It wasn't the kind of opening week Paavo Jarvi had planned for his first season as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

        With the country in mourning over the horrors suffered in Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the symphony was going ahead with concert plans, although festivities and parties were canceled or postponed.

        “We can't possibly pretend to go through with these plans if the whole nation is mourning,” Mr. Jarvi said between rehearsals at Music Hall on Wednesday.

        He was adding Barber's Adagio for Strings to the program as a “musical moment of silence,” for “the victims and all the people who perished in this tragedy.”

        Although the mood at Music Hall was somber, he and the musicians found rehearsing the music uplifting, he says. While the tragedy was unfolding on Tuesday, he was conducting his first rehearsal with the orchestra as music director.

        “Obviously, while we were happy to see each other, there was such a dark cloud hovering over the whole proceedings,” he says. But as they got involved in the music, their spirits gradually began to lift.

        “Music is something with a great healing power; it somehow transports you to a different plateau,” he says. “You saw on television, the whole Congress started singing together. ... Historically, even in the most incredibly dire situations and circumstances, there was always music.

        “Even in concentration camps, in Auschwitz, there were orchestras and music being written. It's simply one of those things that music is able to lift the spirits and give some hope and heal.”
       

Coming together

        At Cincinnati Opera, which has offices in Music Hall, the company canceled its annual meeting Wednesday and donated food for 140 people to Our Daily Bread and the FreeStore FoodBank, managing director Patricia Beggs said.

        The opera hopes to collaborate with other arts organizations for a memorial concert, or a fund-raiser for victims, she said.

        “Arts people are used to coming together. We can lead or participate in a big way,” Ms. Beggs said, adding that they are considering a concert with the opera chorus and opera singers, as well as a blood drive.

        “A lot of our colleagues were involved, being based in New York,” she said.

        Cincinnati Opera artistic director Nicholas Muni was feeling “shock, grief, a heavy sadness and anger — but also a strong impulse to find out more. Who did this and why?” he asked.

        “As an artist, it only deepens my conviction that whatever work I am involved in must be extremely serious, even if it is a comedy,” he said. “It inspires me to make the greatest possible effort to create something that matters, that makes an impact.”
       

CCM in shock

        And at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where school starts next week, Dean Douglas Lowry said people look to the arts in times like these, and ask if they are relevant.

        “I believe the arts do serve from time to time as healers,” Dean Lowry said. “Music, by virtue of its non-verbal nature, does have the power to express or resonate certain emotional or spiritual states that words or gestures can't.”

        CCM is in a state of stupendous shock, he added. “Students and faculty are coming in slowly, speechless. It will take time for all of us to process the magnitude of the shock and what it means.”

        Mr. Jarvi agreed.

        “Nobody could have ever predicted such events, such catastrophe,” he said. “I am getting 20 e-mails a day from friends, just asking, are you OK? People all over the world are completely shocked.”

        Contact Janelle Gelfand at 768-8382; fax: 768-8330; e-mail:jgelfand@enquirer.com.

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