbes said. “But that doesn’t mean that we can’t start working on those things.”

Her solution is to create a culture of care where mothering – a term she uses to incorporate all types of caregivers, including sisters, aunties and friends – is a priority.

“Mothering is the work that makes all other work possible,” she said.

She encouraged people to speak openly about who they are caring for and who is caring for them, especially in the workplace. The United States. is the only developed country that does not mandate paid family leave, despite eight out of 10 voters supporting the issue. The country has a caring majority that needs to act, Garbes said.

“Care feels private and individual; it is deeply unifying,” she said. “It’s one of the most unifying things we have as humans.”

 Those who hire domestic workers in their homes can work with organizations, such as Hand and Hand: The Domestic Employers Network, to write contracts that include fair pay and benefits.

People can also show their care within their community, such as babysitting a friend’s baby or being there for advice. Garbes said she loved Chautauqua’s “intentional community” where people slow down, open their porches for conversation and consider ways their actions can improve the community.

“I really think showing up and communicating and having those real connections, that’s it,” she said. “… I have so much more love to give than I thought.”

Sarah Russo
Staff writer

Two imaginative pieces — one inspired by death and the other by storytelling — diverge in mood, but not in skill, for tonight’s Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra program.

Under the baton of Rossen Milanov, music director and principal symphonic conductor, the CSO will perform at 8:15 p.m. in the Amphitheater. 

The program opens with Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ Valse Triste, or “sad waltz,” which is paired with Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Op. 35. 

While Sibelius’ Valse Triste creates a mysterious and eerie feeling, the final selection of Scheherazade provides a contrast, Milanov said.

“Once we get to the second piece on the program, I think that explosion of flavors and colors would be something that would be in a very good contrast with somewhat darker and brooding piece such as Valse Triste,” Milanov said. 

Originally composed for a 1903 production of the play Kuolema, or “Death” in Finnish, by Arvid Järnefelt, the piece captures the sense of haunting memories recollected in old age.

Valse Triste originated as the first of six numbers Sibelius composed as incidental music for the play written by his Sibelius’ brother-in-law. The plot revolves around a denial of death by the play’s protagonist, Paavali, whose dying mother tells him she dreamed of attending a ball. 

When the son falls asleep, Death enters and the mother dances with him, thinking it is her deceased husband. Then the son wakes up to find her dead. 

In the premiere in 1903, Kuolema’s six pieces were originally scored for strings including bass drum and church bells. In 1904, Sibelius revised Valse Triste, and added one flute, two clarinets, two horns, and timpani to the score. 

“The bigger weight of the piece falls on the string section, because it has a relatively smaller size ensemble without that much, I would say, flavors. … You have only a flute, a clarinet, two horns and timpani,” Milanov said. 

Valse Triste features many efforts of resolution and a sense of unsettled harmony. Patterns in the rhythm also blur the meter to produce the effect of a hesitation waltz, Milanov explained. Sibelius’ Valse Triste presents a false sense of celebration immediately with the opening waltz theme. An eerier section begins to drown out the other themes, leading to a dramatic climax. The melody eventually dies away in a dark cadence for solo string quartet, Milanov shared. 

While Sibelius’ Valse Triste creates a mysterious and eerie feeling, Scheherazade is distinctly different.

 , Op. 35 is based on the tales of The Arabian Nights, originally portrayed by Rimsky-Korsakov’s as general and atmospheric. But, it evolved into storytelling in musical form with each movement of the suite bearing the name of one of the tales.

“It’s very intriguing work … and also a beautiful symphonic work that has its own symphonic logic and uses these recurring themes,” Milanov said. 

As the story of The Arabian Nights goes, Scheherazade is the young bride of the Sultan. After one of his wives cheats on him, he decides to take a new wife every day and have her executed the next morning. But it all stops with Scheherazade. 

She marries the Sultan in order to save all future young women from this fate. She tells the Sultan fascinating stories, leaving him in such suspense each night that he can’t execute her the next morning for fear of not hearing the end of the story. After 1,001 of these well-told tales, the Sultan relents. 

“It features great instrumental solos for almost any instrument in the orchestra … and there will be something very difficult and very beautiful and challenging,” Milanov said. “So it’s kind of a great groundbreaking piece because it was conceived not only as a piece of storytelling with music, but also to display a purely virtuosic nature of what the instrument could do.”

Stacey Federoff
copy desk chief

To tell the story of Chautauqua through opera, librettist Jerre Dye recalled sharing coffee with a longtime Chautauquan, eavesdropping on park benches and poring over the archives.

“Chatauqua is a place full of stories,” he said. “One only has but to listen.”

Now, those stories are taking shape as part of The Summer Place, a new opera co-commissioned by Chautauqua Opera Company and Opera Memphis with generous support of the Chautauqua Opera Guild. Two parts, A.E. Reverie and Love, Loss and the Century Upon Us, are set to be performed from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. today in Fletcher Music Hall. The full piece, featuring five total parts and transitions in between, will premiere next year to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the Institution.

Dye began working on the idea in 2016 with Steven Osgood, general and artistic director of the Chautauqua Opera Company. The pair then brought on board composers Kamala Sankaram and Rene Orth, and dramaturg Ned Canty, all of whom will be a part of today’s reading.

Orth said she had been wanting to work with Dye for several years, while Sankaram worked with Osgood for last summer’s production of Thumbprint.

“One of the really lovely things about these pieces is that they have themes that are universal, which I know is the point of the conversations that take place at the Institution anyway,” Sankaram said. 

She composed the music for A.E. Reverie, set in 1929, featuring a young woman on an “emotional journey” after seeing Amelia Earhart touch down at Chautauqua.

“It inspires an opening up of her worldview in many different ways,” Sankaram said.

Love, Loss and the Century Upon Us, composed by Orth, focuses on a young couple in 1899 who are on a date while seeing the electric lights on the grounds, which was a noteworthy event in the age of Thomas Edison’s new invention.

The couple have opposing views of technology, Canty said, calling the piece a short romantic comedy.

“It’s a rarity (in opera), but it’s lovely, and that is part of the goal is showing the full complexity of Chautauqua,” he said.

Both pieces connect through longing, wanting and looking toward the future, Dye said. In 2024, The Summer Place will feature several site-specific performances on the grounds of the Institution. Showcasing a preview of the piece in these immersive settings, the two-part reading will be performed again at 7:15 to 7:45 p.m. July 18 outside the Athenaeum Hotel.

The reading comes just after a community meeting Monday to address the way forward for the Chautauqua Opera Company and Conversatory, which addressed the “renewed vision” for the program next year and in 2025 due to budget concerns. Under consideration in the future, as announced July 4, Chautauqua Opera may shift focus exclusively as an incubator for new works such as The Summer Place. Osgood said at the meeting that 2024 may be a “transitional year” that will bring this piece and other chamber operas to production.

In the new work of The Summer Place, the “chapters” of the full story remain more open-ended than many traditional operas, inviting the viewer to “think about the future of these people that you’re seeing,” Canty said.

Sankaram said telling these stories through opera enables music to become a “direct window” in to what it feels like to visit Chautauqua, even if they’ve never been here before.

“… (They) will still have an understanding of what (Chautauqua) is and the kinds of emotions that (Chautauqua) creates in people,” she said. “… That’s what opera does.”

While honoring the Institution’s milestone with performances here next year is where the opera will start, Dye said the hope of everyone involved is that the piece is performed to wider audiences — much like the idea of “Chautauqua” as a incubator for education, curiosity and imagination that spread long ago.

“Chautauqua fits in to the fabric of America in such a strange and wonderful way,” he said. “I’m happy to be an evangelist for that.”

Arden Ryan
contributing writer

America relies on the work of caregivers just as much as it relies on professional work. Yet that domestic labor, that “essential labor,” is not being equally supported.

Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, writes about motherhood and caregiving in modern society.
She said she believes the free domestic work underpinning American capitalism is being taken for granted.

At 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater, Garbes will bring her knowledge and reflections on caregiving and mothering in America to the Chautauqua Lecture Series. Garbes will advocate for the value of parents in a society that “fundamentally devalues” women and parenthood, she said, specifically women of color in America.

The American capitalist system was established to and is intent on keeping women in the home, Garbes said. Women are prohibited from equal access to health care and family planning, so they may continue to “take care of the next generation of workers and consumers,” perpetuating an “inhumane” system. People of color specifically are “trapped in poverty,” by restrictions to childcare, producing more children all the while.

“To me, there’s a direct line between … a country that doesn’t value women … and a country that makes decisions about (women’s bodies) and about reproductive freedom,” Garbes said.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced school closures, parents were stuck at home. The most privileged families realized that when outside caretakers weren’t available, they had to care for their children themselves, Garbes explained.

The first year schools remained closed, nearly 1 million women stepped out of the professional workforce in a single month — September 2020. Parents couldn’t keep up full-time jobs and also care for their home and children.

This reckoning revealed deep cracks in the care system, coupled with the pandemic, making income disparity as apparent as ever. People are coming to realize that life in the current moment isn’t working in everyone’s favor, Garbes said.

“Women of color specifically are overrepresented in service jobs,” Garbes said, at places such as restaurants, beauty salons, childcare centers. 

“In the early days of the pandemic, those places shut down, some of them never to reopen,” she said. “We saw the rates of unemployment for women of color skyrocket,” driving up economic inequality.

At the same time, the United States is lagging dramatically behind peer countries in support for family care, not guaranteeing access to affordable childcare or universal paid leave.

“I believe having health care and family leave are human rights,” Garbes said, and “what we need to exist fully in this world.” The majority of countries in the developed world provide for these rights, and “the United States does not. It’s a very specific culture that we’re living in.”

Garbes noted that a strong majority, eight out of 10 voting Americans, support paid leave policies and funding for in-home care. The issue reaches beyond party lines; a “caring majority” want to support care workers. 

Yet “our politicians are failing us, the constituents,” she said. “Political promises (for affordable childcare) have not been fulfilled. That’s not individuals’ fault. I see families doing the most that they can.”

Supporting younger generations is crucial to the future of society, Garbes said, something which she feels the United States has yet to fully realize. 

Countries that support “robust family leave understand that investments in family are investments in the future,” Garbes said, noting that “many issues could be solved, or at least significantly addressed and changed, by investing in people and families at a young age.”

Despite the weaknesses laid bare by the pandemic, Garbes’ most recent book, Essential Labor, was written “in the spirit of hope,” she said, speaking to a time in American life where people are coming to understand the insufficiencies of the care system and the ways it should be improved.

“We all feel care is an (individual) burden, when in fact, it’s actually a really unifying force. Everyone needs care,” Garbes said. “It’s possible for you to be doing what you’re doing today, because someone cared for you.”

Many people assume generally that “care needs are private,” she said, “individual responsibilities (one is) not supposed to talk about.” 

However, talking about care more openly, communicating on an issue that can bridge divides, is just what is needed in this moment, Garbes said.

“Conversations about care … have great potential to unite people around ideas of what we need and deserve,” she said. Sharing stories of care can connect people on an “emotional, personal” level. She encourages everyone to have conversations about care, with which everyone can resonate.

As Garbes said, shared burdens make them “feel lighter, more manageable, like we can laugh and take a break while doing work together.” 

She said she feels fortunate to have her parents close to home to “lean into” when needed for help with her children.

 “I ask for help a lot, I accept help when it’s offered to me, and I ask how I can be of help to other people,” Garbes said, who finds a “cyclical” balance between providing care to her family while taking time for her professional career.

“I feel like when my community is doing well, I’m doing well,” she said. “And when I’m doing well, I have energy to put back into my community.”

Garbes said she will assert in her lecture that our society should grant people the time and space to provide care to all who need it, “some of the most important work that we can be doing.”

How does Garbes find care in her own life? By utilizing an extended network of friends and family members, with whom she trades off the responsibilities of childcare, carpooling together and watching each other’s kids.

“I allow my children to be cared for by other people, (who) welcome the opportunity to care for them,” she said, urging reciprocity with care duties.

“Once you start reorienting your life around not just caring for other people but being cared for, … it’s the best feeling in the world,” she said. “You just want more of it.”

James Buckser
Staff writer

Laurel Braitman is a storyteller working in the world of medicine. As the founder of Writing Medicine and director of writing and storytelling at the Stanford School of Medicine, Braitman works to get doctors writing, not just for patient communication, but also for their own wellness.

Braitman will bring her knowledge to Chautauqua Institution’s Interfaith Lecture Series as a part of this week’s theme “Health and Faith: Considering the Center of Wellbeing in America,” Chautauquans can hear her talk, “Birds of Pray” at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, joined by Ulysses Burley III.

In her new book What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss and Love, Braitman traces the knowledge she gained on the path to become the person who she is today, which she plans to share.

“I’m going to be talking about my own journey, that I now help other people go on,” Braitman said. “Part of how I started on that journey is because I am the daughter of a physician who was dying my whole life.”

Her father, who suffered from terminal cancer, worked outdoors as a farmer and rancher in addition to his career as a physician.  Aside from his career as a physician, he was also a farmer and rancher, working outdoors. Braitman said the way she made sense of what was happening in her life was “often wrapped up” in her family’s interactions with the natural world, something not often discussed in medicine. When she began teaching at Stanford, she told the university she didn’t want to teach inside of a classroom.

“I only wanted to teach on farms outside. I wanted people’s cell phones not to work; ideally, too, there would be farm animals and there would be healthy food,” Braitman said. “To this day, that is how I continue to teach.”

Braitman is a writer, teacher, and secular clinical chaplain-in-training. She holds a doctoral degree in History and Anthropology of Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Author of two books, Braitman’s work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, and National Geographic. 

She first made connections with the Stanford School of Medicine during the research process for her new book.

“When I started, I thought it would be really different,” Braitman said. “I thought I was going to write a book about how doctors die.”

Braitman said she thought that doctors, frequently dealing with death, might experience it differently than the general public. 

She wanted to report that story in a medical setting, which led her to Stanford and Audrey Shafer, an anesthesiologist and poet, who started the medical humanities and arts program.

“She welcomed me in and she and her team made me a position,” Braitman said.

While she said she initially thought she was there “selfishly” reporting for her book, she soon found more.

“I wanted to do something in exchange,” Braitman said. “I found that most clinical students and most physician faculty weren’t getting much communications training.”

Braitman said she thought it was “unfortunate” that healthcare professionals were lacking in this aspect, because they help people make difficult choices.

“They have to be really good communicators of public health, science, and medicine,” Braitman said. “We expect them to do that, but we don’t always give them skills to do that.”

Braitman is also training to become a secular chaplain, which she said is in demand as more people lead secular lives while still wanting “spiritual companionship” during difficult moments.

“I don’t think you have to be a believer in an organized religion or even consider yourself … ‘a spiritual person’, whatever that means, to want to have someone by your bedside that can help you think through and find meaning in what you’re going through,” Braitman said.

Braitman hopes Chautauquans will leave her talk with a new perspective on difficult situations, finding and making meaning in their “toughest moments,” and seeing their grief as a “superpower.”

“Once you’ve lost something, you are marked,” Braitman said. “Grief makes you see a new color, taste a new taste. It’s like a new sensibility that makes your life more meaningful. It makes you less likely to take things for granted.”

Alton Northup
Staff writer

While the United States’ political center has not crumbled yet, Bill Kristol warns we cannot ignore the cracks.

Kristol, whose long list of credentials includes former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, founder of The Weekly Standard, and editor-at-large of The Bulwark, opened the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Three theme, “Can the Center Hold? – A Question for Our Moment,” at 10:45 a.m. Monday in the Amphitheater.

The erosion of the United States’ political center is the result of many factors, Kristol said, including fading communities and population spread. However, he considers President Donald Trump to be the driving force behind polarization in the country.

“The assumption has always been that even if you run a somewhat polarizing – I would say demagogic – campaign … the campaign ends and you overcome that rhetoric,” he said. “…Honestly, President Trump didn’t try to even overcome it as president. He doubled down on it.”

Kristol, who left the Republican Party after Trump’s nomination for the presidency in 2016, said the former president’s approach to politics has since trickled down to candidates at every level of government.

Polite discourse on policy has given way to personal attacks and fear mongering on the debate stage, and even in our communities, he said.

“When the whole country becomes gripped by the kind of affective polarization where you believe the worst about your opponents, you call them enemies, not opponents,” Kristol said. “You think of them as enemies; you think of them as more dangerous to the country than actual enemies who are brutally invading other countries abroad – that’s a very hard situation to maintain a kind of healthy civic life, or healthy politics.”

Past presidents, Kristol said, understood that their role as head of state meant they represented the whole of the nation – not 51% of it. He said that Trump’s critics felt vindicated following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and hoped the rest of the Republican Party would finally agree he had become too radical.

Now, with Trump as the frontrunner for the party’s 2024 nomination, Kristol said the country is no less polarized now than it was in the last few weeks of his presidency. Still, there is hope for the center. But Americans need to decide if they want it.

“We want a society with vigorous debate. … We shouldn’t overly romanticize centrism,” he said.

People often reflect on a bygone era of bipartisanship where members of Congress would sit down for a drink and work on policy together, he said. It is not as nostalgic, Kristol argued, when you consider the policies they wrote were often exclusory and not made to benefit most Americans.

Instead, the focus should be on shared ground rules for debate. The true center, he said, is healthy disagreement. It is by the Founding Fathers’ design that “the American political system anticipates conflict.”

“Just to operate decently as a polity, as a political system, as a society – one needs a functioning center,” Kristol said.

He drew on the poem “The Second Coming,” written by William Butler Yeats in the fallout of World War I, from which the week’s theme takes its name: “ ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. … The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’ ”

For many in Europe, the poem was a premonition of an approaching second world war. It was a time, Krisol said, when the center had truly collapsed, and Yeats understood the implications of that.

“… And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” the poem concludes.

Anarchy, Kristol said, always leads to something worse. In this case, it brought the rise of fascism and a previously unknown destruction to Europe. But still, the center prevailed, and functioning liberal democracies now govern much of the continent.

“It’s a good reminder that the center may not hold, … but we are eager to reconstruct,” he said.

Kristol said if Americans want to prevent the center from falling, they need to be vigilant. 

He often encourages young people, and especially military veterans, to get involved in politics. He said he hopes the post-Sept. 11 generation can replicate the Greatest Generation, who he credits for holding the center together after World War II. 

In 2019, he founded Democracy Defending Together – an advocacy organization responsible for projects such as Republican Voters Against Trump and Republicans for the Rule of Law.

“This is a very important moment for the future of our country and, I would say, for the world,” Kristol said. “We can’t just assume the system’s going to work it all out.”

Mariia Novoselia
Staff writer

Three compositions, two conductors, two centuries and 82 music students will make for one impressive concert, as the Music School Festival Orchestra will perform a repertoire varied in style and historical backgrounds at 8:15 p.m. Monday, July 10, 2023, in the Amphitheater. 

Timothy Muffitt, conductor and MSFO artistic director, said the orchestra’s 2023 cohort has already come far, considering that they started out just three weeks ago without knowing each other at all. And Ryo Hasegawa, the 2023 David Effron Conducting Fellow, said the performances will only continue to get better.

Akin to the MSFO’s opening concert last week, the repertoire tonight consists of three pieces. Muffitt said his primary objective in choosing pieces for the concert is “creating a great experience for the students.” This, he said, means a high level of involvement from everyone in the orchestra, as well as a broad variety of musical styles.  

The orchestra’s evening consists of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1; Dvorak’s “Carnival” Overture; and Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber composed by Paul Hindemith. Muffitt said the Hindemith has a peculiar style. 

“It’s very German; it’s highly controlled, focused, clear music,” he said. At the same time, the piece contains elements of jazz. Together, these two features provide what Muffitt called “an interesting perspective on our unique American musical style.”

Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto was selected by Julimar Gonzalez, a violinist who, Muffitt said, has been part of the orchestra for years. He said the work presents “a remarkably broad arch” alternating between “a very dark and inward-looking first movement” and “a hair-raisingly exciting finale.” 

Muffitt said the audience can expect a wild ride, especially in the hands of Gonzales, winner of last year’s Sigma Alpha Iota competition, carrying with it a $1,000 prize and the chance to select a piece for the MSFO to perform. 

Despite being composed within just a few years from each other, Symphonic Metamorphosis and Violin Concerto are drastically different. Both pieces were composed in the 1940s, but under very different circumstances. 

Muffitt said Hindemith was free to create in any style of music, whereas Shostakovich, being a Soviet composer, was scrutinized by Josef Stalin and would often “run afoul” of the government. For the fear of “being hauled off to prison,” Muffitt said, his music is “somewhat complicated in terms of … its intent or its inspiration.”

Effron Conducting Fellow Hasegawa chose Dvorak’s “Carnival” Overture, with the MSFO will perform under his baton. The work, he said, is about humanity and does a great job depicting a festival, featuring distinct scenes.

“It’s almost like you’re reading a story or some sort of narrative,” Hasegawa said. Starting with a joyous carnival, where everyone is dancing around and having fun, the music transitions into a traditional Czech song, after which it changes gears and embraces the theme of love.

In March, after a day of hiking in the woods in West Virginia with no cell phone service, Hasegawa got the news about being chosen as this year’s fellow. He began conducting in college and is now pursuing a doctoral degree in orchestral conducting at Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. 

“As conductors, we are totally powerless if we don’t have musicians to make music with,” Hasegawa said. “I think it’s a privilege for me to have these great, wonderful musicians in the orchestra – very talented, very passionate, very kind and fun to work with.”

Violinist Nora Wang said her favorite piece from tonight’s repertoire is Dvorak’s overture. She’s been playing the instrument since she was 4 years old. Sixteen years later, she said, her favorite thing about violin is “bringing your own creativity to the piece.” 

While the notes are the same for all musicians, she said, everyone interprets them in their own way.  

“It’s really fun to see how different people bring their energies and their own ideas to the same work,” she said.

This summer is Wang’s first season at Chautauqua. She said her schedule has been vigorous, with a lot of opportunities to practice solos, chamber music and orchestral playing. She said she was very grateful for the opportunity to work with the conductors. 

“I think it’s really wonderful that everyone can come together and unite under the conductors to create something that’s bigger than themselves,” Wang said. 

In his second season with MSFO, Danny Sesi, a 22-year-old double bassist from Ann Arbor, Michigan, has enjoyed being back at to Chautauqua.

“It’s quiet, but it has all the artistic and cultural offerings of a major city during the summer,” Sesi said. 

As a conductor, one of Hasegawa’s convictions is that “music should be shared,” and he is excited to do just that with the July 10 performance.

Sarah Russo
Staff writer

During the pandemic, like the rest of the world, Brooklyn Rider met on Zoom. The group used the time to play together and dream up new projects. During one of those sessions, the members of the string quartet began to ask a very important question: What is the world going to be focused on in the future? 

Climate change and the stewardship of  the planet surfaced as their answer, and soon “The Four Elements” was created. In partnership with the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative, Brooklyn Rider will take the stage as part of the Chautauqua Chamber Music’s Guest Artist Series at 4 p.m. today in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall. 

“Music sometimes could change the world in really unexpected ways,” said Brooklyn Rider violist Nicholas Cords. “And if it’s just a matter of the people in the room gathered around an idea, I think that’s justification enough for what we do.”

In addition to Cords, the ensemble is comprised of Johnny Gandelsman on violin, Colin Jacobsen on violin and Michael Nicolas on cello. For their more-than 15 years of collaboration, the group has created more than a dozen projects with careful selections and theming. 

While he understands that this project can’t solve climate change, Cords said he hopes it will begin a conversation. 

“We wanted to do something that was going to celebrate the planet that we live on,” Cords said. “Its beauty, its mystery.  (We) also wanted to do something that was trying to point the way towards the future and have a program that is based on listening and conversation.” 

“The Four Elements” abbreviated program will feature pieces representing earth, air, fire and water. 

Cords said the pieces the group chose were either based on symbolism and emotions, the history of a composer, the time period when the piece was written, or the feelings associated with the piece.

Even with a small group featuring only two violins, one viola and one cello, the messages in the music are clear.

“What’s special about this program at Chautauqua is that it’s a quartet only, so it’s quite intimate,” Cords said. “How expansive can we create? What kind of expansive world can we create with a string quartet where we’re never in the same place twice in a program, so that it really makes a journey from beginning to end? I think with the collection of pieces that we’re playing, I think we will be able to do that.”

For the piece representing earth, Brooklyn Rider will perform “Short While to Be Here” based on American traditional folk songs collected by Ruth Crawford Seeger and arranged by Jacobsen. Each of Seeger’s folk songs are in some way about animals.

“It’s … a celebration of those traditional tunes,” Cords said. “But in Colin’s hands it becomes a totally different piece.” 

The original program includes “Tenebrae” by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Goliath and is used to represent water; however, for the program at Chautauqua, Brooklyn Rider has included a collaboration with pianist and composer Conrad Tao.

Inspired by rising sea levels, Tao composed a piece referencing mythical wave spirit Undine. Through the music, Tao imagines how a modern version of Udine has influenced the changing way of life for people affected by the rising sea. 

Cords called Tao’s musical language “really gorgeous,” creating the “perfect” piece for water. 

To represent air, Brooklyn Rider sought out Andrea Pinto Correa, a young Portuguese composer. Her piece is inspired by dust storms from the Sahara Desert affecting her country, including the shifting of sand particles around the globe with climate change playing a role in how the storms are changing.

Collaborators, like Pinto Correa, are “always bringing something to the table that expands the (group’s) creative and expressive possibilities,” Cords said.

For the final element, fire, Brooklyn Rider chose Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8. The group incorporated a post-World War II, potentially familiar piece “because the last hundred years has been such an accelerator of issues related to climate,” Cords said.

After the performance, the audience is invited to participate in a conversation including insights from Mark Wenzler, director of Chautauqua’s Climate Change Initiative.

“When we’re talking about something so big, so overarching, music is actually the perfect container for that because (it) contains multitudes,” Cords said. “Then to actually have a conversation with the audience afterward. Chautauqua is exactly that place for thoughtful dialogue. We have no illusion that what we’re doing is trying to solve this topic, but if it engenders a good, thoughtful conversation, I think that’s a win.”