Thank you. Thank you for your patience
Trekking from office to office. Thank you.”
Sixty voices sing in unison in a large room with floor to ceiling windows at the Maybelle Center for Community. The music is prayer-like, interspersed with discordant notes that are mournful but stirring. The choir sings with reverence, in contrast to the cold language.
“Thank you for enduring the long lines,
the clutches of crying children, thank you.”
The Maybelle Community Singers includes a full spectrum of people experiencing extreme poverty, including men and women sleeping on sidewalks and in shelters, parolees with no clear access to housing, and many who are living in low-income apartments throughout Old Town.
“The community choir is the most accessible of all our programs; there are no barriers to join,” said Lucy Pawliczeck, a Jesuit Volunteer with the Maybelle Center in Old Town Portland.
The mission of the center is to help mitigate the social isolation and loneliness that is the unseen, often devastating cost of extreme poverty – an isolation intensified by mental or physical challenges, addiction or trauma.
Choir director Crystal Atkins has extensive experience building music programs for Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, as well as other underserved groups throughout Portland. Two years ago, she began working with the Maybelle singers, taking the burgeoning choir into shelters and performing flash mobs and pop-up concerts.
When the Oregon Symphony was looking for a choir made up of people experiencing housing insecurity, the Maybelle singers were the clear choice. The choir will join the full symphony May 12-14 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. They will participate in the world premiere of a commissioned work by New York composer Gabriel Kahane titled “Emergency Shelter Intake Form” under the direction of Carlos Kalmar. This is the third and last Oregon Symphony production in the series “Sounds of Home” dedicated to engaging the community in collaborative events that explore aspects of home including immigration, homelessness and the environment.
FURTHER READING: Street Roots vendor collaborates with Oregon Symphony on song for baby
The choir will share the stage with violin virtuoso Joshua Bell, who was launched into the national spotlight after performing outside a Washington, D.C., Metro station for a Washington Post experiment that resulted in a Pulitzer Prize.
The concert opens with the visual art of Paul Hindemith, reviled by the Third Reich as “degenerate” because his work dealt with homelessness. Soprano Measha Brueggergosman, Holland Andrews and Holcombe Waller will join composer Gabriel Kahane on vocals.
“Working on this project has been incredibly eye-opening,” Kahane said. “It is deeply meaningful to me that they are involved. One of the challenges of a project like this is that a symphony orchestra, historically speaking, has catered largely to people of extreme privilege — and I am also a person of extreme privilege. So there’s a disconnect with this project, in terms of the lived experience of those in the concert hall (in the audience and stage), and the subject matter. But the involvement of the Maybelle Community Singers means that we are including the voices of those who have lived the kinds of experiences that I’m trying to tackle. To have those bodies onstage, and to have those voices heard, means so much to me.”
When the piece was introduced, some choir members had strong reactions due to the subject matter. There were tears. Some even walked out.
“People took it very personally,” Atkins said. “One man returned, saying, ‘I’m OK with this because we are doing it together,’” she said.
Choir member Diane Stobaeus has been with the choir since its inception. She was living on the streets three years ago but has a home now.
“This choir is a sanctuary. Everyone speaks the language of music; there is no judgment, only love. We became a musical unity community.”
“It will be fantastic to be at the Schnitz,” said baritone Chris Topher, who describes being in the choir as uplifting. Topher was in a serious car accident in 1990 and suffered significant brain damage and memory loss. “I can’t tell you what song we’re singing, but once I’m standing there, my brain hears the tune and I remember right when to come in.”
Atkins reached out to area nonprofits for more singers when the large scope of the Oregon Symphony project became clear. Union Gospel Mission, Central City Concern, Rahab’s Sisters, Sisters of The Road, the Threshold Choir and Transition Projects have all become involved. Board members, staff and advocates will also join the choir on stage.
“All of us need to be together,” Atkins said. “Our poverty crisis is unresolved. When you hear that last note, the silence that follows is that unresolved crisis. The next step is to listen to each other.”
“For enduring this and more we are pleased to inform you
That tonight we can offer in a concrete church basement
An emergency shelter bed
You will need to be gone by six-thirty a.m.”
If you go
What: “Emergency Shelter Intake Form” by the Oregon Symphony, featuring the Maybelle Community Singers
When: 6:30 p.m. May 12 and 14, 1 p.m. May 13
Where: Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Tickets: Oregon Symphony website
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots