Alison Feuerwerker
Published in September 2009
The Waterloo Chamber Players is a small orchestra composed of skilled amateur and semi-professional musicians who have been playing and performing together since 1994. We are a self-run group, collectively making decisions and sharing organizational responsibilities. Members volunteer their time and talents as musicians and in administrative tasks. Working together to “play good music well” (as one of our founding members expressed it) sharing responsibility for keeping the group going, being together for many seasons of each others’ lives, has created strong bonds in the group that persist even as people come and go. We are more than an orchestra, we are a community of friends.
Until last year, our primary funding source was the income generated by accompanying local choirs for concerts and church services. With general cuts to funding for the arts, especially in difficult economic times, those sources of income no longer exist. Since we very much want the Waterloo Chamber Players to continue, a creative response is necessary. And so we are reaching out into the larger community as both givers and receivers.
Several members of the Waterloo Chamber Players volunteer at St. John’s Kitchen. Just as the Waterloo Chamber Players is more than an orchestra, we see St. John’s Kitchen as more than a place to get a free lunch. It is a place where everyone is valued and can have input, where everyone can be productive, whether or not they are in the workforce or have a home.
On Saturday October 17, 2009, the Waterloo Chamber Players will perform a concert at the Church of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Kitchener. Proceeds from this fundraising concert are to be shared between the Waterloo Chamber Players and St. John’s Kitchen. Tickets will be sold to the general public, but people who go through the lunch line at St. John’s Kitchen will be offered concert vouchers and invited to attend as our guests.
We will rehearse and perform this concert without a conductor. Plans for the program so far include concertos by Bach and Mozart featuring members of the group. We will also draw from some of our favourite repertoire, choosing pieces that can be enjoyed by newcomers and seasoned concert-goers alike. Audience members can expect to hear some familiar tunes that will keep them humming once the concert is over.
Times of economic hardship evoke divergent responses: they can lead to despair, isolation and giving up, or they can inspire creativity, reaching out, and working together. The second is a counter to the first, for it is by connecting with others that we end isolation, and it is by working for the common good that we push back despair. St. John’s Kitchen is an example of people joining together to meet basic human needs for food and connection; it is a light in the darkness. The Waterloo Chamber Players are choosing to offer what we do best and love to do most not only to benefit ourselves but in service to the larger community of which we are part.
