Best of Boston

How does an orchestra honor medical personnel, first responders, and essential workers in the middle of a pandemic? It puts together an astonishing eight-minute YouTube performance of composer John Williams’s Summon the Heroes, that’s how. With 86 musicians’ audio and video feeds edited and synched together by Boston Symphony Orchestra engineers—not to mention an introduction by conductor Keith Lockhart and Williams himself—this virtual performance was moving, mesmerizing, and surprisingly educational—ah, that’s where the bassoons come in!