(upbeat music) - Welcome to the show, I'm Shirley Min.

Tonight's show will have you tapping your feet and looking for ghosts.

A once popular musical instrument is finding a local resurgence.

- [Speaker] Playing the accordion is very personal.

- [Shirley] This Philly choir uses its voice as a vehicle for change.

- [Speaker] Our founder wanted to create a choral program for women's voices.

- [Shirley] Plus, lessons learned from the remnants of old buildings.

- [Speaker] How architecture and planning was utilized to create community.

- The accordion has been around for almost 200 years.

In that time, its popularity has ebbed and flowed.

And right now, the instrument is enjoying an upswing.

- The first patent for an accordion was 1829.

All right, ready?

A one, two, three, four.

(accordion playing) We have a piano keyboard on one side.

Generally that's mostly for the melodic part of the instrument.

The left hand part of the instrument is normally for the accompanimental side and that part in the middle that's called the bellows.

- Joanna Darrow started playing the accordion when she was seven here at the Acme Accordion School in Westmont, New Jersey.

Now 77, Joanna runs the school.

- Music education and accordion education are our primary goals, so we try to give a complete education as far as theory, music history, ear training, and how to play the instrument properly.

Playing the accordion is very personal.

The accordion vibrates and you breathe with the breathing of the instrument because it works on air.

You literally begin to breathe with the instrument and when you're doing that, then you're emitting the emotional end of playing.

- [Shirley] Joanna's students range in age and ability.

Take 10-year-old Nate Smith for example.

He was introduced to the accordion through his school's accordion club.

The fifth grader has only been playing for a year, but he's already showing tremendous potential.

- It has all these different buttons and features.

It's basically like so fun and I'm focusing on the music, so it's like really fun.

- It was most popular in the early sixties and then it went through a lull and came back quite strongly and went through another lull.

- [Shirley] But now interest in the accordion is on the rise again, and Joanna is fielding calls left and right from folks looking to pick up the accordion for the first time or looking to pick it up again, like Ken Reed who started playing when he was eight.

- The neighbor down the street played his accordion out on his porch all the time and he just fell in love with the instrument.

And then you go to school, you have a family, you have a job and you play less and less.

And so I had about a 25 year dip, but I got the bug again and I started again about 15 years ago and also learned that my story's very similar to a lot of other people.

They went dormant for a long time and then in retirement or shortly thereafter, they would pick up again.

- The sound of an accordion is a very round sound.

Some people think of as being a very harsh instrument, but it's the totally opposite.

You need to create the sound and bring the sound out of the instrument.

- An instrument that's withstanding the test of time, making beautiful music along the way.

(accordion playing) I learned a few things from this shoot.

One, accordions and harmonicas are in the same music family.

Two, there are a lot more accordionists out in the world than we know.

And there's an accordion convention in West Conshohocken this summer.

And lastly, the accordion is a ton of fun to play.

At the Community College of Philadelphia, an interesting certification program is preparing students for a career in piano tuning and piano maintenance.

- Piano tuning and piano restoration is a craft.

Music is an arts.

And when the two intersect, the art and the craft, then something happens.

- Students can come here, they can get their associate's degree in music performance and also do the piano technician training program and certificate on top of that.

There aren't any other associate degree programs in the United States that are offering this kind of instruction.

And so what we've done is brought it into the community college platform.

So a number of years ago, we were donated a very old Steinway Grand piano and I was contacted by them telling me that John is the guy in Philadelphia who can work on this Steinway piano.

And so a number of years later, I need an instructor to kickstart this program.

And so that's how that relationship started.

- I think I'm the only independent Steinway certified piano technician in this area.

These people I've worked for, Sigma Sound and Gamble and Huff.

I rebuilt Mr. Gamble's piano, had a couple stints with Barbara Streisand, Stevie Wonder, Chick Corea, John Mayer, the Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen I've tuned for several times, working with these wonderful people.

I've tuned pianos at every jazz club in Philadelphia, Wells Fargo, the Academy of Music.

So when Live Nation calls me, I'm working for Live Nation.

That's the big guns and then the smaller venues as well and people's homes.

We were at a home, they had a Steinway B and the Steinway B was made especially for Benny Goodman, which for me was one of the highest honors of my life to even be working on Benny Goodman's original piano.

I think the three T's for this type of work are tuning, touch and tone.

I have three amazing students, Celeste, Jared, and Jason.

They have various backgrounds, they're all musical, they all have knowledge in sound engineering.

They were all interested in learning about piano technology.

I wanna work with people who are really serious about music, who've got a great attitude.

These three really know what they want to do and it's gonna be wonderful to pass the torch.

I've had a very fruitful, wonderful career.

It's still going on.

I want them to have a wonderful career too.

- I am an audio engineer by trade.

Being able to go out and do these house calls and experience what the work is like day to day with John has been really fascinating.

- I actually have a bachelor's in musicology.

My main instrument is piano.

This program is implementing the everyday occurrences that you'll see within the industry of piano tuning and rebuilding and reconditioning, which is really interesting.

- It is amazing to have an instructor like John.

He has all the answers and all the knowledge up there and so it's great to be able to learn from him because he's so good.

He's tuned for everybody.

Big stars, you name it, we're lucky to have him.

- I couldn't be happier knowing that they're taking on something that I've spent 44 years doing and they're serious about it and also know that they would do a great job.

- 50 years after its inception, the Anna Crusis feminist choir's message continues to amplify and uplift female voices.

- I'm Miriam Davidson.

I'm the artistic director of Anna Crusis's feminist choir in Philadelphia.

Our founder, Catherine Roma, wanted to create a choral program for women's voices that spoke to American history through the eyes of women.

And over time, Anna became a place where women wanted to mix music and politics and feminism.

And so Kathy had a mission to create a body of music by for and about women.

We have grown to expand our voices to include singers who identify as non-binary or gender fluid or trans.

And for us, social justice is always changing.

And so we are doing our best to learn and be informed and grow as our community needs to grow.

Choir consists of folks from ages 18 to 80 and that's one of the things that people talk about as being so special about us is that they get a chance to hang out with people who are a lot older or a lot younger than they are and to bring a sense of worldview that might be different than theirs depending on what generation you're in.

It's become a really special part of the choir.

- When I got to Philadelphia, I found this feminist choir and it just felt like the perfect fit for me.

Here's this choir that aligns with my values.

They have a very varied repertoire and I was just really excited to become a part of it.

- I just think that there's such value in having a community where you're creating things and you're able to express yourselves with other people and singing is one of my favorite ways to express myself.

So being able to do that here is really special to me.

- Being in this choir is a transformative experience for everyone, number one.

I think being at an Anna concert is a transforming experience also because the energy and the vibrancy and the love and the care and the commitment and passion to social justice just oozes off of everyone and you can't help but be infected and connected to it.

Art brings people together.

- Let's head to University City where class is in session for Tilden Middle School students.

The subject, hands-on STEM lessons with FirstHand.

- Where we are is surrounded by lots of big glass buildings that actually have really incredible things happening in them.

Thousands of STEM professionals doing all kinds of cutting edge science, trying to cure rare diseases.

Lots of entrepreneurs who like are starting off with two people beginning their business.

First is the STEM education program of the Science Center.

It serves middle and high school students in Philadelphia.

And we provide STEM skill building and career exposure to those students.

- My name is Kayla Calwell.

I teach at Tilden Middle School and I teach seventh and eighth grade science and I've been teaching for two years.

My students do not know what they do not know.

During their school experience, they're only seeing science done where they are writing in notebooks and they're not doing experiments or they're not seeing a person who uses science daily.

And to them, science has no place in their lives.

They are able to see that science does not just have one meaning or one look, but science is involved in whatever they choose to do as well as it is something that is within their reach.

This semester, they have been working on health coding.

Each student, they have a student that they read about that has a problem.

So maybe this student is nervous when they are solving a problem in front of class or maybe they have to check like their blood sugar whenever they are playing sports.

And so this semester, our students have had to find some type of solution to help their students.

- The children's students, their curriculum is health hackers, so they're doing block coding and app development through empathy-based design.

We'll see some of the projects that students believe that they created from the need that they see in their communities.

FirstHand showcase has students bring their projects into the public.

So it's an opportunity for folks to wander around, ask students questions for students to be able to communicate what they learned, what their project is, really pitch their projects.

Applied science is something that FirstHand really excels at because we can do the hands-on science, we can do the activities, we can lecture less and do a lot more.

Their experience is engaging and they're engaging with the content.

- My everything timer is basically a timing where you can set for adults and kids.

If you're a parent, you can set it and if you're a child, you can set it.

- My students that have been involved in FirstHand show more engagement in science class.

- I have an issue when it comes to my phone.

I told myself I'm putting it down.

- Our project was mainly focused on teenagers that be on their phone like overnight, especially on social media.

So we created a box that you could lock your phone for overnight over like a certain amount of time.

And after the time, it automatically opens up for the morning.

This is your phone, right?

You wanna sleep at night and then you put your phone in the box, and then you close it and then you set how long you want it to be.

- Now they are able to see that there is a place for science outside of our classroom walls.

And that science is not just building volcanoes or things like that.

Science also involves coding or making plastic and things like that.

So I think their engagement comes from them being able to see and being exposed to how science is related to their real world.

- You seem like a great person.

Don't beat yourself up just because she doesn't want to be her friend.

- A lot of people growing up, they face a lot of sus.

I feel like they need tips on how to help them deal with it and to let them know they're not going through it a lot.

It's good to try new things.

Never know if you really like something until you try and yes, it takes time, but you should go for it.

- It definitely changed my perspective 110%.

- Best presentation goes to Maya and Simone!

- I really used to think science was really hard.

I would definitely recommend this to a lot of kids.

Really got a closer relationship with my teachers and I really just got to experience science in a whole different way.

- Most creative goes to Hailey and Habsatou!

- It was something I never tried before and I'm glad I tried it 'cause I actually like it and I learned something new and how to create better and code better.

- You've seen them around, remnants of what was once a home or business left abandoned.

They're called ghost buildings and their present existence tells us a lot about their past.

- We're coming up on the ghost of 2621 East Lehigh Ave.

I did some research in maps.

It's not on the 1875 map, but it is on the 1888 map.

So sometime in that 13 year gap, it was built, which tracks for this neighborhood.

Some common features in a ghost.

The steps you can see leading from the first to the second floor where the green transitions to a black wall above, you can see the steps above that, not as crisp, but you can see the diagonal line through the plaster with brick behind, that would be the steps from the second to the third floor.

Building ghosts are the imprint and last impression of a building that's been demolished.

So they only arise if there were buildings that were built together and when one of them is demolished, if it leaves on the remaining building, the traces of where the stair was or the traces of a closet shelf, all those last traces of something that is otherwise gone.

You can see there was a large room at the front of the building as evidenced by the fact that there's this plaster square that's uninterrupted.

There's no wall that cuts into that entire expansive plaster.

They only show up in a place like Philadelphia where buildings are built right up against each other.

They're not gonna show up in cities where buildings are further apart from each other.

When I was starting to think about this whole topic, I naturally thought of Michael, he's a gifted photographer, I'm a historian.

Our skills complemented each other and so I got a seed grant from the Sachs program for Arts Innovation at Penn.

That's a survey that took us all over the city and helped us find 194 ghosts in four months and that's what then became the book.

The book is built around seven neighborhood essays, a reflection for each section of the city about what we can learn from ghosts in that area.

And then there are 40 in-depth vignettes for 40 ghosts that we found where I did site history in censuses, in deeds, in city directories, historic photos, maps, et cetera, to try to reconstruct some or as much of a building's history as I could from the time it was constructed to the time it was demolished.

Number 5021 Market Street was the last place Lillie Wager saw her husband Harry.

Theirs was a rough marriage and once he walked out the front door one day around 1937, Lillie lost all trace of him.

So one day, she walked out the door too.

She boarded the elevated train that stopped a block from the house and rode it five stops down to city hall.

There, she told Sheriff William Hamilton Jr. about Harry and how he'd hurt her long before deserting her.

- Once in a while, I would come across active demolition sites, which is basically the birth of building ghosts.

One in particular was in Strawberry Mansion where the construction crew was there, not too happy that I was photographing their work, but you could still see on the upper floor's wallpaper, lime green paint and poster of 50 Cent hanging on the wall, as well as pictures of probably the person who lived in the room's family.

These opportunities go even further to see into the lives of people who lived in these homes.

- [Molly] When ghosts get built over, there's nothing to remind you of the lives that were there before.

It's very easy to forget that there was anything before the current building or empty lot.

And so in that way, building ghosts are key reminders of layers upon layers of history in a city.

- Kieran Timberlake is based in Northern Liberties in a 60,000 square foot former beer bottling plant.

We renovated this space in 2015 and took great pride in preserving and honoring the existing elements, but making it work in our favor.

We are a Philadelphia-based architecture firm and we've been drawn to the RoHome housing typology since the inception of our firm.

In conjunction with the release of the book, we curated this exhibit in the bottling house gallery for an RSVP only event that was focused around a panel conversation with the two co-authors, Michael and Molly, to sort of unpack the purpose of the book, talk about a few of the stories that are shown here, and really discuss kind of how this can be applied in terms of thinking about the future.

We brought 400 pounds of construction materials that are set to be recycled that are reminiscent of domestic spaces, like the spaces that are documented in the book to really bring the audience into what Molly and Michael experienced as they documented these stories.

- I'm not rooting for more building ghosts 'cause I think they are part of a general attitude of disposability where it's just really easy to take down a building and move on as opposed to the harder work of repair or rehabilitation or reimagining something and reinvesting in something.

- think what this book does is it really shines a light on how architecture and planning was utilized to create community and how quickly that community can be erased and forgotten.

- Here's how you can learn more about upcoming exhibits on ghost buildings happening in our area.

In this week's Flicks, Patrick Stoner talks to the cast of "The Ballad of Wallace Island".

- [Speaker] You made it okay.

- [Speaker] It's not like a harbor.

- It's sort of nature's harbor.

- Welcome to Wallace Island.

- No, no, no, no, don't!

- Do you sell rice, my phone got wet.

- We've got pasta.

- Has to be rice apparently.

- Oh, you've got rice pudding, Luke.

- Rice pudding definitely won't work.

- Well, not with that attitude, no it won't.

- "The Ballad of Wallace Island" is directed by James Griffith.

He's put together an interesting cast, an eccentric pair well known to British audiences, Tim Key and Tom Basden do their thing and he adds multiple award-winning Carey Mulligan to the cast and then he throws it all together.

- These two guys have been working together for nearly 20 years so I think just certainly from watching them and working with them as well, they have a natural rhythm or musicality to what they do with the comedy.

So I think craft-wise, we just tried to give the...

I certainly tried to set them up for success and see them in the frame.

So there's a lot of two shots where you really get a sense of that timing that they have.

- And then Carey, you had to join in with that kind of style.

Did it automatically feel comfortable to you?

- Yeah, kind of, I mean so much of it is... That's baked into the writing like improv, but it isn't, it's very kind of finely tuned writing, but their dynamic is so brilliant.

I just wanted to sort of sit on the sidelines and watch.

- So often you hear about acting being a tennis skate.

- I think in terms of timing, I think that maybe the fact that we are more central to the film, usually we're just going do a small bit of someone else's film.

- There they are, they're the crazy guys, that was fun.

Let's go on with the film.

- So in our one, it was kind of like more our world.

There is a lot of, I think it's a good question.

There was a lot of timing where it kind of feels quite idiosyncratic.

I think if Carey couldn't like be into those rhythms as well, then it would be weird and clunky.

- Carey has almost no range, she just can't take on different roles and do each time.

So it was quite good that you managed to do that.

- This film wasn't beyond Carey Mulligan.

- Yeah, Carey Mulligan, what can you say?

- There's a kind of interesting thing with the kind of comic rhythms of those scenes where you have one character who doesn't really want to say anything at all and another character who doesn't wanna stop talking.

And I think what's lovely is that when Nell arrives, both characters are kind of released in a different way to have far more sort of normal conversations.

Like the rhythms of the film change quite a lot.

- I think you've just described why you needed somebody at the level of a Carey Mulligan who's so embarrassed by all this flattery.

Can't you see it, you could just see her kind of squirming there.

It's just true, I'm sorry Carey, I appreciate your time very much.

- [All] Thank you.

- And that is our show.

I hope you are now in the know, goodnight everyone.

(funky music)