During the troubled times

We feel betrayed perhaps by Wall Street greed, by ineffectual governance, by political leadership.  But music has never betrayed us, never let us down.  It constantly gives back to us, as a boundlessly beautiful repository of the past or a vibrant mirror of our current society. 

 

We remain for all of our lives extremely sensitive to that power of music, whether or not we choose to (or even can) articulate that power.  I have always been fond of Garrison Keillor’s words: “An orchestra concert is where people go to find their souls.  Having worked so hard to lose them, people come and sit in the dark under the spell of music and are reminded of their humanity”.   What happens?  That room full of people – all with different issues on their minds – experiences together a force that we can never fully explain.   Listening, our sense of time changes, our focus sharpens, our problems fade, our priorities shift.