Pittsburgh’s weird concert boat could soon be dismantled

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Point Counterpoint II, a 195-foot-long, self-propelled, otherworldly concert boat, has brought music from the rivers of Pittsburgh to small towns throughout America to the great capitals of Europe for 41 years.

Soon, however, it may be headed for a new destination – a shipyard in Louisiana – and a new destiny, as a regular old crane barge.

Yo-Yo Ma, the world’s most famous cellist, and Robert Austin Boudreau, an eccentric 90-year-old conductor who lives on a farm in Mars, are trying to save it from that fate.

Point Counterpoint II is a true Pittsburgh story, featuring cameos by H.J. Heinz II, U.S. Steel and the vessel’s designer, Louis Kahn, one of the greatest architects in American history.

Boudreau, the boat’s owner, is the music director of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, which has performed on Point Counterpoint II since 1976. He’s tried to find a new owner for two decades.

“It’s getting to be 50 years old,” Boudreau said by phone from Manistique, Mich., a stop on the AWSO’s current and perhaps final tour. “And boats don’t last forever.”

So Ma has tried to drum up interest in Point Counterpoint II. After an article about Kahn appeared in the New York Review of Books in June, the cellist submitted a letter to the publication to make his plea.

“Robert Boudreau just turned 90,” Ma wrote in the as-yet-unpublished letter. “He and his wife, Kathleen, have decided that they cannot keep running the barge, and he cannot find a new guardian for it. I humbly ask that your readers join Robert and me in finding a new home for Point Counterpoint II.”