A 'Messiah' in the Heart of Skid Row: Street Symphony's Re/Sound Festival

December 10, 2024, 3:22 PM · "Comfort ye..."

As the late-day sun shone through the high windows of the Midnight Mission gymnasium, those words from Handel's "Messiah," sung beautifully by Los Angeles Master Chorale tenor Adam Faruqi, sounded just as comforting to me as they ever have in a church.

Maybe more so.

Vijay Gupta conducts Handel's "Messiah" at the Midnight Mission in Skid Row.

The familiar music and message resonated differently in this setting, in the heart of Skid Row, surrounded by the visceral pain, want and persistent peril of those who live just outside, on the streets of Los Angeles.

This is a population - and a place - in dire need of "comfort." The venue for this concert, the Midnight Mission, is one of the few places people can find it. Midnight Mission is more than 100 years old - one of the nation's oldest shelter and housing programs, which also offers meals and 12-step recovery programs.

The "Messiah Project" was part of an all-day "Re/Sound Festival" presented Friday by Street Symphony, the organization founded in 2011 by violinist Vijay Gupta, who gave up his position in the Los Angeles Philharmonic to focus on social justice work after receiving a MacArthur fellowship in 2018.

Street Symphony founder and director Vijay Gupta and Violinist.com publisher Laurie Niles. Photo by Allan Marks.

And the festival was more than music - some 70 Street Symphony volunteers - many of them the musicians - also assembled and distributed 700 hygiene kits and served just under 800 meals that day. Street Symphony also teamed up the Department of Public Health to offer vaccinations.

In order to attend this concert, my husband Robert drove me to Skid Row - to be honest, I was afraid to park my car in this neighborhood. As we drew nearer, we saw the tents lining the sidewalks, people pushing carts piled high with street-worn possessions. A man struggled to wash himself in water blasting from a corner fire-hydrant - clothes on, water splashing off of him everywhere.

Robert dropped me off near the Midnight Mission, and as soon as he drove away, I realized that I was now completely surrounded by discomfort and desperation: a man sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk, people hungry and high, the pervasive scent of body odor, urine and fear. Where, where was the entrance to the Midnight Mission? I felt pressed to get where I was going, to find something familiar in this upsetting place.

When I first arrived, I was on the wrong side of the building and it took me some time to find my way inside. The shelter has a giant wall-like entrance, and people must pass through security to get in. Once inside, the 12 steps of recovery are embedded in 12 tiles shaped like large feet - steps - leading through an outdoor atrium into the building.

I looked down: "Step 12: Tried to help others who were lost."

Upstairs, within the padded walls of the gymnasium, it felt safer, and as I listened to Handel's "Messiah" unfolding, certain words jumped out at me and took on new meaning.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
Make straight in the desert a highway - for our God.

The gymnasium had basketball hoops, weight machines and hopeful banners on the wall about dreams and recovery. And of course on Friday, there was also music. Really beautiful music, played by musicians that included members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Master Chorale, as well as students from The Colburn School.

Colburn students who played in the "Messiah Project," with Street Symphony founder Vijay Gupta. Photo by Allan Marks.

The chorus sang...

And the glory of the Lord
Shall be revealed...

As the hall filled with their sound, a lone man made his way to the front of the room, carrying a large grey blanket. He wrapped himself a little more tightly in it, then laid down on the floor, facing the orchestra, like he was settling in for a comfortable nap. When the chorus finished that movement, everyone clapped, and that is when I noticed the man's bare feet poking out from the bottom of the blanket - he was clapping with his feet.

Vijay turned around to speak to the audience: "Skid Row is a sacred place," he said. "When we make music here, it is not a form of entertainment; art and music is a lifeline. When we make music here, there is no us and them, there is only us - all of us, making music together."

@violinistlaurie From Street Symphony’s “Messiah Project” at @The Midnight Mission in Los Angeles’s Skid Row: Ayana Haviv sings “There were shepherds” and “Gloria”. Directed by Vijay Gupta. #vijaygupta @Street Symphony ? original sound - Violinist.com

This was a three-hour concert in which selections from Handel's "Messiah" were interspersed with music from current and former residents of Skid Row, who shared with us that music was indeed not just important to them, but life-saving.

There were selections from Midnight Strings - a weekly Street Symphony program that teaches Midnight Mission residents guitar, and from Women's Voices, a singing and songwriting program that Street Symphony provides for residents of the Downtown Women’s Center.

Midnight Strings, led by Philip Graulty, included about a half-dozen people who sang and performed several songs, starting "Wayfaring Stranger," that haunting traditional melody that speaks to "traveling through this world of woe." Next was a song called "Midnight Mission," a tribute composed by Justin Berthelot, who told his story before singing his song.

"I wasn't looking for this place - it was God-sent," Berthelot told the audience. During his worst hours, he'd heard that this place would feed him, so he walked all the way down Main Street to get to the Midnight Mission. His singing seemed straight from the heart - he sang about hearing bells, calling lost souls home - "I was searching for home, I found home."

After singing, Berthelot said that "if I didn't have music in my life, I couldn't be here right now, I'd be lost. It played a pivotal role in my recovery."

The Midnight Strings led everyone - in the choir, orchestra, audience - in a singalong for their last song: "Grateful Power, Thank You" - a mantra to gratitude, also referencing that "greater power" - Step 2 in the 12-step recovery program.

About a dozen members of Women's Voices, led by Amy Fogerson, sang a song they had written together called "Break the Cycle." Their voices were magnified as the women in the "Messiah" chorus joined them, echoing the message back and forth, that "change is an inside job."

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light...

The choir sang these words, over and over and over again. Together, everyone sang "Hallelujah" - Handel's version from 1741 as well as Leonard Cohen's from 1984.

The assembled choirs sang a song by the composer Reena Esmail, "Listen," dedicated Brian Palmer, who had sung in some of Street Symphony's earliest "Messiah" performances and who passed away in 2019. It featured a quote from him: "One act of love I know for sure, is to listen."

On this day, the music and messages mixed and mingled - the pain of isolation, the wretchedness of the human condition, redemptive power of God, the power of a community to lift a single soul, the sacred obligation to accept help and then pass it along.

Certainly, the power of music helps bring us together, and it makes us listen to each other.

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