T&E Miller Photography Music director Isaac Selya is shown at the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic’s season opening concert.
The Columbus Indiana Philharmonic will have the concert theme “Music and Mental Health: Trust Yourself,” for its Saturday concert.
The serious focus is the brainchild of retired mental health executive Roger Brinkman of Columbus and new Philharmonic Music Director Isaac Selya, who is passionate about classical music of the ages set to the rhythm and movement of modern life.
“We’re doing something really special in Columbus,” Selya said. “And that’s because orchestras across the country regularly are trying to find new ways to connect with those who don’t normally go to the symphony.
“Some orchestras, bless their hearts, are changing their programs in ways that eventually alienate those who already love classical music. … For the most part with this search, there has not been a silver bullet found.”
“So this classical program that we’re doing could be a totally normal program that classical music lovers are readily going to love. But the question is, ‘How do you position this program in such a way so that people who are not already initiated want to be involved?”
You do it, he explained, by taking a program focusing on great composers who struggled mightily with depression and use that to highlight a widespread community focus on mental health, which has come to the forefront this year like never before in Bartholomew County. So it will be at 7:30 p.m. at Judson Erne Auditorium, 1400 25th St.
The program will include works by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Jean Sibelius.
All three of the works on this program were written at points of crisis in the composers’ careers, after which they had just battled personal demons, rejections, and career setbacks. The orchestra website at the cip.org adds this caveat: “By trusting themselves and focusing on their music, they overcame negative reactions to their works.”
Tchaikovsky struggled with alcoholism and homosexuality in a time long before sexual openness. Rachmaninoff battled lifelong depression. And Sibelius fought his his own hypercritical ways regarding his own work and a brooding, isolating depression.
Organizers have made clear that these musical greats still fought tremendous adversity even after overcoming some of their obstacles.
“There’s an awful lot of stuff from their lives when you really drill down,” said Brinkman, formerly the head of emergency services for Centerstone, the local mental health agency. He also served on the Philharmonic’s music director selection committee.
The evening will include two brief pre-concert video clips of two leading local mental health professionals discussing the importance of mental health today. Plus, local resources for mental health will be highlighted.
Selya wants concertgoers to come away with a sense of hope, if you will, for the struggling.
“I believe that they will come away with beautiful tunes stuck in their head,” he said. “But in terms of focus and content, I hope that we can have some kind of ripple effect of spreading the word about local mental health resources.
“Even if there’s only one person who hears the music and the videos and learns about a resource and shares it with one person who really needs it, then that’s one life transformed or saved,” he said. “Just that single impact would be an enormous success.”
About the concert
Who: Columbus Indiana Philharmonic, under the direction of Isaac Selya.
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Judson Erne Auditorium, 1400 25th St.
Information and tickets: thecip.org
