New York Commemorates 9/11

Certainly, New York was the center of all of the commemorations yesterday for 9/11. In addition to memorial programs there were also many other ways that people came out to show their support and to remember.

Virtually all of New York’s cinemas, museums, concert halls, galleries and theaters stopped their normal routines to remember. As Karen Brook Hopkins, the president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, said that many institutions “want to be gathering places for people to be able to express their feelings, be together and have an emotional connection.”

Remembering Those Who Fell

BAM screened “Manhattan” for free on Sunday. The New Yorker issued a special edition. In SoHo there was a free 15-hour long concert that featured performances by amazing New York musicians such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, David Bowie, David Byrne, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and Elliot Carter. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wordless Music Orchestra performed.

For those who were on the Lower East Side, there was a performance entitled “”From the Ashes: 10 Years Later” that featured jazz saxophonists Joe McPhee, Rob Brown and Oliver Lake.

Lincoln Center hosted “A Concert of Commemoration” with Karl Jenkins’ “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace.” As Jenkins said,

“Music has this emotive force that can move people and bring them all together. It has a healing force and a healing power and certainly a spiritual power. And I think that will be evident on this occasion.”

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway also stopped to commemorate. Choices included Rehana Lew Mirza’s “Barriers,” Steve Fetter’s “A Blue Sky Like No Other” and Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s Obie Award-winning “Invasion!”

The list of performances, concerts, plays and more went on and on and on. Hopefully, it helped people to deal with the terrible events of 9/11 and to gain more closure as they remembered those who perished on this day.