The Atlanta Symphony at the Woodruff

Lyrics

The air here is heavy.
Not with dust. With silence.
The kind of silence that remembers sound.
I am at the podium.
The wood is worn smooth by other hands.

Before the first note, there was a hole in the sky over Paris.
1962.
A list of names on a bronze plaque in the lobby.
One hundred and six patrons, gone in an instant.
This hall is their memorial.
Built of concrete, and grief, and the civic will to make something permanent from the wreckage.

And from this podium, the city’s pulse is conducted.
A steady beat.
The downbeat of Robert Shaw in 1967.
The flourish of Yoel Levi.
The precise geometry of Robert Spano.
The fire of Nathalie Stutzmann.
Four names, one continuous breath held for decades.

I can smell the first night.
October, 1967.
Fresh varnish on the stage floor, new wool on the seats.
The first tuning, that clean A, echoing off walls that had never heard it before.
Shaw’s baton case, left right here.
Initials, R.S.
A simple tool for a monumental task.

And from this podium, the city’s pulse is conducted.
A steady beat.
The downbeat of Robert Shaw in 1967.
The flourish of Yoel Levi.
The precise geometry of Robert Spano.
The fire of Nathalie Stutzmann.
Four names, one continuous breath held for decades.

The baton passes.
1988.
2001.
2022.
The hands change, the interpretation shifts.
But the chair remains.
First violin. Second cello.
The score does not change, only the reading of it.
This is how a city learns its own story.
Note by note. Year by year.

The lights are down. The stands are empty.
But the air still holds the resonance.
The ghost of a thousand chords.
They say the first sound was A-440.
It will be the last.
A reference point.
Always.