By Jan Worth-Nelson
Violinist William Harvey, featured performer at the FIM Flint Symphony Orchestra’s concert on Saturday, March 15, has amassed a rich and impassioned musical life in performing, teaching, and composing internationally.
A longtime resident of Mexico City, he is concertmaster for the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, a two-time Latin Grammy award nominee, and founder and director of Cultures in Harmony, a nonprofit program through which he has led 40 cultural diplomacy projects in 16 countries.
He is also a professor at the Universidad Panamericana, an emeritus professor of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music operating in Portugal, and has lived, taught, or performed in Afghanistan, Argentina, South Africa, the Philippines and many other nations.
But it all started on a quiet block of Montclair Street in Flint.
Now 42, Harvey was born at Hurley Hospital, the second son of Jay Harvey — at the time the culture reporter for the Flint Journal — and Susan Raccoli, a pianist who taught at the Flint Institute of Music and University of Michigan-Flint and played keyboard for the Flint Symphony Orchestra.
In 1987, when William was four, the family moved to Indianapolis, where Jay Harvey took a reporting job at the Indianapolis Star. The elder Harveys still live in Indianapolis but will also be visiting Flint this weekend for their younger son’s performance.
Harvey said he doesn’t remember much from the Flint part of his life, but something very significant happened here: it’s the city where he got his first violin.
“When my violin came in the mail in summer 1986, I ran around the house at 1910 Montclair because I was so excited,” he recalled in an email exchange. “It means a great deal to me to come back to my birthplace, particularly since my parents will be there.”
While Saturday will mark Harvey’s first official appearance on a Flint stage, one of his former visits to Flint already left an indelible mark on me, my husband, and my neighbors.
In June 2016, Harvey was touring the country for his ambitious Cultures in Harmony project, when he spent one week in each state exploring the question “What is American Culture?”
During the Michigan component, he came to Maxine Street and stayed at our house. On that Saturday night, June 12, a gunman in Florida went into Pulse nightclub, killed 49 people, and wounded 53 more.
When we woke up to that horrible news, we also awoke to music.
In our guest room, Harvey was playing his violin. I can’t explain adequately how that soulful music, a counter to cruelty and death, offered us solace. Later in the day, we gathered with our neighbors in our living room to hear him play, and that concert was so intimate and emotional that I’ve never forgotten it.
At the end of his living room performance, Harvey played the Star Spangled Banner. His rendition was the most beautiful, anguished version of the anthem I’ve ever heard – not a celebration but a heartbreaking requiem. I felt deeply privileged to be present for that performance in my own home, with my beloved neighbors.
At his upcoming concert, instead of a rendition Harvey will be performing an original composition, “Seven Decisions of Gandhi,” a seven-movement concerto offering a deep reflection on the life of the legendary anti-colonialist and worldwide advocate for nonviolent resistance who was killed by an assassin’s bullet in 1948.
In 2017, Harvey was guest concertmaster of the Kwaulu Natal Philharmonic Orchestra in Durban, and he visited Gandhi’s granddaughter at Phoenix, the ashram formed in South Africa by her grandfather. He said the visit was a highlight of his life.
Asked about the impetus and heart of his composition and the connection between Gandhi’s life and the work, Harvey reflected on the role of music in politics and the current situation in the U.S.
“While musicians should mostly be apolitical, it is incumbent on artists as human beings to do everything to resist fascism,” he said.
“Every time I show compassion for a young Mexican musician, every time I play a piece in music – the UNIVERSAL language, not just a language for Americans –” he wrote over email, he is resisting what he sees as a “backward looking vision” and threats to the country and the planet. The life and work of Mahatma Gandhi, he contended, offer an unmistakable contrast to the current political climate.
Perhaps that explanation is what made me think of Harvey’s performance of the Star Spangled Banner — the version myself, my husband, and our neighbors had the privilege of hearing in our living room back in June 2016. That rendition first gained national attention at another difficult time in our nation’s history: September 2001.
That’s when, as a student at Juilliard, Harvey joined other musicians at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, where exhausted volunteers returning from Ground Zero assembled. After hours of playing, Harvey concluded late that night with the elegiac version of the Star Spangled Banner you can access here. He called it “the most incredible and moving experience of my life.”
Saturday’s concert of the FIM Flint Institute of Music, titled “Peace Meets West: Barber, Wagner and Harvey” is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the Whiting Auditorium. Harvey will be discussing the life and work of Gandhi at a pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m.
More information and tickets are available on the Flint Institute of Music’s website.
