Homecoming
Earlier this month, I spent a few days in and around Chicago, my original home town.
I am very grateful that this was already the third time I was able to briefly visit Chicago since the onset of the pandemic. On both previous visits I had some family time (including extended family) and attended Sunday worship at Calvary Memorial Church of Oak Park, where I grew up and also a former workplace (and the workplace that was foundational to my career in nonprofit management).
On this most recent trip, I had both family time and a chance to visit Calvary again, and in addition, I was finally able to re-engage in a meaningful, in-person way with two other institutions that are very near and dear to me: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Wheaton College.
I arrived in Chicago on a Thursday morning and after an afternoon with my parents in Oak Park, made my way to downtown Chicago and to “the house that Burnham built” – Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center on Michigan Avenue, home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It had been over 19 months since the last time I had heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in person (the most recent time being their February 2020 tour to Florida, when I attended their performance at the Arsht Center in Miami where I was living at the time) and over 28 months since I had heard the orchestra at its home hall in Chicago (late May 2019). On the program, conducted by CSO music director Riccardo Muti, was both a contemporary work by CSO’s former composer-in-residency Missy Mazzoli (the work was receiving its delayed first CSO performances that weekend) and a Tchaikovsky symphony. The orchestra was at its best throughout the program. From my front-row seat in the gallery, it was such a joy to hear them again after so long. And what’s more, even with a mask on, many of the CSO staff members I had gotten to know over the years recognized me and gave warm welcome.
For about seven years now, I have been a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Overture Council (the OC), the orchestra’s young professionals group. In addition to my general participation in events over the years (including a handful of virtual events during the pandemic, even while physically at my then-home in Miami), I had served on several committees, including a two-year term on the executive committee several years ago.
New this year, renewing members of the OC received a branded tote bag and pin. The OC’s staff liaison, Jamie, graciously arranged for me to pick it up at the box office on the night I was attending the concert. I found a nice note from Jamie inside thanking me for my continued involvement and, as a special surprise, an explanation that instead of the standard silver pin, I had been granted a gold pin in recognition of my service on the executive committee. I am now honored to carry this pin on my backpack, one small visible connection to my hometown.
The next two days of my Chicago visit were spent at my alma mater, Wheaton College. It was homecoming weekend and my class’s ten-year reunion, and I was so grateful that reunions were in-person this year. The main pandemic-related modification was having all the events outdoors (with tents), and we were blessed with near-perfect weather for such an arrangement.
Wheaton College is also a former workplace; I was a staff member in the Conservatory of Music for five years. I was very grateful for time over homecoming weekend to talk at length with many of my former colleagues.
In October 2017, while I was on staff, the Conservatory moved into the first part of the new Armerding Center for Music and the Arts. As I was leaving in January 2019, work was about to begin on the second part, a new concert hall wing. I had briefly visited the new wing when in the area in June, but the final work to furnish the space, install artwork, and so forth, were still in progress. By October, however, the artwork was installed and the place was ready to receive homecoming weekend visitors. I made the most of the free time over those two days to wander the concert hall, lobby, and adjacent areas and soak in the incredible feeling of finally being present in the space we had waited so long for and God had so graciously provided.
I remember distinctly the feeling I had in October 2017 when I sat down for the first time at my desk in the administrative office suite within the first part of the Armerding Center. I had trouble focusing on work for a while; I kept lifting my eyes from my screen to look around and marvel at the new space. But the feeling was orders of magnitude greater sitting just a few feet away from that spot, on a couch in the lobby of the fully complete Armerding Center. And no less profound was the experience of hearing music in the concert hall during some of the homecoming weekend activities.
If you’ll pardon the cliché, words, pictures, and even video tours do not do the space justice. And we shouldn’t expect them to – a concert hall, after all, is meant to be entered into to hear live music. Live music has been in short supply the last year and a half, and musicians and those who support them have done what was needed to protect the health of our communities. But now both Orchestra Hall in Chicago and the new concert hall in Wheaton are filled with music, with live music, compositions both new and old and from around the world.
I am so grateful to have had those moments in those spaces at two of my favorite institutions earlier this month. It was a homecoming in many senses of the word.
