Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at Hillary Clinton’s debut with a symphony orchestra. We’ll also get details on the heat emergency that we’ll be living with for the next few days.
Hillary Clinton — former first lady, former United States senator, former secretary of state, co-producer of a Broadway musical — added a new entry to her résumé last night: narrator with a symphony orchestra. She appeared with Arcadia Symphony New York, which rented Carnegie Hall for a 250th-anniversary-themed program. Clinton read the narration for “Lincoln Portrait,” a 15-or-so-minute work by Aaron Copland that has become one of the go-to performance pieces as orchestras celebrate the nation’s big birthday. The actor F. Murray Abraham is to read the same text with the New York Philharmonic next week. Clinton rehearsed with the orchestra and its conductor, Michael Fennelly, who cued her when to come in. The narrator’s job is to read brief excerpts from speeches by Abraham Lincoln, along with snippets of biographical material about him apparently written by Copland himself. The piece ends with the last few lines of the Gettysburg Address that refer to “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Clinton said after the rehearsal that she thought she would cry when she got to them. “And, I mean, I’ve read that hundreds of times,” she said. She joined the ranks of other famous people who have delivered Copland’s narration, including Judy Collins, Julius Erving, Henry Fonda, Danny Glover, Tom Hanks, James Earl Jones, Gregory Peck, the Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg and Copland himself. “And my husband,” she said. Former President Bill Clinton did “Lincoln Portrait” after he left office, with the Arkansas Symphony. “You know, this has always been a moving, impactful piece combining this wonderful music with these words,” she said before touching a 250th anniversary pin she was wearing and adding, “We have to be as vigilant and careful as President Lincoln warned us of.” Fennelly said he had been conducting opera in Bulgaria when a conversation he was having “moved away from music to current events and politics.” He did not want to talk about that, so — impulsively — he said he was going to conduct Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at Carnegie, even though he “totally made it up.” Alice Kandell, a child psychologist, human rights advocate and art collector who is a longtime friend of Fennelly’s, said that the idea of making it a 250th anniversary concert came to mind later. “I said, ‘What about Hillary Clinton?’” recalled Kandell, who had a walk-on part later in the concert. “He said, ‘We’ll do Lincoln Portrait.’” Then she called someone who knows Clinton, who called her. Then Fennelly called Carnegie Hall, to book the date. “They said, ‘Do you have any stars who would draw or sell tickets?’ I said, ‘Hillary Clinton.’” But he couldn’t say that publicly. The orchestra said that Clinton’s staff had set one condition: There could no promotion of her appearance before the performance, out of concerns about security. The advertising focused on the Beethoven — the orchestra performed the “Ode to Joy”— and on “You Are My Rhapsody in Blue,” Fennelly’s arrangement of Gershwin’s famous piece. So for people attending last night’s concert, the first indication that a big-name narrator would appear in “Lincoln Portrait” came when they opened the programs the ushers had handed them as they walked in. WEATHER Today will be mostly sunny with a chance of afternoon rain. The high will near 95 with heat index values as high as 103. Expect partly cloudy conditions tonight and a low near 79. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Friday (Independence Day observed). QUOTE OF THE DAY “I am a principled pragmatist. And I care about both parts of that sentence.” — Jennifer Mnookin, who begins her tenure as president of Columbia University today and who says dialogue and negotiation will be essential to success in the job. The latest Metro news
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“This is Texas hot, which we don’t usually see here, so it’s serious.” That’s how Carolyn Olson, an assistant commissioner of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, described the heat wave that is settling over New York. It’s making us sweaty and sticky, and maybe stressed and irritated. It’s also making officials worry about keeping construction workers, street vendors and others who spend their days outdoors safe as summers become warmer. Mayor Zohran Mamdani also mentioned tourists at a briefing on what the city plans to do to help people cope with the heat in the next few days. “The single most important thing you can do in these temperatures is to stay indoors with air- conditioning,” the mayor said. He said hundreds of cooling centers would open today across the five boroughs and that 2,200 LinkNYC kiosks would display directions to the nearest centers. He also said 15 “cool vans” operated by New York City Health and Hospitals would provide “medical care, resources like water and electrolytes” and transportation to cooling centers. Mamdani said that places that were already hot would get hotter, with temperatures climbing into the high 90s or even the 100s. It’s happening because of a “heat dome,” a huge high-pressure system that is creating and containing heat. Last year brought a sharp rise in the number of heat stroke deaths. On average, seven people die each summer because of heat. Last year there were 21 such deaths, with 19 of them attributed to a heat wave in late June. On Monday Mamdani ordered what City Hall called an “unprecedented, historic heat emergency plan.” This meant designating libraries, senior centers and other air-conditioned spaces as cooling centers. City Hall also said that most large public pools would be open for an extra hour, until 8 p.m., and that anyone could borrow a spray cap from a firehouse to turn a hydrant into a sprinkler that children could play in. City agencies are also preparing to set up outdoor cooling stations, with misting fans where outdoor workers like street vendors and food delivery workers could gather. METROPOLITAN DIARY Halloween ’04
Dear Diary: Halloween 2004. I didn’t live in New York yet. But I drummed in an arduous and insolvent band based in L.A. that took our name from a pulp porno paperback. We had just played a whopper of a gig at a place near the then-pizza-heavy Montrose Avenue L stop. When you don’t live here, a New York slice is the greatest food ever invented. The show was a joyous and raucous mess, and a great time was had. Afterward, our guitarist and I got a ride to an infamous Sunday night dance party on Spring Street. Despite the recent smoking ban, indoor cigarettes were de rigueur. It turned out we knew one of the DJs and he offered his floor as a crash pad. Upon arriving groggily by yellow cab, we realized no one had a key. Somehow, we managed to get in after a very long half-hour. It was around 5:30 a.m. Surprisingly, there were plenty of carpeted rooms and a small backyard, and sunlight broke through the trees. There were about seven of us, and folks started to pair up and pass out, or both. A master of the French exit, I decided now was the time to split. Upon exiting the apartment, I found myself at an impasse, with three identical doors in front of me and the door to my friend’s apartment having locked automatically behind me. With zero idea which door would lead me outside, I made what seemed like the obvious choice: the middle one. Wrong. I opened the door, and a woman bolted upright in her bed and let out an exasperated scream. People live in single rooms here? I shut the door quickly. Luckily, one of the other doors led me directly outside. I ran. Fast. Why is everything so embarrassing? — Brooks Headley Mr. Headley is a chef and the owner of Superiority Burger in Manhattan. Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
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