New Haven Independent

Few concerts make genuine news, but this one did. Nathaniel Kahn, the son of architect Louis I. Kahn, and Richard Saul Wurman, the man who wrote the first biography of Kahn, were among 1,000 people spread out across the green expanse of Quinnipiac River Park in Fair Haven on a perfect Saturday night in June. They were there to hear the final Arts & Ideas festival concert of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra (AWSO), played on Point Counterpoint II, the great music barge that Kahn designed in 1974.

However, if Nathaniel Kahn’s dream, which he expressed in whispers so as not to disturb the thrilling concert of percussive music from around the world, becomes a reality, the barge may become a permanent resident of New Haven. “I very much want this boat to become part of the future of New Haven,” he said, toward the end of a concert that brought hundreds of people to set foot near the bank of the Quinnipiac — many, it appeared, even some lifelong New Haveners, for the first time.

“I think New Haven is poised to become an even greater city for the arts, to take that next step, and to add a third creation of Louis I. Kahn, this barge, to the Yale University Art Gallery, my father’s first major building, and the Yale Center for British Art, his last. It would really be sublime.”

But how far has this idea advanced? And is it really possible?

We’ll come back a little later to young Kahn and to Wurman. Wuman constructed the first music barge, Point Counterpoint I, on the Thames in London in 1961, following Kahn’s instructions over the telephone and in telegrams only. (Wurman applied for a job age 23 with Kahn’s office on a Monday in 1960; on the Sunday, Kahn asked him to fly to London and supervise the building of the barge!).

But first a quick tour of some of the other concert-goers and what brought them to Fair Haven, in an evening that may turn out to be a red letter moment in the ongoing turn-around of one of the most beautiful and historic parts of the city.

The couple in the front are Lisa Dondy and Bill Kaplan. Sitting behind them are Terry Eicher and Ginny Eicher. The former live on Autumn Street, the latter on Linden. Terry Eicher came out to the concert in part because Nathaniel Kahn’s My Architect, the poignant film on Kahn’s life, is about his favorite movie. Lisa Dondy, a lifelong New Havener, said that she never in her life had been to this park. “I never really knew there was this kind of access to the river.” She looked around at the barge, which was raising its canopy, the tetrahedral shapes of the roof catching the sun setting in the west, and she said, “I feel as if I’m in a different city.”

Would she come back to the park again, to visit Fair Haven again, even if there weren’t a concert? “I promise,” she told a reporter, “that I will come back to Quinnipiac River Park.”

These three couples, Sara and Ken Law, on the left, Karen and Steve Wu, in the red shirts in the right corner, and John Um and his wife Jennifer, in the sunglasses, from Hamden, had driven by the park now and then. But they also confessed they had never, until the night of the concert, visited. On their way to prepare their pre-concert riverine picnic, they had stopped at Grand Vin, the wine store on the bridge, and bought a bottle of delicious white from Spain.

They were sipping and enjoying themselves because they were young, they were in love, and they were also even married. As the first chords of the program sounded out across the water from the barge, anchored some 25 yards from shore (it was a lively scherzo by the Irish composer Patrick Zuk, one of hundreds of works commissioned over the years by the orchestra), John Um was heard to murmur, “This is awesome.”

This cool fella had a special reason for attending. He’s Isaiah Cooper, well established New Haven lawyer, aka as the lead trombonist of the jazz group the Sliders. In 1979 Cooper was a member of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra. He had spent part of the day visiting maestro Robert Boudreau and his wife Cathleen at a rehearsal. “I’m not 100 per cent sure Boudreau remembered me,” Cooper said, but then added, impishly, “when I reminded him of a few incidents that happened, he did.” Cooper said that the orchestra is a training ground for interesting musicians who go on to stellar careers. One of the soloists at the concert, Tim McFadden, is lead trumpet with the Tulsa Symphony. Cooper himself was principal trombonist in 1985-86 with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

An insider to the intricacies of wind instruments and amplifications, Cooper said one of the pluses of the Point Counterpoint II is that the sound system, he recalled, was designed by the same folks who worked on the sound system of Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

And what was the experience like for him as a young musicians playing with Boudreaus?

“Good,” he answered, with lawyerly tact. “They commission a great deal of new work, but there are always tensions. The musicians travel in vans and arrive in a place, and maybe Boudreau comes in having spent half the night piloting the barge up a river. He’s tired, things happen. Look, you know what are the two most important and accepted words of wisdom among musicians in general and trombonists in particular?”

As a reporter did not, Cooper provided the answers: “First, as a musician, you are always at war with the conductor, and both sides just accept that and go on. Second, for trombonists, you must never clean the green crap out of your instrument, because that’s where the best sounds come from.”

Cathleen Boudreau did indeed pause the concert briefly to thank all the alumni of the AWSO. She named Cooper and many others, and remembered that to the day June 23 was 50 years from the Point Counterpoint’s first concert on the bank of the Allegheny. Here she was on the bank of the Quinnipiac.

The agreeable smiles of arts boosters and philanthropists Louise Endel and Bill Curran reminded a reporter to return to Nathaniel Kahn’s great new dream for New Haven.

“Yes, when I was in college,” Kahn continued, “those of us at Yale came maybe down to Sally’s and Pepe’s for pizza, but not down here. Now look at this. Look what’s going on here,” he said. “New Haven is so much more exciting. I mean I look at the barge, and to me it’s a barge of dreams. It shows you how art makes a difference, how art, space, music, architecture are part of life, and affect us. I think the boat can be central to this kind of rising feeling of what the Elm City might be. Yes, the boat could be here permanently.”

But was it more than your grand idea? he was asked.

“Absolutely. People are talking, not just me. And the idea is gathering support. To get to that next step, sometimes you as a person, or, collectively, a place, need something that shocks them, and this boat can do it. Look at it.” Indeed, the American flags and the Arts & Ideas flags were blowing steadily in a gentle wind, the lights in the canopy were sparkling among the diamond shapes, the percussionists were hopping around the xylophones and drums, and, on shore, in a park that had seldom been so well used or appreciated, art was somehow alive in a new way.

Brief conversations with Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, bore out that Nathaniel Kahn’s dream may be gaining traction. “Yes,” said Reynolds, one of the focal points of the growing conversation about the barge’s future in New Haven, “it would be absolutely terrific. I think Mayor DeStefano really likes the idea. We’re talking among ourselves as to how we can accomplish this.”

In the meantime, as the concert neared its end, these little Fair Haveners, Sheila Hutchings and Cindy Spiegel, were dashing among the listeners and picnickers and quiet talkers responding to the music, it seemed, by blowing bubbles. When a reporter asked Sheila, who lives down near the Quinnipiac, for her deep thoughts on the concert, she turned her back, and slowly blew a large, beautiful bubble. It was a perfect expression of this magical evening in Fair Haven. The iridescent bubble bounced along on the breeze, happily off toward the river and then seemed to be making its way directly toward the Point Counterpoint II. Let us hope that the barge’s prospects for a future in New Haven will continue to grow and grow, and not burst.