Why a Percussionist Was Playing a Siren

New York Times

21-03-2025

Good morning. It's Friday. We'll find out what happened when an experienced percussionist rehearsed with a siren at the New York Philharmonic. We'll also get details on a 30-day reprieve from the Trump administration on congestion pricing.
Joseph Kelly's first rehearsal with the New York Philharmonic went well. He felt he was 'getting familiar' with the instrument he was playing in his spot behind the trombone section — an instrument he had not played before.
In the second rehearsal, he said, 'I felt like my approach was coming together.'
Then he broke the instrument.
The instrument was an air raid siren.
Kelly was one of 12 percussionists who had parts in 'Amériques,' a dissonant piece that the composer Edgard Varèse began writing in 1918, a couple of years after Varèse moved to Brooklyn from Paris. As the critic Harold C. Schonberg observed when the Philharmonic played it in 1975, 'it calls for unconventional instruments and makes unconventional sound.'
It also calls for an unconventionally sized orchestra. The version of the piece that the Philharmonic played squeezed 122 musicians, 53 more than were needed for Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 last season.
Only two of the 12 percussionists in the Varèse were full-time members of the orchestra. Kelly, who is the assistant principal timpanist and a section percussionist with the Toronto Symphony, and the other nine were hired as 'extra musicians' to fill out the unusually large percussion section in 'Amériques.' Varèse wrote parts for castanets, sleigh bells, whips and even a drumlike instrument called a lion's roar.
'I think that was him experiencing the city' when he was still a new New Yorker, Kelly said. The sound of sirens is 'so much a part of being in New York that you almost don't notice it' after a while, said Kelly, who graduated from the Manhattan School of Music and lived in Manhattan for seven years before moving to Chicago, Miami and then Toronto.
The note in the Philharmonic program book said that some listeners had 'latched on to' the siren 'and decided that 'Amériques' depicted a bustling modern American city.' Varèse, though, called 'Amériques' 'a piece of absolute music, completely unrelated to the noises of modern life.'
But was it? He also said that 'Amériques' was 'my own rather vivid reaction to life as I know it.'
Unlike a violinist or a cellist who carries his own instrument wherever he plays, Kelly did not bring any sirens on the plane to New York. The Philharmonic has several, and when he tried them out, a military-green one caught his ear.
'I liked that one in particular because I was able to start and stop it very comfortably and control the dynamics more clearly' — all elements that mattered in 'Amériques' because Varèse wrote instructions in the score for 'when to rise and fall, how loud to play and when to cut off,' he said.
The instrument had been modified to start and stop with a handle. During the second rehearsal, the pin that connected the gears to the handle broke. 'I stopped too suddenly,' Kelly said. The gears no longer whirled, and the siren no longer whirred.
Kelly lugged the object backstage and, with the production crew, took it apart. 'It looked like we were performing surgery,' he said. 'It's at least from the '40s. This is from an age when things were built to be repaired — not like now, when something breaks and you throw it out and get a new one.'
The broken pin was stuck, so someone carried the parts to the machine shop at the Metropolitan Opera, just across the plaza at Lincoln Center. But the pin could not be salvaged, and a replacement pin was nowhere to be found. So Kelly tried other sirens in the Philharmonic's collection. 'It's the New York Philharmonic,' he said. 'They had four other sirens.'
He ended up using two red sirens, one hand-held and one mounted on a table. 'They cut through the orchestra more easily than the original one,' he said, and that 'served the music better.'
Early showers and cloudy skies should give way to sunshine by noon. Expect gusty breezes up to 39 miles per hour and high temperatures in the low 50s. Both the wind and the temperatures will fall off overnight, with a low around 42.
In effect until March 31 (Eid al-Fitr).
The latest New York news
Trump official delays congestion pricing deadline
New York was defiant when the Trump administration demanded that congestion pricing end by today. Now Washington is willing to wait a month.
The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, extended the deadline by 30 days. But the reprieve came with a threat: 'Continued noncompliance will not be taken lightly,' he said in a social media post that was directed at Gov. Kathy Hochul.
He called congestion pricing 'unlawful' and said that the federal government and President Trump were 'putting New York on notice.'
'Your refusal to end cordon pricing' — as congestion pricing is sometimes called — 'and your open disrespect towards the federal government is unacceptable,' he said.
It was yet another twist in the fight between the administration and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the program. A spokesman for Hochul said that Duffy's post 'doesn't change what Governor Hochul has been saying all along: The cameras are staying on.'
The M.T.A. took the Trump administration to court last month, arguing that the administration could not reverse a program that had been approved. That approval came in the last two months of the Biden administration.
Duffy's announcement about the extended deadline came two days after he sent a letter to the M.T.A. in which he threatened to withhold federal money from the authority if it did not respond to questions about crime on the subway, which he characterized as out of control. Crime on the subway has, in fact, been declining. Duffy's letter made no mention of congestion pricing, but some transportation specialists and legal experts suggested that the missive was a thinly veiled effort to gain leverage over the M.T.A.
Trump has promised to end congestion pricing and could use a range of tactics to get his way, legal experts said. Most passenger cars are charged $9 during peak hours when they drive into the 'congestion relief zone,' which is anywhere in Manhattan south of 60th Street. The tolls are discounted by 75 percent overnight.
Seeing Stars
Dear Diary:
It was 1985, and my husband and I were living on the Upper East Side. We planned a rare date night out and found a friend to babysit our 1-year-old daughter.
We set out for a nearby theater where 'Cocoon,' with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn among the stars, was playing. I was a fan of the couple, having seen them onstage at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis when I was growing up in Iowa.
Unfortunately, when we got to the theater, we found that the next showing was sold out.
Determined not to waste the evening, we walked a few blocks to another theater, where 'Prizzi's Honor,' with Kathleen Turner, Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston, was about to start.
As we waited to buy tickets, I noticed an older couple standing a few feet ahead of us in line. I nudged my husband.
'Look,' I whispered. 'That couple: That's Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn!'
— Jean Young
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Brandon Thorp, Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [e-mail].
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