How One Composer Is Using Broken Instruments to Make Underfunded Music Programs Heard

by Rebecca Milzoff
Departures

David Lang’s symphony incorporates some 1,000 of the Philadelphia public school system’s instruments, all in need of repair, to call attention to programs in need of funding.

What’s the sound of a broken trombone?

For composer David Lang, that’s not a Zen koan but a very real question, one with a surprising answer. It all began last year, when Robert Blackson, director of Temple Contemporary in Philadelphia, asked Lang to compose a symphony utilizing some 1,000 of the city public school system’s instruments, all in dire need of repair, to draw attention to underfunded music programs. “I immediately got excited,” Lang says. “You have to investigate each to figure out what they can do.”