The Healing Sound Of A Broken Orchestra

Heard on All Things Considered / NPR
Download | Transcript
November 30, 2017 at 4:35 PM ET

In a cheerful rehearsal room at Temple University, a few dozen professional musicians inspect the instruments that they’ll be playing to debut an audacious piece of music by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.

The composition is called “Symphony For a Broken Orchestra” and, fittingly, these instruments are all broken.

Over 1,000 damaged instruments are languishing in what are known as “instrument graveyards” in Philadelphia’s public school system, which lacks the funds to fix them. This weekend, 400 of these instruments will be played in performance by musicians ranging from members of the Philadelphia Orchestra to public school children. The goal is to get those broken instruments repaired and back to kids.