[ Movement 12, "I Am (Don’t You Run From Me)" plays ] ♪♪ -What is Chautauqua?

It's that feeling that you can't necessarily describe, but it makes you feel special, and you want more of it.

-I couldn't be more honored to be here and more appalled that you've asked me to come speak to you.

Did you run out of noteworthy individuals?

-Chautauqua is an ideal, and it's a place for people with very different ideas, different political backgrounds, different talents, different cultures.

-You could be a different race or different religion and all these things, and we're gonna talk about it, we're gonna be here together, and we can share this beautiful place together and not get bent out of shape.

-But it's also easy when you have the big fight and then you go, "Well, let's have some cocktails and look at the lake."

-When you walk through those gates, you realize, "Wait.

This is here?

This exists?"

-You see something that you've never seen before, and that causes a shift in you.

-Just to be surrounded by that much passion and that much knowledge and that much, like, curiosity, it just felt like every place was, like, a temple to how amazing humans are.

-I've been looking at this -- this story of what does -- what does it mean to be American, who gets to call themselves an American, who gets to represent the American story?

-For generations, Chautauqua Institution in Upstate New York has been a haven for families, faith leaders, intellectuals, and entertainers, exploring America's cultural and political flashpoints.

And the institution has had an outsize impact on American culture beyond its grounds.

-I believe that the only way forward is to hear the unvarnished truth, so that is what you shall receive today.

-When you come here, it has all the dreams of the ancestors and all the ghosts and all the good spirits of those who are interested in doing the difficult work of the democracy.

-That's how we should be operating in the world today and in America where, you know, we're so divided, is being able to sit down and really listen to one another, have an open heart and an open mind, and try and understand where someone else's experience is.

-Attracting more than 100,000 visitors each year, its events spark discussion, debate, and sometimes controversy.

-What we experienced at Chautauqua today was an act of violence, an act of hatred, and the violation of the one thing that we have always cherished most.

-Now, in celebration of its 150th anniversary, jazz legend Wynton Marsalis journeyed to Chautauqua to perform "All Rise," his massive symphonic work that takes on the question, how can we turn our differences into collective creativity?

It's a question at the heart of Chautauqua.

-♪ I say, all rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ -"All Rise" is one of Wynton Marsalis' most ambitious works.

Its 12 movements span jazz, blues, classical, and world music.

-♪ All rise ♪ -The performance at Chautauqua Institution features over 100 singers and musicians, including Chautauqua's Music School Festival Orchestra.

Many had never worked together, until now.

[ Movement 5, "Save Us" plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -A piece like this is really emblematic of the various influences that inform the American musical landscape.

-We refer to America as a melting pot because people from all cultures have come together to make this country what it is, and it's something important to recognize and to embrace.

And I think when you think about how jazz is such a community, it's about people who negotiate, people who can voice their opinions in different ways.

And it's about agreement and it's about finding each other, and I feel like the community of Chautauqua is like that.

-Here we are on the giant stage of the Chautauqua Amphitheater with all of these young musicians from all over the world.

And the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and the soloist and the musicians of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra representing the piece, which is bringing these large entities together for creativity and collaboration.

-It was a challenge in so many ways -- technically, creatively, spiritually.

It asked a lot of us as musicians because he used us to help express these musical ideas that are so varied and require an understanding of different grooves and different kinds of influences and cultures.

-One of these influences is reflected in Movement 10, "Expressbrown Local," inspired by Marsalis' love of trains, a symbol of freedom and power and the connections that tie all of America together.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ "All Rise" was commissioned in 1999 by the renowned maestro Kurt Masur, then conductor of the New York Philharmonic, as the last of their Millennial compositions.

-The concept of "All Rise," to bring people together, at the request of Kurt Masur who ironically in our conversation about it, he started by saying he had been a member of Hitler Youth and was a Nazi soldier who had, of course, transformed himself in the years past that time.

-Masur's time in the Nazi armed forces as a teenager, and later in communist-controlled East Germany, exposed him to the true evil of fascism.

-He said, "If a man in a village sleeps with a woman who is not his wife, in the next week everybody knows it.

Do you think it's possible to kill that many people and nobody knows that?

Everyone knew, everyone, friend."

Now, I remember how deliberate he was in the delivering of the information.

-Masur's experiences led to his lifelong fight for freedom and democracy.

He encouraged Marsalis to create a composition that would bring people together, inspiring the best in humanity through music.

-Of course, being from the Afro-American tradition and Mississippi and the history of lynching and killing, people going to jail for no reason, I'm not naive about what the United States of America is.

I had my own experiences.

I started to work on "All Rise" and lay out a plan for how to write for those type of large forces.

-♪ Ah ♪ -The first movement in "All Rise," "Jubal Step" is a powerful demonstration of this need for unification.

It brings together the rhythms of jazz, ragtime, the fiddle, and South American dance to create beautiful music.

[ Choir vocalizing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -History is the story of our successes and, yes, of our failures.

And why would a democracy be any different than all of us?

I know you all are better people than I am, which is not hard.

So don't get cocky.

Trust me.

-Think about the founding 150 years ago and what was happening in the country.

And in some ways, we're perfectly geographically situated for that.

There was a series of movements that were taking off right after the Civil War, and this is where Chautauqua shows up.

You've got the Mormons in Rochester.

You know, you have Frederick Douglass who's bouncing between Rochester and Buffalo giving a lot of talks.

You have the women's suffrage movement is coming through this area.

You have the Spiritualist movement in Lily Dale.

The Methodists show up here.

And it's all around this time where Americans have leisure time for the first time, but it's also not completely in vogue to take a vacation.

-The site was built in 1871 as a camp meeting site.

It was the Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting Association that was purchased by Methodist ministers in the area.

Then in 1874, it was used as the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly.

John Vincent was a rising star as a preacher.

He was put in charge of the new curriculum and teaching it to Sunday school workers.

So he started holding two-week normal school sessions to do this in this area.

He wanted to hold one of these sessions in Akron, Ohio, so he approached the superintendent of Sunday schools, Lewis Miller, whom he knew already, and asked if he could do so.

And Miller said, "I have a better idea.

Instead of doing it in the city, let's take it to the woods."

And he suggested that they come to this place at Fair Point on Chautauqua Lake where there was this newly constructed camp meeting grounds.

-Their plan was a huge success.

The opening ceremony at the site drew over 3,000 visitors, and, overall, more than 20,000 people attended this first summer assembly.

Chautauqua Institution was born.

-Even though they were started out as a religious Bible school, they really early on adopted a non-denominational philosophy for what they were trying to do.

And I think since education was such a prominent part of their mission, they always welcomed people from different backgrounds and different beliefs, and it was kind of a safe place.

-John Vincent explained his idea of a four-year correspondence reading course called the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

He was hoping to get a few hundred people.

He got 8,000.

What was unique about the CLSC is that it offered a range of subjects as you would study if you went to college, and this was very attractive for people who could not go to college either because they were too poor or they were too busy or they lived too far away to go to college.

-The success of CLSC led to what became known as the Chautauqua movement.

Several new Chautauquas, or "daughter Chautauquas" developed up all over America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Talent agencies began their own traveling Chautauquas, which were called "circuit" or "tent" Chautauquas, showcasing a variety of entertainers.

Chautauqua became known for famous visitors.

In 1929, aviator Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, landed on Chautauqua Institution's golf course before delivering her speech on the grounds.

And President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made history in 1936, giving his famous "I Hate War" speech at Chautauqua.

-I have seen war.

I have seen war... on land and sea.

I have seen blood running from the wounded.

I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs.

I have seen the dead in the mud.

I have seen cities destroyed.

I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line, the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before.

I have seen children starving.

I have seen the agony of mothers and wives.

I hate war!

-Several U.S. presidents have visited Chautauqua institution since its founding.

President Bill Clinton caused a frenzy in 1996 when he and his team stayed at the Athenaeum Hotel on the grounds of Chautauqua for a few days during the off-season as he prepared for his televised debate with Republican presidential candidate senator Bob Dole.

-I want it to be essentially a positive thing.

There will be obviously some clear contrast between Senator Dole and me, but my belief is that people want us to try to talk about building a future, and that's what I'm going to try to do."

-In the wake of America's Civil War over slavery, Chautauqua was launched as an educational retreat and a getaway from some of the troubles of the world.

It has become a haven for exploring issues that are central to the American experience like democracy, equality, and freedom of expression.

But even Chautauqua was part of America's sordid history of segregation.

-My wife and another woman here, also living year-round, wanted to do an archival research and publish on women at Chautauqua, and they called it "Ladies, Learners, and Leaders."

While they were in the archives digging through all the old newspapers and everything, digging up information on women contributions, they found an ad that said, "Housing available for colored employees at the Phyllis Wheatley House."

They said, "What is this?!"

-The Phyllis Wheatley Cottage is a great example of how this institution was mirroring what we would consider an awful part of our history, which was segregation.

The Phyllis Wheatley Cottage was not a rooming house that people got to stay at that was honoring this incredible poet.

It was a rooming house for people of color who were housekeepers and who, you know, may have worked as attendants in the hotel.

And so it was a segregated house, which is no longer physically on the grounds.

-I don't know that we can always be proud of some of the exclusionary behavior that has existed at Chautauqua, whether it's been, you know, against people that are Jewish or Catholic or Black or Hispanic, you know, different, other people.

But I do think that Chautauqua and the leaders of Chautauqua and the families of Chautauqua have said, "We want to lead and we want to be better.

-We thought it important to put up a plaque.

That requires an approval process by the Institution, which they did grant, and we had a ceremony which had approximately 300 people.

-Let's put your bouquets in honor of the Phyllis Wheatley House.

-There's a history here of Black folks coming to Chautauqua, whether it's Booker T. Washington speaking here in the late 1800s, whether it's the Fisk Jubilee Singers singing here.

-Mary McLeod Bethune was here.

Paul Robeson was here.

And, in fact, one of the most famous Black suffragettes is a woman named Hallie Quinn Brown, who walked these grounds for a graduation from the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

And so those things should be known.

-It's about bringing into rightful prominence those great Americans who have been a part of our cultural fabric but have been left out of the telling of the American story.

-I wanted to, you know, kind of pull all the beautiful, joyous experiences that I've had connected to ballet and bring that into communities where, you know -- these communities that don't often think of themselves as a part of that art form.

It's important to bring a diverse group of people to these different art forms, to the classical arts, to the fine arts.

But I think more importantly is the experience that the individual has by being exposed to it, what it gives them -- you know, the tools, the confidence, the grace, the strength.

-♪ Jesus, save him soul, Jesus ♪ ♪♪ -The music of "All Rise's" Movement 6, "Cried, Shouted, Then Sung," does just that, sharing with the musicians and the Chautauqua audience the art and traditions of the African-American Church.

-♪ So, mock our children ♪ ♪ Hear them ♪ ♪ Sanctify the lies we've sold ♪ ♪ And that same Jesus ♪ ♪ Come to save our souls ♪ -♪ Our souls ♪ ♪ Ride on, King Jesus ♪ ♪ Teach us to be ♪ ♪ Our fellow man ♪ ♪ In him, in me ♪ -Chautauqua is unique because of the tradition.

150 years.

It's just a little after the Civil War.

Right before the end of Reconstruction, of a continued sustained engagement with the principles of democracy... and its evolution into interfaith relationships and also the ability to sit in discomfort with those who do not believe what you believe.

-You've got to be careful in the present democratic moment.

There are people that want us to forget our yesterday.

When Chautauqua first started, it always began with a worship service.

That would frame it.

But not just simply a worship service in the simple sectarian sense, but the heart of those values.

What does it mean to be compassionate?

What does it mean to live a life of grace?

How do you focus and build your life around assisting those who have been marginalized?

-Palestine is ours alone!

-Palestine is ours alone!

-Settler, settler, go back home!

-Settler, settler, go back home!

-Hamas is Isis!

Hamas is Isis!

-There's no escaping the tensions and conflicts that arise from being in multi-religious community and convening in interfaith conversation.

Within our Abrahamic Program for Young Adults, I would say that it is a present point of reflection and conversation to look at the global landscape, to look at current conflicts, and for people to share transparently with one another about what that experience looks like for them.

-Both of you actually, both Madison and Allison, having spent time in Israel and Palestine, you have, like, this really visceral experience living there.

And then given what's going on, like, how are you making sense of everything?

-Exposure to people who have a different experience from me is so insightful, especially people who are living in the Holy Land.

-It's hard because it can feel very overwhelming.

When I was in Palestine, I had made friends with students that were in Bethlehem, that grew up there.

And with the things going on, their life has gotten harder.

-When we put out the application to search for these coordinators after October 7th, I was really nervous because I knew that the Jewish and Muslim coordinator and also the Christian coordinators, they were gonna have to live with one another, and I wasn't sure how that was gonna be.

-One of the things that I find that I can get involved the most in is honestly, truly interfaith work and being in spaces that are uncomfortable for me at times, but also recognizing that the people in those spaces have reasonable and valuable concerns and fears and hopes that motivate them and their choices, that I won't know or understand those unless I give each of us an opportunity to understand each other.

-When I came into this place as a Jew, I felt that the community was incredibly open-hearted and receptive and really looking to engage and understand the ways that my Jewish interpretation aligned with and also did not align with their read of tradition.

Do not underestimate or downplay the threat of white-nationalist violence in this country today.

Anti-Semitism endangers not only Jews, but all of us and the democratic order itself, because anti-Semitism is fundamentally a conspiracy theory.

-America has long grappled with questions over this kind of open discourse, and at times, Chautauqua has been thrust into the national debate over free speech.

-Freedom of speech is important.

Freedom of the press is so pivotal.

Without a free press, there is no free society.

-Chautauqua, it provides a battleground.

You can sit with people, you can think, you still see high-minded, optimistic people, and you see those who are interested in being a part of the constant transformation that has to take place for us to maintain a democracy.

-Show me what democracy looks like!

-This is what democracy looks like!

-You can't erase history!

-I want to talk about another trend that's happening today in the world of books.

And that, of course, is the ongoing attempt to restrict literature, namely book bannings and book challenges.

-Why waste the energy of trying to figure out which books to ban?

I mean, that becomes a whole discu-- And then it leaves it open to discussion.

Why leave it open to discussion?

If you were really hell-bent on banning books, just don't teach the kids to read.

It's that simple.

[Chuckling] What are you putting your time and energy into this for?

-Honestly, when I found out that that was where this story was going to go, I was a little nervous about it because you'd have to be living in a cave or under a rock, with earplugs on, not to have been aware of the discourse about appropriation and who tell us what story.

It's like the best book group that you can imagine because this is one of the historically longest-running book clubs in America.

-I believe that literature can save us, that it can transform us into becoming better human beings.

-For much of the last 150 years, literature and all of the arts have been a pillar at Chautauqua.

The institution has provided a platform for discussions and debates about cultural issues and helped develop a new generation of artistic talent.

Some of the biggest names in music, dance, theater, and comedy have graced the stages here.

-I grew up in Cleveland, and Chautauqua was always talked about.

I was obsessed with theater since I was basically in kindergarten.

And this was a place that I knew they were going to have visiting professors from Juilliard, from NYU, from all these incredible acting conservatories -- would be meeting there to teach these classes during the summer program.

And so I think it was either the summer between sophomore and junior or junior and senior, but I definitely left a Hometown Honey and I definitely had a cassette of U2's "Joshua Tree" and listened to "With or Without You" the entire way there, which was maybe two and a half hours, but sobbed the whole time.

I, like, had a gut feeling that it was going to be a very -- It was going to be a rigorous and incredible summer.

And I was looking for that.

I remember the classes we did mask work.

We had to go out and do mime.

And because you were wearing this mask, you had to find a way to communicate through your body.

I'll never forget my friend was trying to go up to this guy on a bench and just, like, get him to be engaged.

And the guy on the bench was like, "Don't play that horse... with me, son."

[Laughing] And then he just walked away!

And we weren't allowed to talk, but I had, like, makeup dripping down my face.

I was laughing so hard.

I was crying.

Yeah, that was just definitely not a good mime.

-Even though the schedule here is pretty hectic for the students, everything's so contained that it really does feel like a little bit like a community.

The audiences here are very engaged, and so, you know, when they see you play in the orchestra and then they come to you on the street and they're sort of wondering, "Where are you from?

What's your story?"

-Just like "All Rise," the arts here are more than just entertainment, but are often a cultural response to the debates raging in American society.

- My play, "The Light and the Dark, the Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi," is about the artist, the painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, who was the most famous female artist of the Baroque periods, and arguably of the entire Renaissance.

She did these amazing, very empowered, feminist, angry paintings, and she gained an incredible amount of fame for that, but they were thought very shocking.

- Even though it takes place in the 1600s, it still stands true.

As a female artist, I relate to a lot in it, and I think any artist that has gone through any kind of oppression could relate to it.

- Her most famous painting is "Judith Beheading Holofernes," which is her self-portrait of her beheading her own rapist.

After a pretty scarring incident, I was working on anti-harassment within the theater field, and right about that time, I went on a belated honeymoon with my husband in Italy, and I walked into the Uffizi Gallery, and I saw this painting, "Judith Beheading Holofernes," live, and I swear to you, sometimes you have these, like, spiritual experiences around art, I think all of us have had something around there.

I felt the motes of dust that were this woman come down to me and go, (hand slaps) "Snap out of it!

Like, you have the privilege of having a voice and you have a privilege of having a voice at this time, so you're gonna use it and you're not gonna like quit.

You're gonna do something about it.

You're a feminist playwright, you're gonna write this play."

- And she said, "I just have this first draft, it's really early," and I asked to read it, fell in love with it, and immediately said I'd like to put a finishing commission on it, and to work towards a production.

- Her images of women were shaping what it meant to be a woman and what it meant to be a woman in the face of this like incredible trauma, and obviously in the wake of the Me Too movement, and her stuff is very, very, very timely.

-Chautauqua has always been considered a safe space to explore controversial subjects, but in the summer of 2022, that all changed when author Salman Rushdie was attacked onstage.

For years, Rushdie faced threats after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for his death because his novel "The Satanic Verses" angered many Muslims, who considered it blasphemy.

-Now to that chaotic scene in Western New York where author Salman Rushdie was stabbed by a man who stormed the stage just as Rushdie was beginning a lecture.

-I sat there on the stage, and while the introduction was being made, I was just looking out at the audience to try to say, "What's it like to be in front of so many people for a talk?"

I mean, Salman Rushdie is used to doing this, and I figured, you know, he's gonna -- he's gonna carry the weight here, but...

So, I was busy looking out, getting comfortable because it was, certainly in terms of a sit-down conversation, the biggest audience I had ever been in front of.

And When Matar came across the stage, at some point, I could see him, and my first reaction -- because you couldn't really see any knife or anything like that -- was that, "This is, like, the stupidest prank I've ever seen," this guy coming up to do something to emulate this kind of threat, and then it became real.

-So, freeze-frame for me is important writers saying things that need to be said.

And then there was the stabbing, which was truly a portion of humanity's desire to silence everything that that stood for.

The next image I would paint for you, which I think says as much about Chautauqua as anything can, is that a good chunk of the audience ran toward danger.

They didn't run away.

They ran onto stage as medics to help.

They tackled the assailant.

They helped us make that space accessible so that critical care could get there.

-Our audience is older, and I was so afraid that there would be a stampede, that... that another attack would happen.

And we got everyone out.

And immediately everything turned into finding out how to keep people safe, and not just the security of the grounds, but how to keep people safe through this.

-I arrived back on the grounds that night and clearly saw a community that had been traumatized.

In a place that really is committed to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of worship, freedom of expression, all of these, and their power to build community, to see that be violently assaulted, that idea be violently assaulted, um, that, I think, really tore at the fabric of the place and the faith of the place.

-What we experienced at Chautauqua today is unlike anything in our 150-year history.

It was an act of violence, an act of hatred, and a violation of the one thing that we have always cherished most -- the safety and the tranquility of our grounds and our ability to convene any conversation, even if it's difficult.

-The next day, what we had planned was Julie Kent and the Washington Ballet were going to be performing with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra led by Rossen Milanov.

And I went to my e-mail to get Julie's number, and there was already an e-mail from Julie, and she talked about how she was so sure that we would lead and make decisions with grace and with strength.

And in her e-mail, she already made it clear that they wanted to perform.

And so I called her, and she said, "Deborah, I danced on 9/11.

I danced on 9/11.

And this is what we do.

In fact, this is why we do it."

-Fast-forward to that night.

We -- For a whole bunch of security reasons, anyone that was going to be a part of the program in essence got locked backstage early.

You know, so it was -- And I remember wondering, after what people had seen not 24 hours, 36 hours before, would anybody come?

Um, and normally, from our backstage area, there's this little peephole that you can pull and you can see who's in the audience, but because there were dance curtains up, open-air amphitheater, you couldn't see the audience.

And the first thing that was happening was I was to go on stage to welcome people back, and I didn't know if there were 30 people in the audience or 4,000.

And I rounded the corner from the dance curtains, and the amphitheater was full.

-Oddly enough, I was on that stage the following week as part of a series of lectures about courage, which, of course, had been planned months ahead of time.

And I think everyone who was speaking that week was invited to ask themselves, "Okay, what would I be willing to risk in defense of what I believe in?"

-Without courage, the other virtues don't really matter because people won't defend or support them.

-When I got to Chautauqua and I saw the amphitheater that I was going to be speaking in, which is the same amphitheater that Salman Rushdie had spoken in when he was attacked, um, I have to say I had a bad sleepless night because that amphitheater sits 4,000 people.

And I was also very aware of, um, you know, what that amphitheater, what that place had witnessed, you know?

The attack on a writer who has risked so much for freedom of expression and freedom of writing.

Ah, I kind of felt the weight of not wasting people's time when I was speaking the next day.

And it turned out to be one of the high moments of my life.

-We don't all agree with one another, and we can radically disagree, but if we all are saying we are responsible to one another and we're doing this in some sense of good faith, it changes the way you react, and I think that -- What you saw there is a model of success in a moment of failure.

-Although the attack on Rushdie was one of the most difficult moments in Chautauqua's history, they knew the show must go on.

Showing unity in the face of tragedy and a threat to our democracy was something Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center understood all too well.

[ Siren wails ] -"All Rise" was recorded a few days after September 11th.

Everyone who was involved in the recording was supposed to be out in Los Angeles.

Recording engineer was in one place.

Producer was in another.

Musicians scattered across the country.

-We had already performed this piece.

We premiered it before.

And we knew the piece very well and we understood a lot of the meaning of the piece.

But the meaning changed during that week.

-That was the beginning of a month-long tour for us.

We had just flown to California.

I think maybe the second day of rehearsal, it was around 7:00 in the morning, I got a call on my hotel phone line.

I'm groggy.

I was like, "Hello?

Who's this?"

And it was Wynton Marsalis, you know?

He was like, "Hey, man.

Have you heard about the stuff that happened in New York City?"

"What stuff?"

"Turn on the TV."

"What channel?"

"It doesn't matter.

Just turn on the TV."

-Today, we've had a national tragedy.

Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.

-Everything shut down.

So we were like, "That's the end of this recording."

Man, do you know that, like, the people in the LA Philharmonic were like, "Nah, we need to make the recording."

And the -- People in my road crew started to drive all over the country, young musicians I knew.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It is hard to explain.

You know, if I could explain what people have done for me.

[ Scoffs ] My producer at that time, Steve Epstein, he's getting on a plane to go to Detroit, driving from Detroit to Kansas City.

Somebody's leaving Los Angeles, picking him up in Kansas City.

Um... Our road manager's driving.

So we all get there.

We got all the choirs singing.

The Morgan State Choir.

Nathan Carter.

Rest in peace.

It went on and on.

Then when we got to the session, my producer -- it was not enough time for him to get there, so we had to wait.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was like, "We'll wait."

They waited.

In that world, people go by the clock.

They'll get up in the middle of a piece and stop because the rehearsal time ran out.

"We'll wait, man."

-I've never felt such a sense of togetherness from our jazz orchestra and the LA Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir, and we are so joined together at the hip.

When we performed the piece, it was on September 13th, like, a few days after the tragedy hit.

The Hollywood Bowl was just packed with people just needing something.

-I remember we walked out on stage, and the audience just -- they were on their feet.

We all -- A lot of us had tears in our eyes.

We were just starting to kind of feel what "All Rise" means.

And do we rise up?

Do we become better?

Do we embrace an opportunity to be better people?

And I think that this piece, "All Rise," from that day forward, that every time I play it, it's an opportunity to be better.

♪♪ -The idea of human brokenness and human possibility.

The idea of human brutality and human beauty.

How do we deal with those contradictions and face those contradictions in order to hammer out something new?

-Well, I went to the deepest human fundamentals, right?

So, the seventh movement is "Look Beyond."

That means you look beyond all of how you were raised, all of what you think is true, all of what you have been brainwashed into thinking is you, and there's more open spirituality, redemption, true sacrifice of the transformative power of love, the refusal to separate people into their genres based on society.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -We get to eight, and that one is called "The Halls of Erudition & Scholarship."

And that's like -- You go to whatever your concept of heaven is.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Over 100 singers and musicians come together to perform "All Rise."

They call out to the audience, "Come back home."

It's a demonstration of the power of unity and community.

-Everything's spinning around and bouncing and buzzing.

Brass playing, timpanis.

Everybody.

And then the choir sings at the end.

-♪ O my Lordy, won't you come by here ♪ ♪ O sweet Jesus, won't you come by here ♪ ♪ Save our souls, Lordy, save our souls ♪ ♪ Save our souls, Lordy, save our souls ♪ -♪ Hear me prayin', won't your come by, Lord ♪ -♪ Bleed my song till it sings untrue ♪ ♪ Still I'm gonna sing my song in blue ♪ -♪ Glory train coming through ♪ ♪ Help us, Lord ♪ ♪ Sing our souls, sing our song ♪ ♪ Yes, the Lord's always here to hold our hands ♪ ♪ And He say come back, and He say come back ♪ ♪ And He say come back home ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] -The themes of "All Rise" are also about collaboration, about intergenerational experiences, right, about moving forward, about creativity, about youth.

And I thought if we could do it with our Music School Festival Orchestra, then that's also what Chautauqua wants to lift up and celebrate in our sesquicentennial season.

-Doddly, doddly, dum, bum!

Always listen at the end of the phrase for the next thing that's coming.

There's nothing more powerful than a group of people listening to some other people play.

That's like next time you get in an argument with somebody, force yourself to listen to what they're saying.

And that silence is going to be very powerful.

♪♪ -The Music School Festival Orchestra are 83 musicians that come from all over the world.

And I think that these young students can see at the very highest level how the arts can interact with the community.

-The main trajectory of this program is really orchestral programs.

This is what they spend their time mostly with.

I think it's very much useful for young people, so it prepares them for professional lives.

-It is a very intense seven weeks.

We are putting on performances every week.

We're in rehearsal every day.

We are sometimes preparing multiple programs at the same time.

And they're all very demanding.

There's no fluff.

It's all full-throttle, uncompromising, heavy-lifting, great music.

♪♪ -Let that loud... [ Imitates drumming ] Like...

Okay.

One other thing about the rhythm.

When you get to the skip rhythm, dee-dee-dee-da-da.

You've been playing... da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

[ Imitating drumming ] It's all that 2/4 feeling.

Sometimes we're losing that.

-When I was around 10, I had a -- our school made us do, like, a vision board, and one of it was to play with Wynton, which is something wild, like, something I just threw on there.

And I was just like -- And, like, I'm in classical music.

And I'm like, "That probably will never happen."

So when I saw that we were playing with him, I was like, "There is no way, like, how the stars align to the point where that's happening."

I physically jumped around.

I told everyone I knew.

And I was like, "I'm about to play with Mr.

Marsalis!"

-Wynton finished rehearsing with the Music School Festival Orchestra, and we come right here to my porch, we sit down for lunch, and all of a sudden, you hear a trumpet right over there.

And as Wynton's sitting down, he gets up and says, "I got to go talk to him."

And I laugh because I think he's kidding.

Well, Wynton's down the stairs, so I run after.

And we start walking across Bellinger Hall parking lot.

Wynton's looking for the window.

We find the window, and he just looks at me.

And I look up at the window, and I say, "Hello!"

-This is crazy because I was practicing on the solo in Movement 8 that I was banging my head against the wall about.

And, um, I had the metronome on, and I'm trying to sing it through, I'm playing it.

Then I see Ms. Deborah's hair from the window.

And I'm like, "Why is Ms. Deborah here?"

And then all of a sudden, I see Mr. Marsalis' head.

And I'm like, "Whoa."

-And Jamie looks over, and he says, "Mr. Marsalis, this is frightening."

And Wynton's response is, "Let me in, man."

-So, I get him through the door, and they come in.

-Jamie sits down.

Wynton says, "Let me hear it."

And then proceeds to give him a 15-minute lesson, which also begins by Jamie taking a breath and putting the trumpet down.

And he looks up at me and he says, "No pressure."

-Control your volume and be explosive... but also follow the accents.

-That little master class was awesome.

It was just like -- It was cool that he just heard it and he was like, "Let me go help him out with it."

-So, Wynton shared with me that very few trumpet players have ever played this solo correctly.

And he said, "Eh.

Jamie's gonna do a good job.

It's a really hard solo.

Not many people get it right."

So, the concert comes, and at that moment... ♪♪ ♪♪ Jamie plays the solo, he gets done, and the entire trumpet section -- Kenny, Ryan, Marcus, Wynton -- turn around and look at Jamie, and they are just glowing because every single one of them knows he nailed it.

-It made me realize that music is much more than just notes and getting the notes.

It's more about what you're expressing through those notes and also just how everything is intertwined together.

It's a unity piece.

I came into MSFO thinking that I would be expanding my knowledge of trumpet, but I expanded my knowledge on music and being a human.

-When we get up there on the stage, I always tell them it doesn't matter whether you miss notes or play parts.

I've played 6,000 concerts.

Every one I'm trying to play.

And some I play good.

Some I don't.

But it's the act of us doing it is what's important.

When we're here, let's be here.

In our band, we have a thing we do when you mess up a part and you look around... "Let's go, man.

We're still playing.

We're not assessing you.

This is what we doing."

And that's life.

Let's go this way.

All rise.

All rise.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ I say all rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ And be heard ♪ -♪ All rise ♪ -♪ And now all rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ -♪ Choose to be ♪ -♪ Oh, hear the cry of ♪ ♪ God's sweet love ♪ ♪ Call to be ♪ -♪ Who you are ♪ -♪ All choose ♪ ♪ All see ♪ ♪ All rise ♪ -Chautauqua has always tried to bring America together by exploring things that pull Americans apart.

Wynton Marsalis says his band has a motto -- "Don't run away from it.

Run towards it."

150 years after its founding, Chautauqua is still running.

And it isn't running away.

-♪ All rise ♪ ♪ All rise, give thanks ♪ ♪ For all life ♪ ♪♪ [ Choir singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪