WDAV To Play Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder – Friday, 8:00 p.m.

To the WDAV family,

I imagine many of you have been reeling, as I have, from the back-to-back mass shootings in our country over the last two weeks. Tuesday’s killings at the grammar school in Uvalde, Texas, where most of the young victims were in the fourth grade, have moved many of us to think of our own childhoods. If yours was like mine, it was mercifully free of the fear of being killed in a vicious attack.

When I was in fourth grade, I was honor guard bringing in the flag at our grade’s assemblies. My favorite class was science, and I imagined I’d be a nuclear physicist someday. Fourth grade was also when I had a leading role in the spring musical, where I played a prince who sang “I will marry the Princess Renee…”

I missed a few months of fourth grade, as it happens. That was because I was hit by a car while crossing the busy street in the Bronx where I lived. I spent the time bedridden, but Miss Chappelle sent work home for me regularly, and she assured my worried mother that I should have no trouble graduating at the end of the year.

My family’s concern for me was enormous at the time, but the reasons for it seem so simple compared to the unspeakable grief of those stricken by the attack in Texas.

At WDAV we seek to provide you a Classical Oasis from the various stresses of the day, whether they come from your daily life or the terrible events in the news cycle. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel that we are doing enough in times like these. But classical music is how we pursue our mission of serving our community, and we know from experience how important it is in your life.

This Friday, May 27th at 8 PM, we’ll begin the Night Music with Gustav Mahler’s song cycle Kindertotenlieder – “Songs on the Death of Children.” We will present it to remember the families shattered by this most recent horror. The unique context of the Mahler work lends itself to marking Tuesday’s crime, and it reminds us of the powerful way in which music can address grief and pain.

We also want to share with you these resources should they help you to process the oppressive sadness recent events have led many of us to experience.

In addition to providing what relief we can, all of us at WDAV hope fervently that as a people we can come together to end the present threat that is endangering so many children in our nation.

Frank Dominguez

WDAV General Manager