With apologies to Audra McDonald https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isQr674sN1k

Why does everyplace claim to be “world class?” And what does that even mean? In introducing Wynton Marsalis’ tuba concerto, Aubrey Foard, its principal tubist, asserted that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was one of best in the world. Why did he feel the need to point that out? Why isn’t it good enough to be just a very fine ensemble. Baltimore is a really nice place, with some great neighborhoods and important legacy institutions – and it has clearly spent billions and billions of dollars on big projects trying to be a “world class” something. There is a sense it which the city elders appear to be trying way too hard, and don’t have confidence in the city’s virtues.

My first trip to Baltimore was probably in 1968 for Super Bowl III, in which the favored Colts lost to the NY Jets 16-7 (I remember being at the game, the details I had to look up). The business my dad worked for had printed the game tickets, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad tickets we used to get back and forth to the game. I felt like a 12-year-old big macher. In the 90’s, the Downtown Baltimore Partnership was an early adopter of the Grand Central Partnership downtown management model, of which I was a part, and we visited then. Inner Harbor and Camden Yards were breakthrough urban revitalization projects at that time. The innovating commercial development urban revitalization firm, Rouse Companies was founded in Baltimore.

Baltimore is known for its neighborhoods of row houses and as the home of Johns Hopkins University, which is, among other things, a bio-medical behemoth, and the largest beneficiary of the largess of one Michael R. Bloomberg. Hopkins has annual revenues of around $7 billion. Baltimore was historically the major mid-Atlantic port, with access to the nation’s interior via the mighty Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, through the Harper’s Ferry gap in the Appalachians. The downtown has a fine collection of the majestic former homes of long-gone financial institutions. A couple of major finance firms continue to be headquartered there. Its population maxed out at about a million souls in 1950. The subsequent decades were not kind to the city, which, in additional to experiencing the same urban traumas as other eastern cities, became a satellite to the metastasizing center of the American empire, Washington, D.C.

The great fall of Baltimore was vividly and darkly portrayed in what was perhaps the greatest television series ever shown in the U.S., The Wire – a highly nuanced drama of cops and drug dealers fighting for territory. Baltimore has punched above its weight in popular culture because of native sons, filmmakers John Waters (Hairspray) and Barry Levinson (Diner). Most recently, the Baltimore of the 1960’s was dramatized in “Lady in the Lake,” a creepy vehicle for Nathalie Portman, which revolved around the charged relationship between Blacks and jews as the city changed.

Today, Baltimore’s population has settled at about half of what it once was. Baltimore is now a 61% Black city, with only a 27% white, non-Hispanic population. The Inner Harbor is an attempt to draw tourists to town, as are the nearby multiple stadia and a convention center. Inner Harbor has all the usual brand name national high-end restaurant chains (McCormick & Schmicks next to a Ruth’s Chris), big box mid-market retailers (Burlington Coat Factory), and dozens of chain hotels. It also includes a number of newly built apartment buildings and the T. Rowe Price offices. While I had a pleasant lunch outside on a pier (in November) at a local place, Inner Harbor could be anyplace. The real character of historic Baltimore is in the downtown. I stayed at the Lord Baltimore, an Historic Hotel, built in 1928 (comfortable enough, with dark rooms, and a lobby in the style of Miami-based owners and art collectors Don and Mera Rubell) (fun facts: Don started out as a dentist, and as a junior attorney I worked on some of his early ventures. His brother was the late scenester and Studio 54 impresario, Steve).  Adjacent to it, the Monaco Hotel, is in the imposing former offices of the B&O railroad. However, Inner Harbor has sucked most of the street life out of the neighborhood.

The downtown has many high-quality buildings from the past. There are the elegant row houses from the 19^th Century. There also dozens of high quality pre-war commercial buildings, ranging from imposing financial institutions to smaller interesting retail structures. There are also many post-war, glass and steel structures, an early one of which is the 1962 Mies van der Rohe, One Charles Center. The ensemble is an interesting mix. Many residential conversions, both for sale and rent, have taken place in both pre- and post-war buildings. This is all good, and the downtown appears well kept and populated.

What it doesn’t appear to be is lively.  There isn’t much street life in the historic downtown. Inner Harbor is vibrant with bars and restaurants, most with outdoor seating. The historic downtown has little to none of that. There are scattered restaurants, but no outdoor cafes, and very few high-quality retailers. Most storefronts appear to be let to whoever landlords can find – low-end jewelers, hair care places and off-price athletic wear sellers. The lack of street level commercial activity makes the downtown feel sterile and disconnected. The old major department store, Stewart & Co., is now the offices of Catholic Relief Services and looks to be under-maintained. The Lexington Market is a major draw (it is no longer a farmers’ market, but more of a food court). It is the only majority Black space I visited (more on that in a bit) and operates in a brand-new facility, with substantial structured parking near it. The market is surrounded by empty and underused store fronts. By contrast, the neighborhoods just outside of downtown appear to have some scattered appealing retail strips, with interesting local shops and restaurants. But not downtown.

This impression of half-hearted urbanism is also reflected in the transit system, which includes a subway, light rail and bus system. There is a much-advertised free downtown circulator bus system. However, each system is so under scheduled that none of it is very reliable. The subway system was shut down for maintenance the weekend I was there. I took the bus once, during my visit. On my other four tries I gave up and took an Uber after fifteen minutes of waiting. The metro would do well to give up on the light rail and the subway and make the bus system more reliable in order to increase ridership. I know buses aren’t sexy, but rail is so 19^th Century.

All of this is evidence of Burnham-ism, the making of no small plans, to dysfunctional effect. Inner Harbor. Camden Yards. The light rail. Big projects that appear not to contribute to the vibrancy of the historic downtown. Downtown needs the implementation of incremental small ideas to provide ligaments between the people in the buildings. Small scale retailers and food and beverage operations need to be incentivized to locate downtown with subsidized rents and buildouts. Activity needs to be generated on the sidewalks, with tables, chairs and heat lamps. As noted, the Downtown Baltimore Partnership has been around for decades, and I observed some desultory teams of cleaners, and some branded trash cans. But the Partnership’s presence isn’t what it should be. I should also note that I always felt safe downtown (although I didn’t see any BID ambassadors or public safety staff). The streets and sidewalks hosted substantially less anti-social behavior than you see in midtown Manhattan. Public spaces just didn’t have enough going on. Especially, given the high level of residential development. No doubt it would be great for downtown residents if there was a more active street life.

The recent history of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is an interesting one. Marin Alsop was hired as the only female music director of a major American orchestra (with the exception of JoAnne Falletta in Buffalo) in 2006. She was replaced in that job by Jonathan Heyward, an American and British trained, Black American conductor. More recently, Heyward was appointed to the leadership of the orchestra formally known as Mostly Mozart in New York. The Baltimore Symphony has an annual budget of almost $30 million, and, as such, is one of the country’s largest. It also has recently taken on two homes – one in the city and one in the suburbs – the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore, and the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda. Another piece of the orchestra’s environment is that 40 miles away (and even closer to Bethesda), the National Symphony plays at the Kennedy Center (from which it receives significant support) under the direction of international star conductor Gianadrea Noseda. Like with Pittsburgh and Cleveland, you have two first rate ensembles competing for audience and resources in essentially the same market. Not ideal.

The concert I attended was at the Meyerhoff, which is outside of the downtown. The structure, from 1982, appears to be an urban bunker designed by prominent brutalist Pietro Belluschi, the original architect of Alice Tully Hall and the Julliard School. The interior, unfortunately, is now showing its age and looks a little worn. While it has some wooden acoustical panels, it essentially a cement box, much like Paris’ Bastille opera, and the principal interior public space design element is a coarse red brick. The inauguration of the hall was much celebrated at the time in the orchestra world, and the acoustic is neutral and clear, but without the 19^th century plushness that marks Orchestral Hall in Boston and Carnegie Hall in New York. Also significant is that the stage is very low relative to the audience seating on the main floor, making the presence of the band very direct and immediate – unlike, for example, Carnegie, or the new Geffen Hall of the New York Philharmonic (which I heard the next night, more on that, also) which are raised and as a result makes the orchestra feel remote (and isolated).

The orchestra after 16 years of Alsop and under Heyward’s baton is a very fine one. Heyward briefly introduced each of the pieces on the program. He is tall and skinny, with a lopsided smile. He’s a very modern maestro, in that he goes for regular guy-ness, rather than the calculated majestic diffidence of yore – with a schmear of a British accent. The affect of the concert, with two-thirds of the hall filled, was a kind of hometown hominess. I would be remiss in not noting that less than a dozen of the audience members appeared to be people of color. Under Alsop the orchestra had a reputation of being the leading American symphony in successful community outreach. The place of a symphony orchestra in a majority Black town is a challenging one. And yet, with the work of a major Black composer (and the finest classical trumpet player [before switching solely to playing jazz] that this country has produced) and the country’s most high-profile Black conductor, the Black community of Baltimore did not turn out. This is a major conundrum for arts institutions across the country. I might suggest that these great institutions perhaps need to be more confident in the quality and importance of their output and stop trying so hard politically. This is an excellent orchestra, playing great music. That strikes me as enough, as long the organization is as open, welcoming, supportive and accessible to first time concert goers as it can be.

Heyward announced that the idea for the program was to bookend the concerto with the music of two Nordic composers. The opener was Carl Nielsen’s “Helios,” musically following the sun as it transits the sky from morning until sunset. The performance was lovely, even if some of the wind entrances were insecure and the ensemble playing a little ragged.

The Concerto is an interesting mix of things and was an enjoyable listen. It isn’t, somewhat surprisingly, an opportunity so much for virtuoso tuba playing as for displaying a range of musical possibilities for the instrument. The first movement is programmatic (with the story told by Foard at the outset), the second is based on a boogaloo dance rhythm, the third, the most engaging, is a chance for the tuba to demonstrate its lyrical possibilities (which are substantial), and the fourth an homage to Charlie Parker. While it was not clear what held the four movements together musically, other than all featuring the tuba, the piece, which was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2001, earned its place on the program.

Foard isn’t a particularly charismatic person or performer, he has a kind of goofy, aw-shucks demeanor, but he is a distinguished player and made the most of the various possible characters of the tuba the piece projects. The first movement didn’t quite come off in its idea of the tuba representing a street preacher in New York City. The second movement hit a syncopated dance groove using rhythms from popular music. The third movement gave Foard a chance to play expressively, while other brass instruments wah-wah-ed and slid between notes behind him. The lively last movement was reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein’s theater music orchestrations, with a touch of Billy Strayhorn.

This was followed by a short piece by African American composer, William Grant Still, “Threnody (In Memory of Jean Sibelius),” not listed in the program, and announced by Heyward. It was played with great affection by the band. It was an attractive piece and was a nice fit given the context of Heyward, Baltimore, Sibelius and Nielsen.

The big symphonic work, after the intermission, was Sibelius’ Fifth, a great orchestral show piece in three movements. It’s a lot of spectacular music packed into only 30 minutes. Heywood led a highly controlled, restrained performance of a work that can often break down into an opportunity for the brass to lose themselves in excess. The entire performance was tied together by an overall coherence of concept. This wasn’t the Sibelius of majestic snow-capped peaks and smashing icebergs, but one of the beauty and awe of nature. It was poetic and elegiac. The orchestra beathed together beautifully, and the strings had appealing sheen.

However, by coincidence, the next night I was able hear the piece played by the irascible New York Philharmonic led by the young Finn, Santtu-Matias Rouvali. The players of the Philharmonic can be both virtuosic and aggressive, as is evidenced by the recent firing of two players for sexually belligerent behavior with colleagues. In the awesome finale of the Fifth, the New York trumpets and trombones have been known to blow the roof off the joint (and blow out the ear drums of the players in front of them), as opposed to Baltimore’s refined and handsome rendition. Rouvali had the orchestra on its best behavior and the performance was complex and magnificent. Rouvali masterfully handled the many transitions, and balanced and highlighted the many distinctive melodic voices that Sibelius has flow among the sections. The final climax grew organically, and the brasses were suave and monumental (and, by the way, the Philharmonic has been without a principal horn player in recent years. Note to management: hire whoever was playing principal horn for that show. Flawless).

I wouldn’t have gone on like this about the Philharmonic had it not been for this business about Baltimore being “world class.” Its Sibelius performance was very fine. I thoroughly enjoyed it. But the heft, the weight, the fullness, the confidence and authority of the Philharmonic’s performance was something else altogether.

My visit to the Walters Museum the next day brought forth similar thoughts. The collection was assembled by two generations of Baltimore merchants and financiers and given to the City of Baltimore. Admission is free. The collection of Medieval and Early Renaissance material, both European and Byzantine, is spectacular – rivaling the depth of the Getty in California. As the Michelin guides used to say – three stars, worth a detour. The museum advertises itself as being comprehensive and has Islamic and ancient collections (which I didn’t get to) and later Renaissance and Baroque works, that are made up of a lot “from the workshop of” and Italian painters named after small obscure towns. There are apparently also later works, but they mostly aren’t on the walls. But for Baltimore to have this unusual collection is a tremendous asset.

The museum is an odd collection of three buildings – two old and one new and getting around is confusing. The curators choose to show the art in rather glaring light, which makes some of the larger pieces and those hung higher on the walls difficult to see. But most distinctively, the museum has a philosophy of restoring pictures to what they might have looked like when new. The colors pop and the surfaces gleam. That’s not what most other places do – which tend to have a philosophy of minimalism, and “do no harm” in restoring old works. They are left to look old. At the Walters, paint that has flaked off is replaced. Every layer of varnish discolored with time has been removed. This is the Romanesque in technicolor.

But the Walters has the most pathetic and off-putting land acknowledgement/institutional apology of any arts institution I have encountered. Wall text at the entrance describes the Walters family businesses (alcohol trading and railroads), which had to have benefited from slavery in the 19^th Century. The Walters were supporters of the Confederacy and decamped to England during the Civil War. The text notes that while the Walters claimed their collection to be comprehensive, it failed to include many cultures and indigenous peoples. It also stated that European art, while featured in the collection, is only one of many forms of artistic expression and was overemphasized by the collectors. Again, Baltimore is a majority minority town – and creating a path for cultural institutions arising out the interests of monied white elites in a community where the demographics have radically changed is a significant intellectual and political challenge. But I would suggest that temporizing and apologizing for the excellence of western cultural production is philosophically bankrupt, counterproductive (in that it attempts to minimize the value of the cultural product) and does nothing to draw in a more diverse audience. At both the Symphony and the Walters most of the Black folks I saw were employees of those organizations, which, of course, is a good thing, in and of itself, but not the same as attracting a local audience and patronage.

This was altogether a fascinating and rewarding trip, to a city with more going for it than I think its civic, cultural and business leaders realize. It has great buildings, important institutions and livable neighborhoods. It has made itself into a significant tourist and sports destination, for better or for worse. Baltimore, cultivate what you have. Think smaller. Stop apologizing.  You’re fine.

******

Here are the lyrics to the song referenced aboveWhen my mother told me don’t forget your rain boots when it’s wet
I listened up, just like a good, good little girl
And when she prudently suggested I should lose the cigarette
I knew that bit of wisdom was a pearl
But in all of the advice that I collected through the years
I admit to you, with trepidatious dread
Unfortunately, there was some that whizzed right through my ears
Ah, WHERE.? WHERE was my mind, when Mother said

Avoid navel-contemplating floppy haired actors originally from Baltimore
Who excel at mime, collect stamps and have issues with their mom
Sure at first they’re very charming, their attention is disarming
But give attention in return and dear they’ll drop you like a bomb
Yes, do avoid REO Speedwagon loving Christopher Walken imitating thespians originally from Baltimore
Who can’t piss unless their shrink says it’s ok
Why let them break your heart, dear?
Put your head on and be smart, dear
Put some bug spray on and make them go away.

When my daddy told me look both ways before you cross the street
I took his words to heart and I complied
And when he told me be yourself, and I should march to my own beat
I did and found THAT truth was bonafide
But in all of the advice that I collected through the years
I have to say, I am a bit surprised
I missed the best advice that Daddy trumpeted my way
Ah, where where was my mind when he advised

Avoid narcissistic alcoholic think-they’re-French-but-they’re-not waiters originally from Baltimore
Who deflower you, carry a copy a Fountainhead in their pocket and lie about their age
Sure at first their eyes are steely, and their words are touchy-feely
Have them cheat upon you twice and my advice is more than sage
Yes, do steer clear of Renaissance festival loving food service consultants originally from Baltimore
Who say they dance with NYC ballet but are really an administrative In-TERN

For it’s clear upon reflection
When you give him your affection
You will understand the concept crash and burn

The singles world out there can be a scary land
I have to ask, is it me, or is it Maryland?

So if you can possibly avoid it, don’t fall in love or lust
Or have crushes on Boys from Baltimore
Though indeed at first they seem filled with style and class
Sure Cal Ripken’s charm is actual but he’s married and it’s factual
Pamlico is not the only place you’ll find a horse’s ass
Yes, at all costs avoid ridiculous though amusing experiences cultivated in Baltimore
Barry Levinson, I mean no disrespect
If you have to go to Baltimore, and meet boys, do not marry em
Although it’s true I’ve heard that they’ve got quite a nice Aquarium
Ladies, take your hearts and run as fast as little legs can carry em
From Baltimore

There are better boys in Boise
Boys in Boise always call
You’ll have better luck in Josie
Or St. Paul
Well, not St. Paul

But no matter where life takes you
It just makes no sense to fall
In Baltimore.

Hey, where are you from? Silver Spring? Oh!

By: Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich