DOGE couldn’t stop the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Pride concert

You can’t keep a good drag queen down. Or an orchestra. Or its music director.

In fact, by the time the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Pride Concert reached the stage Wednesday night, the loss of a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts had generated a backlash of love and goodwill so great, you almost wanted to thank the Trump administration for trying to reignite the culture wars.

Almost, but not quite.

“What makes this concert — what makes this month of Pride so great,” said Martha Graham Cracker to a full house in Marian Anderson Hall, “is how it brings us all together to celebrate who we are and what we are. And that love trumps hate.”

Big audience applause and cheers.

“Let me rephrase. Love beats hate.”

Really big audience applause and cheers.

That this fourth annual free Pride Concert would happen was never in doubt. But after the Trump administration canceled the NEA award — along with thousands of other federal grants — a flood of benevolence enveloped the event.

Local philanthropist James F. Dougherty issued a $100,000 challenge grant, pledging one dollar to the orchestra for every dollar raised through June 30. Orchestra music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin decided to donate his fee for the night back to the orchestra.

And, perhaps predictably, the cancellation supercharged the event with a sense of purpose and emotion.

Freddie Ballentine’s “I Am What I Am” was always going to be great because he’s an incredible singer. But in the context of the current atmosphere — a pain likely resonant in both his voice as well as our ears — the tenor’s performance of the anthem by Jerry Herman was astonishing. It seemed to gather steam as it went, sweeping in both a nuance and firepower that elevated it to an act of resistance.

All the more astonishing since Ballentine was in town for something else altogether — Wagner. He and five other singers migrated into the Pride Concert as recent arrivals from the orchestra’s current concert version of Tristan und Isolde.

 With the two opera performances spaced a week apart, some were remaining in Philadelphia for the week, and the orchestra invited them to join the Pride concert. It turned out to be the happiest of musical happenstances.

The program’s theme was gay composers. But of course you can throw a rock at almost any classical music program and hit any number of sexual orientations. Tchaikovsky, Samuel Barber, and Leonard Bernstein were held up at this concert as representatives of gay genius.

Stylistically, the repertoire was no less prismatic.

It ranged from Paul Williams/Kenneth Ascher’s “Rainbow Connection” sung not by Kermit the Frog but by Ms. Graham Cracker, to popular songs chosen by Tristan singers, to Joan Tower’s fierce Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman.

The participation of four choirs — ANNA Crusis Feminist Choir, Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus, Philadelphia Voices of Pride, and Transcendent Choir of Philadelphia — joyfully underscored the community-building power of events like this.

Some concerts end on a triumphant note, others trail off leaving the audience with no particular emotional directive. This one aimed straight for the heart, and it could not have landed more beautifully.

Six of the Tristan singers — Ballentine, Stuart Skelton, Karen Cargill, Tareq Nazmi, Brian Mulligan, and Claire Barnett-Jones — joined the choruses in Bernstein’s “Make Our Garden Grow” from Candide­.

The piece trembles with hope — punctuated by an elevating harp part, played beautifully by the orchestra’s Elizabeth Hainen — but a hope grounded in the reality that, given all of our human failings, all we can really do in this world is plow ahead.

We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good

We’ll do the best we know.

We’ll build our house and chop our wood

And make our garden grow!

“Any questions?” asked Ms. Graham Cracker at the end, taking Dr. Pangloss’ line from the piece.

This audience had none.