By Alexandra Broat

(Sounding Board, Dec. 2001) Imagine being faced with this Herculean task: You must document 58 composer residencies, involving thousands of people, and spanning 58 communities spread across all 50 states. You need to capture the people, the places, and, of course, the music. Just to make things tricky, 20 of the projects are taking place on the same weekend, and … oh yeah … you have to tie it all together in a one-hour television documentary.

As director, writer, and producer of PBS's Continental Harmony documentary, Ed Robbins was charged with doing just that -- and he succeeded. Robbins captured the essence of the Forum's Continental Harmony millennial celebration by focusing on four residencies -- St. Louis, Mo.; San Francisco Bay Area; Scottsville, Ky.; and Madison County, Miss. -- while giving a general overview of the entire program.

Robbins has worked as a writer, director, and producer for nearly 20 years. His credits include the Emmy Award-winning Shtick and a Dream, a documentary about New York performers trying to break in to show business, and NBC's TV Nation: The Best of Michael Moore. He also collaborated with Walter Cronkite on Christianity Reborn: Prayer and Politics for the Discovery Channel.

Being an artist yourself, how did you go about capturing such a massive project in the scope of one hour?

It was exhaustive and exhausting. I had to select a handful of sites to focus on. I read the proposals and talked to many of the sites and the people involved in the projects. There was one criterion that really narrowed it down -- which projects were still ongoing. The other criteria were geographic spread, diversity of community, diversity of music, and something unexpected or challenging in what they hoped to do.

I knew that I wanted to highlight people. The reason they chose me as a director is that I like to tell stories around people's experiences. I was discovering what was going on and what was about to unfold at the sites even as I was filming. I knew I wanted to do a few smaller communities. I knew I wanted to do some cities. I also knew I wasn't doing a concert compilation but a documentary about people as they were challenged and hopefully changed by Continental Harmony.

I was actually looking for pieces out of the ordinary -- pieces that did not fit the usual expectations of who a composer was and what a composer did. That was one of my main goals. I just wanted to subvert peoples' ideas of what composers did and who they were.

What did Continental Harmony teach you about the connection between music and community building?

I learned a tremendous amount about the connections between music-making and community building. That's one of the most lasting things I came away with from this project. One of the participants in a small Continental Harmony community told me after their concert was performed that, "Music was just the catalyst for something else that happened."

I think the projects that were most interesting were the ones where the community said, "We want to do this, this, and this," and the composer said, "why don't we also try this and this." There was a real synergy - something greater than imagined resulted. I think one of the themes of the documentary is that the arts have a place in community building and they are not frivolous. Even the smallest communities have found so much meaning in their projects.

What kind of impact do you think Continental Harmony left on the communities that participated?

It varied hugely from place to place. That's one of the things I think the Forum is looking at -- which of the places were most impacted. Which were the places where the community got most involved and the results continued after the project was over?

There were places where there were amazing musicians. A composer went down and created a well-done piece of music that was played by professional musicians. There were other places where they pulled the guy who works at the local clothing store together with the woman who directs traffic for the school. They pulled them all together because they played instruments or sang. Maybe it didn't sound as good as professional musicians, but I think in those places the limits were stretched by this project.

For a composer to go into a community as an artist-in-residence is not that unusual; that happens all of the time. Doing it on a national scale is pretty extraordinary, and giving the community a say in where the project goes and insist that the artist extend into the community -- in a lot of ways is where the unexpected happens.

How do you feel about the Forum's decision to extend Continental Harmony beyond its initial season?

I think it's great, because they learned an enormous amount going through it the first time. The people at the Composers Forum jumped right in, started swimming, and then realized, "Oh my God! It's the Atlantic Ocean and we're going toward the other shore." They kept going and going and actually made it to the other side. Now they've seen what works best, what kind of situations were the most meaningful for communities and composers, and what kind of composers seemed to work best within communities.

What especially moved you about Continental Harmony? Did you have any favorite experiences?

Some of my favorite moments were seeing discoveries happening for other people and seeing people being surprised by some interaction with the composer. I also loved being exposed to things I've never encountered before.

When you drive across the country, on the surface, there seems to be a great homogenization of America; there's a McDonalds, Hardee's, and Texaco station everywhere. But when you have to go beneath the surface, as you have to do documenting these projects, you discover that regional differences and community-based identity still exist and that sense of place is incredibly important to so many people.

Continental Harmony is about rebuilding and rediscovering that sense of place. I think that is a very valuable and precious thing to be pursuing and building, as the media and the spread of mass culture take over. It's really interesting when a place's unique history is rediscovered and people find out what's unique about who they are and where they came from.

PBS's Continental Harmony documentary was produced by Twin Cities Public Television, with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The program began airing nationwide on PBS stations beginning in September 2001. For more information on the documentary and Continental Harmony's millennial celebration, visit www.pbs.org/harmony.

Continental Harmony was a Millennial Project of the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funding provided by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; The Rockefeller Foundation; The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; Land O’ Lakes Foundation; Ecolab Foundations; Target Stores, Marshall Fields, and Mervyn’s Califronia with support from the Target Foundation; and the state arts boards of Minnesota, Ohio, and Illinois. Documentation of Continental Harmony, and associate partner of the White House Millennium Council, is being archived by the Library of Congress.