Featured Book: Hallelujah Junction by John Adams

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Mr. Adams writes in Chapter 1, "Winnipesaukee Gardens": "The orchestra, my first orchestra, performed under the august name of the New Hampshire State Hospital Auxiliary Orchestra. It was a community ensemble sponsored by the main mental hospital in the state. The performers were local amateurs — businessmen, schoolteachers, a car mechanic, our family doctor (on trombone), several lawyers, and others — who enjoyed a weekly confrontation with the instruments they had learned in their youth. The repertoire was 'light classics.' The first rehearsal I ever played included the Schubert 'Unfinished' Symphony and Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite. But we also played show tunes and Sousa marches. Occasionally a patient would be allowed to join the orchestra with predictably unpredictable results. Concerts were given three or four times a season for the assembled patients. These concerts were intense affairs. Nurses and guards would lead hundreds of patients in single file into the gymnasium where we in the orchestra sat, ready to play our concert. …" (p. 17)