Weeks after canceling its free parks performances this summer, the NY Philharmonic has announced that it will give a free concert to mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. According to the NY Times, the Philharmonic will perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, the “Resurrection,” at Avery Fisher Hall... but the concert will really be on September 10.
The Times reports, "The concert will be broadcast live on the radio and projected on a screen in Lincoln Center’s plaza. It will actually take place at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 10, and be rebroadcast on PBS the next evening. Philharmonic officials described the concert as a gift to the city, but they also acknowledged that the planning for it, as well as a decision to perform on Sept. 15 in Central Park with the tenor Andrea Bocelli, had contributed to the absence this summer of the orchestra’s traditional, beloved concerts in the parks, which normally take place in mid-July."
Originally, the Philharmonic wanted to give a free 9/11 memorial concert in Central Park, but then Bocelli and his team proposed a Central Park concert, which the Philharmonic would play at (and it would be paid for). Philharmonic president Zarin Mehta told the Times, "I didn’t think there was a conflict. One was on the 10th, and one was on the 15th... At that stage, the enormity of the Bocelli production was not known," adding the Bocelli concert made "good economic sense."
