Behold, I tell you a mystery, sang out bass Bryan Murray Thursday night to a packed Woolsey Hall, the wide O of his mouth quivering as William Boughton parted the air before his face with two sure, outstretched hands. We shall all be chang’d in a moment.
In the hall’s lobby, Karen Comstock and David O’Sullivan were planning the lineup for Friday’s first and second meals of the day at New Haven’s Community Soup Kitchen, which would start with Comstock rising around 5 a.m. for prep and end after over 100 bellies had been filled. Every so often, music wafted into the space, and the two smiled.
Boughton is the conductor of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO). Comstock and O’Sullivan, aided by a small army of volunteers, run the Community Soup Kitchen (CSK) on Broadway Avenue.
Thursday night, the two groups found themselves in concert with each other, part of a holiday tradition in which a portion of the proceeds from the NHSO’s annual winter concert and “symphony supper” goes directly to the soup kitchen. Braving the cold, a couple hundred turned out for the concert. As of Friday morning, NHSO Marketing Director Katie Bonner Russo estimated that the NHSO had helped raised “a little over $1,000 through the Symphony Supper” and another $750 on cider and cookie sales at the concert, bringing a rough total close to $2,000. That excluded direct donations made to the CSK, the numbers for which are still pending.
Lucy Gellman Photo
Comstock, selling cookies for the soup kitchen at Woolsey Hall.
“Some people go to church on Sunday, but I’m trying to live my faith,” said O’Sullivan, who has overseen the CSK for 30 years and brought on Comstock after suffering a stroke last summer. “There’s a practice side to that. Some people are just do-gooders; I’m trying to do more than that.”
His view is, in many ways, strikingly similar to the Messiah’s original intent. Written by George Frideric Handel in 1741 and first performed in 1742 (and then workshopped for picky London audiences until 1749), the full Messiah has a certain bent toward clarity, disseminating to audiences the life of Jesus Christ in hours of song that are more potent for their staying power than their musical ostentation. Between 1741 and 1749, Handel shrunk the orchestra and focused on having a small, powerful choir and soloists, a form that the NHSO and Christ Church choir stuck to Thursday night. In working with the soup kitchen, New Haven’s concert also adhered to another long tradition: during Handel’s lifetime, the Messiah performance functioned as an annual benefit for London’s Founding Hospital.
Just days before at the soup kitchen, Comstock and O’Sullivan went through the near-symphonic production of preparing for the lunch rush. Industrial pots of meat sauce were put on to simmer, budgets balanced, cookies for Thursday night baked, and the dining hall cleaned and ready to await the day’s lunch crowd. A sort of choir filled the drafty room, warming it with a cacophony of grateful voices, quickly uttered pleases and thank yous and now I have something to eat, amid the clink of cutlery on lunch trays. Around them, an orchestra of volunteers snapped into acton, heaping peas, yellow squash, beef-dressed macaroni, and donated dinner rolls onto tray after tray with synchronized precision.
In that choir and orchestra, faithful members sound like Mary McNeil, a longtime volunteer who sees serving at the soup kitchen — which she has almost every day for six years — as a way to give back to the community in which she was raised.
McNeil.
“I love people and I love my faith,” she said, handing out peach yogurt and napkins at the end of a long table. “So many of these people — you don’t know where they slept last night, or where they’re going to get their next meal. To give them a hot meal, and say ‘have a nice day,’ it’s small, but you don’t know what you’re doing for these folks.”
Johnny Nelson has been coming to the Community Soup Kitchen for lunch each day for 20 years. After growing up in the Hill neighborhood of New Haven, Nelson fell on hard times. He found himself hungry, and not always with a job, and got “mixed up with some bad stuff.” When a friend suggested the CSK for a dependable warm meal, he was wary of the stigma that would follow him inside. And then he saw a friend of his mother’s serving food, and felt welcome there.
“People need to eat, and there’s always somewhere to [go] because of this place,” said Nelson Tuesday, his eyes darting around the room to eating, chatting attendees who had come for the lunch rush. “This is my lunch every day. I’m really blessed.”
Nelson.
To find out more about the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, visit its website. To find out more about the Community Soup Kitchen or to get involved, visit its website.
