After Sept. 11, many Hispanics moved their families from New York and New Jersey to Hazleton, Pa.
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BY JONATHAN TILOVE
Salvadore DeFazio, the poet laureate of Hazleton, Pa., is on deadline. In the days leading to the Fourth of July, his hometown is celebrating its 150th birthday. The centerpiece of the commemoration is a history pageant DeFazio is furiously working to finish. He is searching for an ending, though he has settled on a musical theme in Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.”
It’s a perfect fit, DeFazio says: “Hazleton is a fanfare for the common man.”
Not everyone is thrilled with the choice of music. “‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ burns me up,” says Joseph Palaggi, 80, who has played clarinet with the Hazleton Philharmonic Symphonic Orchestra since its founding in 1954. Palaggi is the son of a shoemaker who came to Hazle ton from Italy at the age of 16. Hav ing worked most of his days in shipping and receiving, his common-man credentials are impec cable. But the fanfare, he complains, was written for brass and percussion. At the sesquicentennial performance, he and the other woodwinds will be mostly idle with “all those measures rest.”
For better or worse, these are the brass and percussion days in Hazleton.
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