Bonus Days

I do not believe in life after death, but, because of my recent intimacy with cancer, I have started to understand things quite differently than I had in life B.C. (or b.c.). I have come to think of everything that has happened in 2026 as a generous bonus.

If I hadn't had the opportunity to start treatment for this cancer in January, when the pain from the tumor on my sacrum was unbearable, I would very likely not be here to write this post. But science, insurance (Medicare), an enormous amount of support from my family (particularly Michael who helped me through the worst pain and the worst fears), a team of brilliant and dedicated doctors, extremely helpful and dedicated nurses, and my friends, have made it possible for me to experience extraordinary things during what I have come to understand are bonus days.

Come to think of it, every day is a bonus day.

Today I played a Bach prelude and part of a fugue on the piano, practiced some Brahms on the violin (I'm playing with a new pianist, and next Tuesday evening we're playing Brahms), practice some of the music I have written for violin and piano (this new pianist is interested in reading that too). It ain't Brahms, but what is except Brahms? I also played some Grieg on the piano, did some teaching, and talked with both of our kids and our grandchildren (who wished me a happy birthday today).

Michael and I read two chapters of Bleak House, mowed the lawn, and went out for dinner.

That I have a future is a gift.

That I can look forward to seeing our daughter and two granddaughters this weekend, and can look forward to the arrival (into the world) of another granddaughter next week is a gift.

That the treatment for this cancer has made it possible for me to walk every day, to practice every day, to read every day, to go to concerts and watch movies, to do work when necessary, and to do daily tasks (cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning the house) is a gift.

Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas, who died yesterday at the age of eighty-one, will always be a young man to me.

I am grateful to Lisa Hirsch, who knew MTT well, for making a portal post with multiple obituaries and links.

I had the opportunity to sing in the children's scene at the end of an unstaged performance of Wozzeck in 1969 or 1970 at Tanglewood, and Michael Tilson Thomas was our conductor. He stood in front of us, and we felt safe. It is an odd thing to say when referring to that particular opera, but that is how I remember the experience. Before we were on stage everything was bloody and murderous. On stage we had this animated young man making sure we were singing together.

I got to sing with him again a few years later, when I was in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. My mother was in the chorus, and somehow I was able sing in it too. I found the program for the first concert that I sang with the chorus, and Michael Tilson Thomas, who I already knew, was the conductor. I had no idea how unusual this program was for the Boston Symphony Orchestra to play.

I do remember that Thomas always referred to the Canticum Sacrum as the "Canticum Geshundheit," and I could never figure out exactly why. Could the word "Geshundheit" which means health in German, be in the same "family" as a "Bless you" after a sneeze, since Sacrum means sacred?

This has bothered me for much of my life.

My Arrangement of Price's "Adoration" to be Performed by the Vienna Philharmonic!

I just learned the other day that for their Sommernachtskonzert on June 19, 2026 the Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Lorenzo Viotti, has programmed my arrangement of Florence Price's "Adoration."

I remember looking at the organ music (Price's original) for the first time in the winter of 2013, and being blown away by what I heard. I immediately made setting of it for violin and piano, and brought it to my friend John David Moore's house to play it through. We decided to include it on the concert we were planning for February 28, 2014.

The two of us were the only people who knew it as a piece for violin and piano. And that concert increased the number of "Adoration" cognoscenti by a few dozen.

I decided to make a string orchestra version of the piece for our local Summer Strings orchestra, and shared that arrangement, as well as the violin and piano arrangement in the IMSLP. You can find all of my arrangements of "Adoration" here, along with settings by me and by other arrangers. The number of musicians who enjoyed playing the piece increased exponentially. And the number of people who enjoyed listening increased exponentially as well.

During her lifetime Florence Price never got the kind of recognition she deserved for her exquisite work. The idea of the Vienna Philharmonic including a piece written by her on one of their concerts would, I am certain, have been something far beyond her wildest dreams.

And having an arrangement of mine being performed by the Vienna Philharmonic is nothing I could ever have imagined in my wildest dreams.

I feel so grateful that I have had the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to do Price's "Adoration" justice as a piece for string orchestra (as well as one for violin and orchestra), and I feel so grateful to the people who chose the music for this Vienna Philharmonic Sommernachtskonzert for putting the Price on the program.

Back in the very early 1980s, when I was studying recorder in Vienna, and playing flute and recorder on the Kärntner Straße in order to pay for rent and food, and hanging out at Jazz clubs with my friend Leo Wright, I never would have imagined being "present" in the city in this way. But here we are.

Matters Musical and Emotional

I heard a most interesting discussion on NPR the other day while driving to my weekly blood draw (treatment is going very well) about a crisis in mattering. Hearing this discussion at this particular point in my life (mid 60s, with a disease that has certainly caused me to think about life differently), was exactly what I needed.

Before the internet became the highway, street, road, window, and path to just about everything we do, both as musicians, and in extra-musical activities, my feelings of not mattering were personal family issues (a lot of typical middle child stuff in a wildly atypical family). Despite my issues growing up,  I had friends, and I knew that I mattered to a lot of people.

Mattering and connection were, thank goodness, hard-wired into me through public school, my neighborhood, my musical life, writing letters, talking on the telephone, and even my various workplaces. Occasionally colleagues became friends, but even if we remained only cordial in our interactions, those relationships still mattered.

We didn't think so at the time, but raising children in a small town ended up being a real advantage in the mattering department. Even though they came of age with the internet (though it was primative and wired with annoying dial-up connections), they grew up with activities they enjoyed and a local paper. They also had to live and grow among people who had very different priorities from the priorities we had at home.

But they knew everyone, and everyone knew them. And they grew up knowing that they mattered. In their adult lives and in their lives as parents of young children they both seek out relationships that are meaningful. 

Our son lives in the Boston area, which is where I grew up. I told him that I used to know all the cracks in the pavement in the Back Bay area of Boston, but then they changed the pavement. Aside from his young family and a few friends, I have very little connection with Boston. But I occasionally learn that musicians there play music that I have written and arranged. I need to remind myself that what I do and what I have done matters, even if I hear about it in indirect ways. It is so easy for me to forget that what I have done (and what I do) musically does matter.

I think the music I write as a medium through which musicians who play together can feel that they matter to one another. I try to make my music as comfortable as possible to play or sing, so that people are free to express themselves. 

After a period of withdrawal from active professional musical life because of the unpredictability of the array of chemo drugs I am taking (since the beginning of 2026), I am doing my best to start stepping out a bit and am making connections with more local musicians. It feels like a healthy way to move forward.

I am also using this time to take a break from composing. I am spending all my musical energy practicing violin and playing piano.  After playing at the piano for the past decade or two, I can finally play the instrument more freely, and without tension. I have no desire to develop the kind of technique that would make me sound like a real pianist, and do not care at all about playing at any tempo faster than molto moderato, so I do not practice scales or etudes. I just play music. 

Violin is a different story. My goal with the violin is to be able to play everything at tempo, in tune, with clean articuation, and with the greatest possible sense of phrasing and nuance. It makes for a nice life balance. Good cop, bad cop, I guess.

I am learning a great deal about writing music from Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms these days. They are my best teachers. I am excited to see what comes out on paper when it is time for me to write something new (or when someone asks me to write something new, whichever comes first).

Ambition

I was an ambitious teenager. I was also a very hard worker. As a high school flutist I used to set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. and practice scales for an hour in the basement. Then I would have breakfast and get on the 7:10 school bus.

I would use my free periods in school to practice (we had two practice rooms in the music office). I must have spent some after school time doing schoolwork, and I must have spent time with friends (playing duets, no doubt). After dinner I would often get on the trolley and go to concerts at the New England Conservatory or Boston University. Then I would practice until 11:00, listen to a record (usually a piece of Brahms chamber music), and would go to sleep immediately after the tone arm on my record player returned to its resting place, which turned the whole machine off.

I never let more than six hours of time pass between practice sessions. And I listened to a lot of Brahms chamber music.

My ambition got me into Juilliard. My ambition found me friends who worked as diligently and consistently as I did. My ambition made me fearless in the presence of the accomplished musicians I met in Europe, particularly people who specialized in early music, and it made me unafraid to work in radio, as a reviewer, and even as a kind of a scholar, even though I had absolutely no training in musical scholarship. 

But it wasn’t ambition that fueled my return to playing violin in my early thirties, after nearly twenty years away. It was pure need. I had run into an expressive wall, and needed to find a way to move forward. 

I needed to be able to play a stringed instrument so that I could play the kind of chamber music that was never available to me as a flutist. I needed Schumann in my life, and Brahms, and Beethoven beyond the Serenade.

I knew that at my age there was no path to the kind of a career I imagined I would have as a flutist. I was quite demoralized after every path to “success” (or even employment) as a flutist came to an abrupt and bitter end, but I achieved competence as a string player rather quickly, and found that I had a knack for making string quartet arrangements.

Arranging gave me the courage to write my own music, and I found my old ambition returning. I started studying composition, and then essentially chain wrote piece after piece. I loved the hard work. I loved the rhythm of getting up very early and writing. I loved the thrill of hearing something I wrote played or sung beautifully. I particularly loved having the opportunity to express myself without the need to be judged by others. I have always been my fiercest critic, and organizing the notes and rhythms of a piece successfully is always gratifying.

I fell into the “class” of a “woman composer,” whether I thought of myself as one (different, in some way than a “man composer,” I suppose?) or not, and found that I was treated less seriously than my peers, regardless of the quality of my work. I had to fight simply to be taken seriously.

But then I found a few people who did take me and my work seriously. And then there were more.

I have a body of work that I am proud of. I know what I can do, and I know what my limitations are. I have never measured success in monetary terms; I measure it in terms of the usefulness of what I have written. 

I could use monetized social media to property promote my work, but I have no ambition to do so. If somebody wants a piece of music, they know where to find it. I don’t want to adjust my biography to make myself worthy of someone’s attention. I prefer to let my work speak for itself.

I want to be able to play more difficult music on the piano, and I want to (finally) get a chance to play the Brahms piano quintets (all of them), on either violin or viola. Maybe I will write something new. Or not.

But I am calling on all my experience with ambition to make it through my cancer treatment, which continues through the end of July. And then it is only a few months until November, when the fate of the world has a chance of moving towards something resembling sanity.

Haydn String Quartet Project

My quartet friends and I have, over the past decade, made our way through all of Haydn's sixty-seven numbered string quartets in order, including the "spurious" quartets that were once attributed to him. And on Easter Sunday we are going to play (can you believe it?) the Seven Last Words. After that we will begin playing the Mozart "Haydn" Quartets, a truly delicious next place to go.

I noticed something yesterday while playing Opus 77 no. 2 in F major: the opening theme in the first violin part brings to mind the opening unison motive of Beethoven's F major String Quartet, Opus 18, no. 1. The opening of the Beethoven feels (at least to me) like a modernized and condensed answer to Haydn's graceful and gentile opening.

In 1798 and 1799 Prince Lobkowitz (of Vienna) commissioned both Haydn and Beethoven to each write a set of six string quartets, so both composers were at work: one at the end of his career, and one at the beginning of his career.

If you were to just look at the publication information it wouldn't seem possible that Beethoven, under ordinary circumstances, could have known what turned out to be Haydn's last complete string quartet. Haydn's Quartet Opus 77 no. 2 wasn't published until 1802, while the six quartets of Beethoven's Opus 18 were published in 1801. But Vienna was a small town, musically speaking, and the composers shared a patron. It wouldn't be beyond anyone's imagination that Beethoven might have had chance to see, through the good graces of the Prince, the manuscript score of what he believed would have been Haydn's last quartet long before it was published.

The F major Quartet was not the first of the Opus 18 quartets that Beethoven wrote; it was the second. Maybe he put it first in the publication so that his bold opening related-but-opposite F-major opening gesture to that of Haydn could more effectively and more immediately introduce his modernized approach to the string quartet.

After playing Opus 77 no. 2 we played Haydn's very last quartet, published as Opus 103. The final movement, which Haydn calls a Canon, is a puzzle to me because there is no way that it can be "canonized." Haydn, one of the greatest masters of the musical endgame, presents the end of his body of work for string quartet without making it come to a cadence. Wow.

The fragement Haydn uses of "Der Gries," a poem by Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim that he set for SATB choir, soloists, and keyboard as Hob. XXVc:5, ends with a semicolon in its original form:

Hin ist alle meine Kraft!
Alt und schwach bin ich;
Wenig nur erquicket mich
Scherz und Rebensaft!

Hin ist alle meine Zier!
Meiner Wangen Roth
Ist hinweggeflohn! Der Tod
Klopft an meine Thür!

Unerschreckt mach' ich ihm auf;
Himmel, habe Dank:
Ein harmonischer Gesang
War mein Lebenslauf!

Mimi on the First Day of Spring

Michael and I watched La Bohème on PBS last night. It was a performance recorded live on November 8 of 2025, and it is being broadcast for the first time now.

In light of an actor's comments (I have refrained from mentioning his name in previous posts, and will continue to do so) regarding the cultural validity of opera, I can't think of a better rebuttal to him and those who share his views than this performance of La Bohème (the link takes you to a place where you can watch it).

I have always loved the opera, but my experience with it has been either from an orchestra pit (where I couldn't see the stage), through reading a piano-vocal score with a translation, listening to recordings following the libretto, or watching select staged separate scenes. This was a first time for me to experience whole opera without any kind of distraction.

I loved being able to see such an excellent-in-every-way performance in my living room, with my husband (who was also seeing the opera for the first time), a full box of tissues, and an extra handkerchief. And as a full-blown adult I found that I brought much of what I have learned (through literature, music, and studying history) into the experience. I hear so much more after living an inner-voice string-player's life, and through writing music myself that I can marvel on a whole new level at how magical Puccini's orchestration and vocal writing is.

In this opera you get the greatest contrasts imaginable: the most intimate moments of deep emotional communication between lovers, two monologues that pass seamlessly into a duet, and an aria that a basso sings to his coat, presented here with tasteful serious devotion (my attention was drawn to the bassoon doubling, which might suggest to some directors and conductors a sense of the absurd). This was a believable love song, sung by an extraordinary basso. And then there are the raucous songs, dances, and banter that are more like vaudeville acts than what anyone would expect from a serious opera about love and death.

In contrast to the intimacy between Mimi and Rodolfo, where they seem to be the only two people on the earth, illuminated only by moonlight, Marcello and Musetta's on-stage relationship is never private. But Musetta's transformation from a person of ill repute into a truly great human being is front and center. Maybe the public Musetta was always different from the private Musetta (we will never know). She had to make a living, right? In my mind Marcello's only saving grace is that he can't help loving her.

The second act crowd scene in this production, which contrasts the intimate ending of the first act, is a marvel in every way. The stage is filled with people, action, props, storefronts, tables, animals, and a marching band of children snaking their way through a two-level crowd. There is extraordinary choral singing, and real dancers doing work that requires real skill: appearing to be clumsy, moving gracefully in an animal costume, and lifting people. 

In 1830s Paris (and for a long time before that) a woman without inherited wealth (property, that is, on which she would "earn" a certain amount of money on from rent) had to rely on men to care of her needs. She had very few ways to keep herself alive, unless she was a clever monster like Balzac's Cousin Bette. 

And if a woman inherited a great deal of wealth, she couldn't have access to it unless she was married. Consider the case of Winneretta Singer (the Princesse de Polignac), who had a marriage of convenience with the titled-but-poor Prince de Polignac (both were gay), and used her wealth to promote musicians and commission music from composers. She even got a title, and the freedom that having vast amounts of money offers to live life on her terms. Most women didn't have her good fortune.

Beauty, if you had it, served as currency for women. Mimi and Musetta were/are two such women. In this opera they exist in a sea of male characters who present a buffet of negative male characteristics: self absorption, cluelessness regarding women and regarding relationships, jealousy, helplessness, and sentimentality that tell us a lot about the human condition in 1830s Paris. We can recognize these less-than-desirable male characteristics in the rich and powerful leaders of industry, government, and communications that elbow their way to our  televisions while we wait for a portion of the news, a video, or a movie to begin. 

We watch the cultural powers that be do their best to supress the rights that women (half the world's population) have worked for centuries to achieve and still struggle to maintain. Mimi asking Rodolfo whether she is still pretty just as she is about to die really drives the above point in the previous paragraph home for me.

Michael, who hadn't slept well the night before, was afraid that he might nod out during the opera. That didn't happen. Giocomo Puccini, Franco Zeffirelli (the director of the production), the fabulous cast, the astounding set designers and builders, and the conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson didn't let it happen. If anything the absolute balance between emotional intensity and comic relief made watching an energizing and refreshing cathartic experience. There's nothing like a series of good cries to bring your feelings to the surface. All your feelings.

Experiencing the world through feeling and connection is what makes us human. Becoming reacquainted with those feelings through an opera like La Bohéme (i.e. Puccini's operas in general), reconnects each of us with our humanity.

That is why I know that I need to spend more time with the operas that I love. Fortunately there are a great many operas available through the PBS App that we have on our television (because we support PBS). And we have a great collection of DVDs both at home and at the local University library.

I cried real tears when Rodolfo cried in response to a selfless gesture of kindness from Musetta. And when Mimi died (it isn't a spoiler that she dies at the end), I cried for her and for her friends. But I also cried for what I fear: the end to funding from the federal government for musical organizations like the Metropolitan Opera, which cannot sustain itself on money from supporters alone (including corporate sponsors), that accessible ultra-high quality performances like this one might not be able to happen anymore. 

Mimi, who is music personafied, comes to the end of her life too soon because she hid the fact that she was sick (except she shared it with us, the audience), and wasn't able to get medical care (which may not have been able to save her). Paris in the 1830s suffered from food shortabes, food shortages, cost of living increases, and widespread cholera, that, in the spring of 1832 killed 100,000 people all over France (18,402 in Paris). 

There were, of course, many people who died because of lousy medical care. 

The real possibility of performances at this extraordinary level fading into memory comes because of a government that will not use its vast resources to fund arts institutions and make performances of operas affordable both for the audiences and for the people putting on the productions. Instead they threaten universities, systematically silence broadcasting companies, and flood disinformation, propaganda, gold coins, and ever-changing views of reality through preferred pipelines. I think of the squandered money that could have gone to so many organizations that have been dedicated to improving the lives of people in America, Many organizations have, until recently, kept the country from descending into something like the documented chaos that Paris (and Europe in general) experienced in the 1830s.

The lack of human rights, the ability of one person to get away with owning another person and disposing of that person when s/he is no longer of value that was still going strong during the middle of the ninetenth century suddenly doesn't feel like it was very long ago.  As they say, "What happened once upon a time happens all of the time."

Here's the link to the opera again. Remember, it isn't available after April 4th.

Haydn Sonata in E-flat L. 62 Hob. XVI:52

Haydn dedicated the 1798 Antara publication of his final Piano Sonata to Magdalene von Kurzbeck, but he wrote the piece four years earlier for the London-based pianist Therese Jansen Bartolozzi. The 1937 Peters edition (photographed above) has this Sonata as the first work of the first volume.

For some reason the first volume of my collection had been sleeping in a file cabinet. I found it yesterday, and playing through it, even with my rudimentary piano skills, was thrilling.

I wonder how many composers over the centuries have had the same reaction to the magic of this piece that I have. I wonder how many pianists over the centuries have felt the same series of thrills that I feel when playing this piece.

At first it was known only to Haydn. Then for four years it was known only to Therese Jansen Bartolozzi and the people she played it for. Then it was published, and was available to anyone with the money to buy it, or anyone with a friend who had the money to buy it.

Now it is available to hear on demand at the touch of a button, at any time of day, from anywhere in the world, played by great pianists, many of whom are no longer living.

Before the internets people all over Europe, and elsewhere in the world must have loved this piece as I do. And they would have loved it during times of peace and during times of war: the last year of the French Revolution (1789-1799) the Napoleonic Wars (1798–1815), the Second French Revolution (1830-1831), the Third French Revolution (1848-1849), the wars for Italian unification (1848-1870), the wars for German unification (1862-1871), the Crimean War (1853–1856), the Russian Revolution (1905-1917), the Balkan Wars (1912-1914), World War I (1914–1918), the Russian Civil War (1918–1920), the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), World War II (1939–1945), and the other wars that happened between 1900 and 1944, between 1945 and 1989, between 1990 and 2002, and the twenty-first-century wars documented on this Library of Congress website, which seems to need almost daily updating in order to account for the daily "feeling" in a certain leader's bones concerning where to strike next.

I am convinced that this Haydn Sonata will continue to shine its way through the dark times we face now and the dark times ahead. Without doing anything (except for being played and heard) it stood and sang as a jewel of joy, balance, emotional sensitivity, and communication through the worst of times in our shared past (because as members of the human race the past is something we all share, regardless of which "side" of a situation we might have sympathized with).

I like to think that my personal experience with the healing nature of Haydn might be shared by others through this piece. It helps me keep a light shining when things get dark and foggy. Maybe it might help you as well.

Perfect and Imperfect Storms

Freezing weather in March (snow today after huge high winds last night).

A deeply disturbing documentary we watched yesterday about the "manosphere."

David Markson's This Is Not a Novel.

"Golden" running through my head, making me cry, over and over again.

Cancer-fighting drugs surging through my system, making me aware of the magnitude of my physical state: this is far from easy, and far from over.

The state of the world, brought to humanity and other living things by a chaotic, unstable, craven, cartoon of a "man" who somehow is able to do whatever he wants to do.

The streamlined directness of Haydn.

The hope of Bach later today.

And the hope that tomorrow might be a little easier to bear.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra Situation

Reading the comments below this article in The Boston Musical Intelligencer is a good way to learn about the situation regarding the surprise and sudden termination of Andris Nelsons's contract. There are well over one hundred comments, many from regular audience members and BSO subscribers.

Matthew Guerrieri, of Soho The Dog fame, has made a substack post about the situation. Here is some of what Matthew has to say in his post called "M[r.] Nelson[s] is Missing"

I, too, have spent the past week wondering just what is going on at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. To recap: on March 6, the BSO Board of Trustees and president and CEO Chad Smith released a fairly terse statement announcing that the contract of music director Andris Nelsons would not be renewed, as conductor and organization “were not aligned on future vision.” The move apparently caught Nelsons by surprise (“not the decision I anticipated or wanted”) and was made without consulting the orchestra’s musicians. Theories as to why have coalesced around two possibilities:

a) Nelsons, who is also the Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and, of late, has been spending a lot of we’re-just-good-friends quality-time with the Vienna Philharmonic, had stretched himself too thin to keep adequate eye on the store in Boston, with a corresponding drop-off in focus and quality (we’ll call this the “David Allen conjecture”)

b) Smith, who was hired away from the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2023, has been itching to revamp the BSO’s programming into something more like LA’s, with more pops-leaning crossovers and post-modern, audience-friendly new music, but has been stymied by Nelsons’ insistent devotion to the European canon (we’ll call this the “you’re-not-from-here postulate”)

You can debate these on the merits (Allen’s diagnosis of decline, for example, might be a bit of correlation-causation confusion; from the start, Nelsons struck me as a kind of Reggie Jackson of conductors—lots of home runs, lots of strikeouts). To be sure, there have been hints that a Smith-Nelsons partnership was not built for the long-term. But that still doesn’t explain the abruptness of the announcement. (Pure speculation, but my own wager would be that this has a great deal to do with the imminent departure of vice president of artistic planning Anthony Fogg, who is retiring in September, leaving an enormous hole in the BSO’s administrative apparatus. If CEO and music director were in a high-noon standoff over Fogg’s replacement, I could see the board panicking and turning an “ease him out” situation into a “rip the band-aid off” situation. But again: pure speculation.)

Among the Nelsons-friendly and more Boston-centric comment boards I’ve been perusing, Smith already has been cast as the heavy in this drama, a top-down corporate outsider imposing an unwelcome agenda. (This take assumes that the unaligned future vision mentioned in the board’s announcement is option b) up there.) Out of curiosity, I went back and took a look at the trustee-board committee that picked Smith to be the CEO. It looked like this: medical research institute administrator, foundation director, arts administrator, corporate governance lawyer, private equity partner, philanthropist, and arts administrator (and former BSO member). It’s a group, I think, symptomatic of the tension at the heart of American orchestra governance, where governing boards are expected to be fundraising machines, fiduciary watchdogs, and artistic stewards all at the same time. On the one hand: if you’re hiring an administrator, that’s the kind of expertise you want in the room. On the other hand: that’s a largely corporate crowd, making a corporate decision-by-committee—not exactly a recipe for out-of-the-box innovation. It’s probably going to land on a corporate candidate.

(Incidentally, lest you think that a gathering like that is some sort of 21st-century late-capitalist perversion of the BSO’s mission, here’s the lineup of BSO trustees ca. 1950: lawyer, judge, investment banker, paper executive, real estate broker and philanthropist, church administrator, car dealer and politician, investment banker, advertising executive, lawyer and academic, media executive, education administrator, lawyer, judge, lawyer. That there were at least three people on Smith’s hiring committee with professional-level musical training is significant progress, for what it’s worth.)

Still, if Smith really is aiming to plug-and-play some facsimile of the LA Phil ethos in Boston, he might want to sit down over a two-hot-dog combo with one of the people who hired him.

Joshua Lutzker—the private equity guy in that list—has been a BSO trustee since 2014. He is a managing director at Boston-based Berkshire Partners. In 2014, Berkshire Partners, in a deal worth right around a billion dollars, acquired Portillo’s, a Chicagoland chain of hot-dog-and-Italian-beef stands. Lutzker was part of the team than landed the deal, and he has served on the Portillo’s board of directors ever since, shepherding the company through both an IPO and a nationwide expansion. (Though it was announced just this week that, with the appointment of a new CEO, Lutzker will be leaving the board. History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes, etc.)

The Substack has links, images, and charts, plus a look at Portillos as an economic entity. I think I have eaten at Portillos in Chicago, and I have not eaten at the one that recently opened in Champaign, Illinois. If I did eat there, I don't remember much about the food, and I certainly do not have the wherewithal to analyze the financial stuff concerning the business.

I am very grateful to Matthew, who grew up in Chicago, understands a great deal about music, and understands a great deal more about how the financial world works than I do, for offering his far more than two cents about this situation.

My Two Cents on the Actor who Doesn’t Like Ballet and Opera

The musical internets are all abuzz about two sentences an actor uttered in an interview concerning his lack of use for ballet or opera. I learned from Michael that this guy (I keep forgetting his name, and have no desire to look it up or plant a link in this post) played the role of Bob Dylan in a recent bio-pic. Unlike many of my peers, I have no interest in Bob Dylan. I thought the film was well made, and well acted, but it did nothing to assuage my lack of appreciation for Dylan, his work in music, or in what has been lauded as his poetry.

I love a great many ballets and a great many operas. I also love the art of ballet, and I love the way ballet teaches people to move their bodies in disciplined, expressive, musical, communicative, and athletic ways. And ballet doesn't necessarily depend on a set repertoire of  “old” music. Ballet companies use all kinds of music for their productions. Sadly not enough of the music that people dance to is made in real time by musicians who are paid for their time and talent, because production costs are too high to hire musicians for performances. Recorded music, even with fees, can work within ballet company’s budget.

My love of opera has a lot to do with loving the music and drama of specific operas, and the deep level of escape that a well-written, well-staged, and well-performed opera gives to me. And I also love the fact that I can listen to a recording of an opera with the libretto, and I can imagine a theater in my head. And when I write operas the theater in my head increases in dimension and in scope, and lets my imagination become boundless.

I have had the opportunity for music I have written be used for ballet, and someday I hope to see and hear one of my operas staged and performed somewhere other than in the theater in my head.

The “death” of institutions that participate in what has had to become the business of classical music pops up its ugly head every once in a while. And this time it comes at a time when we have incredibly high levels of playing, singing, teaching, and scholarship, and when composers are continuing to write excellent, challenging, and expressive new music (in contrast to what people were working with during the serially dominated part of the twentieth century, when tonality and modality were considered either old-fashioned or uninteresting).

My father always said that people will always have musical institutions and religious institutions. I think that he was correct. And people benefit in all kinds of ways by participating in musical activities and musical communities (particularly school orchestras, music school ensembles, bands, and choruses) when they are young.

An encounter I had in high school comes to mind. One of my chorus mates also played the flute a little bit. She asked if she could try mine, and asked what kind it was. I told her that it was a Haynes. She said, "Oh, they make great pantyhose," and blew into my instrument. 

My high school wardrobe consisted of overalls and painter's pants (from the men's section of the Sears Catalog), and I had no more business wearing pantyhose than my friend had playing a Haynes flute.

I believe that this chorus mate grew up to become a pediatrician who designed solar-powered equipment which she brought to areas of Africa that didn’t have conventional electrical power, and thereby improved and saved countless numbers of lives. 

Late (or is it early?) Morning Thoughts about Compromise

I recall last year's discussion in the halls of congress concerning switching from standard time to daylight savings time did not have a Democratic vs. Republican division. Nobody likes changing the their clocks twice a year (and, if you are like me, nobody remembers exactly how you set the microwave clock, even though you do it twice a year). Nobody likes the day of adjustment it takes to let your body know when to wake up and when to go to sleep.

But there are serious geographical and agricultural issues that come into play. The United States of America has people living and businesses operating in the tropical state of Hawaii, and also in Alaska, up in the Arctic Circle.

So, in this time of intense political divide concerning just about everything we can imagine, and things we can't imagine that keep surprising us upon waking, and then disturb our sleep.

I don't think that anybody on the news is going to be talking about whether to establish a single time for the whole United States of America this year, or in the near future. 

Everybody, for as long as I can remember, has compromised. We have adjusted our work lives and our personal lives in ways that allow people in every part the country an adequate amount of daylight.

So this year's spring into daylight savings time is almost a pleasure: a kind act of compromise for the greater good.

"In the Gold Room," "A Bird in Gilded Cage," and "Asleep in the Deep" performance!

I got to hear a livestream concert from the Tenth International Music by Women Festival yesterday that included a performance of these three pieces I wrote for voice, flute, and piano (the video is set to start just as soprano Lydia Beasley Kneer, flutist Brittney Patterson, and pianist Laurie Middaugh are ready to play). It was particularly exciting for me to hear these three pieces performed as a set.

The flutist is not playing a gold flute, but because the concert is being held in a gold room, golden reflections glint off the flute. There is something just right about that. Here is the text for the first song, which is a poem by Oscar Wilde.

In the Gold Room: A Harmony

Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy,
Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale-leaves listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze.

Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold
Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun
On the burnished disk of the marigold,
Or the sunflower turning to meet the sun
When the gloom of the dark blue night is done,
And the spear of the lily is aureoled.

And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine
Burned like the ruby fire set
In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,
Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,
Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet
With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.

Harry von Tilzer wrote "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" with Arthur Lamb in 1899, and I made a setting of Arthur Lamb's lyric in 2009 as part of a series I thought of as being "new tunes for old songs." Here is the text (which also has a lot of gold in it):

It shone with a thousand lights,
And there was a woman who passed along,
The fairest of all the sights,
A girl to her lover then softly sighed,
There's riches at her command;
But she married for wealth, not for love, he cried,
Though she lives in a mansion grand.

She's only a bird in a gilded cage,
A beautiful sight to see,
You may think she's happy and free from care,
She's not, though she seems to be,
'Tis sad when you think of her wasted life,
For youth cannot mate with age,
And her beauty was sold,
For an old man's gold,
She's a bird in a gilded cage.

I stood in a churchyard just at eve',
When sunset adorned the west,
And looked at the people who'd come to grieve,
For loved ones now laid at rest,
A tall marble monument marked the grave,
Of one who'd been fashion's queen,
And I thought she is happier here at rest,
Than to have people say when seen,

She's only a bird in a gilded cage,
A beautiful sight to see,
You may think she's happy and free from care,
She's not, though she seems to be,
'Tis sad when you think of her wasted life,
For youth cannot mate with age,
And her beauty was sold,
For an old man's gold,
She's a bird in a gilded cage.

Tilzer's song was wildly popular. My setting expresses Arthur Lamb's text very differently.

Lamb also wrote the words for Henry W. Petrie's 1897 song "Asleep in the Deep." It is best known as a novelty song to show off the voice of a low bass singer. They lyrics are very dark, but the original setting of them is ironically light. I wanted to express the darkness of the text, so instead of a bass voice, I opted for the lower partials of the soprano voice. I also wanted to capture the movemnt of the waves in a dialogue between the piano and the flute, and wanted to make the bell-ringing in the refrain of the song a prominant musical motive.

Here is the text:

Stormy the night and the waves roll high, bravely the ship doth ride; Hark!
While the lighthouse bell's solemn cry rings o'er the sullen tide.
There on the deck see two lovers stand, heart to heart beating and hand in hand,
Though death be near, she knows no fear, while at her side is the one ever dear.

Loudly the bell in the old tower rings
Bidding us list to the warning it brings.
Sailor take care! Sailor take care!
Danger is near thee, beware! Beware!
Beware! Beware!

Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep so beware! Beware!

What of the storm when the night is o'er? There is no trace or sign!
Save where the wreckage hath strewn the shore, peaceful the sun doth shine.
But when the wild raging storm did cease, under the billows two hearts found peace.
No more to part, no more of pain, the bell may now toll its warning in vain.

Loudly the bell in the old tower rings
Biding us list to the warning it brings.
Sailor take care! Sailor take care!
Danger is near thee, beware! Beware!
Beware! Beware!

Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep so beware! Beware!
Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep so beware! Beware!

You can find the music for "Asleep in the Deep" on this page of the IMSLP, the music for "In the Gold Room" on this page (with a few alternate transcriptions), and the music for "A Bird in a Golden Cage" on this page.

Cause and (Side) Effect

Conventional wisdom tells us that life is a kind of "garbage-in-garbage-out" situation, but personal experience of late has taught me that when you are sick and are on a bunch of medications, there seems to be very little in the way of rhyme or reason to how a person might feel from day to day, or even from hour to hour.

Am I sleeping more because my body is reacting to the medications I take? Do I feel slightly better (a whole lot better, actually) in my head because I am getting a lot of sleep? Am I thirsty all the time because my body craves water in order to get my blood chemistry into the normal range, or is it a side effect of a medication?

Yesterday I worked on the Bach Chaconne on the violin. I love my violin. She (I named her Antonia) has probably played it before, but this was the first time she has played it with me. The difficulties I have had with the Chaconne in the past, playing it on my Bearden violin, and playing it on the viola, were not there. I could, for the first time, wrap my head and hands harmonically around what was happening in real time.

Is this because of the violin? Is this because I have been getting enough sleep? Is this because I have been spending a lot of quality time at the piano playing Bach, Mozart, and Haydn? Is it because the tumor that had been filling my days and nights with pain has been obliterated by radiation?

I am in my third week of treatment (three of eighteen), and it is an "off" week for the strong oral cancer medication that I take for the first two weeks of each cycle.

And now it is time to go off to get an infusion of whatever drugs my great team of doctors gives me.

Trio Village: Thread

It is such a thrill and an honor to have one of my pieces (Four Coliloquies for Flute and Oboe) included on the Trio Village's forthcoming recording.

You can read about the musicians (Rebecca Johnson, Elizabeth Sullivan, and Cara Chowning) and the music here.

Avant Garde?

I have been spending time with Mozart's piano sonatas recently, and the other day I came upon K457, in C minor. I felt immediately like I was playing something by Beethoven, and my first reaction was to think of Mozart being "ahead of his time." But Mozart lived his very short life, with its particular and extraordinary creative path, in his own time. Beethoven might have found a clear and durable way of musical expression that really resonated with him through this particular sonata: a portal of sorts through which he could connect himself to the spirit of the teacher he always wanted to study with, but missed the opportunity.

Those of us who express ourselves through writing music, whether through notation or transmitting it only by sound, walk down many paths until we find a direction that appeals to us. It doesn’t matter a great deal if we have a personal relationship with a person who served as a guidepost or a particular way of thinking musically. The fruit is there for the picking. But we need to recognize it, and we need to reach for it.

So often when playing Haydn Quartets I hear tinges of Schubert in the Haydn. That might be because Schubert and his family would have played everything available to them that Haydn wrote. The eleven-year-old Franz Schubert, who sang in the Vienna Boys Choir, might even have had the chance to meet Haydn because of his relationship with Antonio Salieri. Franz entered the Choir in 1808, and Haydn died in 1809. I like to think that it was through Haydn that Schubert found his way to express himself, and I constantly need to remind myself that it is Haydn I hear in the Schubert.

It wasn't that Haydn was "ahead of his time," channeling what would become known as the Romantic Period. Haydn, like Mozart, was a person of his time. Schubert was of his time, as was Beethoven (and they lived in Vienna at the same time). But with all that amazing musical and creative energy dancing its way around Vienna, what a time it was!

Alysa Liu and Jacqueline du Pré

Michael and I watched "Genius and Tragedy," the 2025 documentary about Jacqueline du Pré the night before I learned about Alysa Liu and saw her scate during the 2026 Olympics. And now I don't think that I can think of one woman without thinking of the other. Maybe some day Alysa Liu might scate to one of Jacqueline du Pré's recordings. Can you imagine the joy that such a convergence of creative souls would bring to this bruised and battered world?

Recently Updated!

Rebecca Johnson and Cara Chowning have a new date for their recital: March 1, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. I have updated my earlier post.

The Schoen Duo's "A Child's Garden of Verses" Project

You can find your way through this link to a series of artfully made video recordings that combine readings, images, "field" video recordings, and stage performances that the Schoen Duo assembled as an educational package to appeal to children (of all ages).

And you can find a link to the music (in versions for different instruments) on this page of the IMSLP.

Ten Years

[Yesterday's Sunset, a painting by June Fine]

Ten years ago on this day my mother, June Fine, died from tongue cancer. She had been unable to see for many years, and was unable to walk because of severe edema. When she was diagnosed with tongue cancer she told me, "The good news is that I have cancer--the bad news is that it is treatable." Treatment for my mother would deprive her of the ability to talk and the ability to eat. I respect her choice, but her willingness to die has haunted me for a decade.

Fast forward to Valentine's Day 2026.

When I first suspected that I might have cancer back in December I thought about my mother. I always felt that I was her protector: I became a flutist because she could no longer play due to an operation she had on her left hand, and I tried my best to encourage her and support her, even though she was reluctant to relate to me in a maternal way. I very often said (and thought) that she would be a person I would choose for a friend, but not as a mother.

With every anniversary of her death I forgive her just a little bit more for not being the kind of mother she was unable to be. I know that she never meant to hurt me. She might have even thought that she was protecting me from having the kind of over-protective mother that she had. But that is neither here nor there.

What is here is my unwillingness to repeat my mother's mantra regarding cancer. I have places to be and things to do, and I have people I want to be with and do things with.

I am eager to begin getting infusions and taking oral medication (I begin on Thursday). I am  curious about which side effects I will have, and wonder how I will feel while doing this serious science-based battle with an entity that is attacking the marrow of my bones. But I also feel (to use the expression "in the marrow of my bones") that I will regain control of my body and my future.

I like to think that my mother would be proud of me.

My flutist friend Meysam Ghodraty needs help

Meysam Ghodraty spent a couple of years as a graduate student at the university in my Illinois town. The last time I spoke with him was just before graduation in April of 2025. He told me that he was headed to California to find a doctoral program. Michael and I just learned today that Meysam has spent the past two months in ICE detention in Louisiana.

The university music department started a GoFundMe page today to raise money for Meysam's legal assistance:

He came to the United States legally and was in the process of obtaining an Optional Practical Training (OPT) extension to his visa in order to start a Doctoral program in flute performance in Fall 2026. We believe that his OPT may have been denied due to a clerical error and want to help him correct this situation.

While he was a student here Meysam lived in an apartment very close to our house. I enjoyed hearing him practice when I walked by.

UPDATE from the gofundme page:

Thank you so much to everyone who has so generously supported Meysam Ghodraty’s legal fund. We are deeply grateful for your kindness, encouragement, and willingness to stand with him during this incredibly difficult time. Your support truly means more than we can express.

Yesterday, we learned that the Fifth Court of Appeals (which covers Louisiana) issued a decision on Friday (Feb. 6th) indicating that bond may not be permitted in cases like Meysam’s. Because he has a court appearance scheduled for Monday, we are very concerned that his bond could be reconsidered.

Our immediate and urgent goal is to post his bond (which we are working on right now!). If he can be released, his case would move to the non-detained docket, which—while slower—would at least allow him to continue his case outside of detention. Importantly, being out on bond may also give him the opportunity to resubmit his OPT visa application.

Thank you again for your generosity, compassion, and support. We could not do this without you!

UPDATE: Meysam is safely back in Illinois. Thank goodness.

Minnesota Orchestra Livestream Concert January 31, 2026

I believe this is the space on YouTube where the Minnesota Orchestra will begin tonight's and tomorrow night's concerts with a performance of the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony in memory and in honor of Renee Good and Alex Pretti who were murdered by members of the ICE organization that is being deployed by the federal government.

The Minnesota Orchestra has changed the program for its concerts on 30 and 31 January in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

In a statement on their website and social media, the orchestra wrote, “In light of what’s happening in our community right now, this weekend’s program will open with the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, instead of Dukas’s ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.’ We offer it in memorial for Alex Pretti and Renee Good—and we share it with love for our audience and our beautiful city on a program that explores the resilience of finding ‘songs to sing’ amidst tragedy and seeking hope in darkness.”

The rest of the program is unchanged, and includes the US premiere of Donghoon Shin’s ‘Threadsuns’ Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, featuring Principal Viola Rebecca Albers. Conductor Fabien Gabel will lead the concerts.

The program will be streamed free of charge on the orchestra’s YouTube channel on 31 January at 8pm CST

Rebecca Johnson and Cara Chowning Concert Postponed

UPDATE: The new date is Sunday, March 1, at 7:30 p.m.

I’m really looking forward to hearing Rebecca Johnson and Cara Chowning play my Piccolo Sonata and my flute and piano transcription of Florence Price’s "Adoration" on this concert at the Doudna Fine Arts Center Recital Hall on the campus of Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, IL. (New date because of icy roads). It looks like the other composers are also women: Valerie Coleman, Geraldine Green, Florence Price, and Yuko Uebayashi. There will also be a livestream link, which I will post here when it becomes available.

An anthology of music for young cellists written by women that is published by Schott

This 128-page graded anthology for cello and piano compiled and edited by Beverley Ellis, is the first part of a three-volume series dedicated to cello music written by female composers. It is a progressive compendium of educational and concert pieces for cello and piano, composed by women from the 19th century to the present day. The anthology aims to help ensure that works by women composers become an established part of the cello repertoire.

Volume one, published in January 2026, has twenty-eight pieces of easy and moderate difficulty.

It is such an honor to have a piece in this anthology!

Käthe Volkart-Schlager (1897–1976)

 Sonatine

Anna Priscilla Risher (1875–1946)
Miniatures/Miniaturen

Barcarolle
Cantilèna
Valse mélodique
Tarantella

Barbara Heller (*1936)

Moments/Momente

Now / Jetzt
Eternal / Ewig
Impulsive / Impulsiv
Timeless / Zeitlos
Sometimes / Manchmal

Vera Mohrs (*1984)

Cat Songs / Katzenmusik

Hallo Kitty! / Hallo Kätzchen!
Roaming / Streifzug
Nightwatch / Nachtwache

Vasiliki Kourti-Papamoustou (*1988)

Baroque-ish

Magdalena König (*1970)

Hanging Out

By the Sea / Am Meer
Pumpkin Pie

Charlotte Mohrs (*1989)

Dream Dance / Traumtanz
Syncopation Tango

Adeline Shepherd (1883–1950)

Live Wires Rag

Magdalena Cynk (*1968)

Ukrainian Dance / Kozak Ukrainski

Elaine Fine (*1959)

Cellodactyl

Els Aarne (1917–1995)

Nocturne op. 56/1

Carita von Horst (1864–1935)

Sarabande

Berta von Brukenthal (1846–1908)

Romance op. 9

Vasiliki Kourti-Papamoustou (*1988)
Bow Dance
Keep Cool!

Susanne Paul (*1970)

Frogster Funk

You can find the Presto website here, where you can buy a copy of this anthology.

First Piano Lesson

Two of our granddaughters were visiting last weekend (along with their parents). We had a lot of fun: painting with watercolors on good watercolor paper, baking muffins with Michael, reading, and a lot of hide and seek. Our house does have a lot of great hiding places, especially if you are six and eight.

The girls asked me if I would give them a piano lesson. The last time they were here I taught them that old chestnut where you use your fist to play the group of three black keys up and down. But this time, after my experience with the piano is far more personal and intimate, I decided to actually teach them something that would "count" as real piano playing.

I figured that Frances Goldstein would have taught the kids the numbers of their fingers, so that's what I did. We started with the right hand.  I had them put their thumbs (finger number one) on the F key, with the other fingers following, one to a key. Then I taught them to look up from the keyboard and transfer the weight from one finger to the next, teeter-totter style.

I didn't start with middle C because there were two of them sharing a bench.

The three of us set up our "houses" in different octaves. Right away I had the kids not look at their hands, and try to feel their fingers on the keys ("tactile, tactile," as FSG would say) and imitate the two-note motives I would play, using the fingers they felt on the keys. They imitated me really well.

The kids were thrilled to learn that the left hand fingers had the same numbers, and were fascinated by the fact that the notes they played went down instead of up.

The six-year-old wanted me to play the music that was on the piano music stand, which, of course, was a movement from a Haydn Sonata. I played the first eight measures. The eight-year-old then made up something of her own that used patterns she heard in the Haydn. That was a gift.

What was most thrilling for me was to be witness to the exact moment when their brains and their ears made a connection with their fingers. It was a first for me with the piano. Once that connection is established there is no going back. That is the moment when a person becomes a musician.

I wish I could work with them every day.

Dol

I learned about the Dol scale, which measures pain, when I was at work on "Weights and Measures." The official name is the Dolorimeter, and it came into use in the 1940s. I spent much of the last week in the hospital, where I went through a series of tests, and was asked to rate my level of pain on a scale of one to ten every time I was given pain medication.

Armed with a diagnosis, a treatment plan, and some pain medication, I was able to leave the hospital on Saturday in the later afternoon.

It turns out that I have a highly treatable form of multiple myeloma, for which I began radiation treatments yesterday. I have eight to go, and then will start chemotherapy. I have great doctors, and I have great support from family, friends, and musical colleagues. I have every reason to be hopeful and grateful. 

This thing is literally a pain in the butt, since the tumor has taken residence where I sit and where I lie down. It is rapidly being destroyed, and as it becomes smaller, so will the pain.

Now that you know the background story, I can let you know how Haydn helped me survive.

During my first ninety-minute-long MRI, I was able to listen to the Haydn Quartets Opus 76 no. 6, no. 5, and no. 1 (in that order). Since I know these pieces so intimately, having played them all recently, I was able to stay completely still and follow the lines of the music through the bangs, squaks, bumps, and thuds of the MRI. It gave me such a sense of purpose to make it my business find my way through all the noise, and hear the music.

I was actually looking forward to my second MRI because I could listen to Opus 76 no. 2, no. 3, and no. 4. I recommend Haydn quartets as companions in such circumstances. My radiologist told me that they got really good images from the MRIs. I thank Haydn for that.

While I was in the hospital my pain level never went above eight, but before I entered the hospital (before I had adequate pain medication), Michael got to witness what level ten can do to a person. The only relief I could get (while waiting for the NSAID and muscle relaxer a critical care doctor perscribed for me over a holiday weekend) was having Michael sit next to me on the bed and play "Lotus Blossom" on his guitar. 

My first radiation treatment was yesterday. I didn't have any problems with the hour-long ride up, or during the procedure. But on the ride home I realized far too late that I should have brought along some muscle relaxer. 

My pain level reached level ten when we were about thirty minutes from home. Michael suggested that I might want to listen to some Haydn, so I found the Cleveland Quartet's recording of the Quinten (Opus 76, no 2) Quartet. Singing and crying along with it saved my sanity. My sciatica-like pain was so great that my leg actually went numb, but thanks to Mr. Haydn and the members of the Cleveland Quartet I was able to find considerable joy through the pain.

Michael didn't particularly like driving twenty miles over the speed limit on an empty rural road, with the person he loves writhing in serious pain next to him. He was not particularly keen on driving with intense music (all those melodic fifths create an amazing amount of tension) in the minor mode playing loudly over the car speakers, but he was a hero and pressed onward, getting us home safely. He found the second movement to be charming, and appreciated the canon in the minuet. We didn't get all the way through the last movement because we arrived it home in record time. 

I went straight for my muscle relaxer, jumped into bed, put on my headphones, and listened to Opus 76, no. 4 (the Sunrise). And after that I was OK.

Do You Like Brahms

So far I have spent all of 2026 with the company of a fever, body aches (some severe--a literal pain in the butt), and the various foggy states that come with the flu. I have also been fortunate to have the company of Michael, who seems to have avoided getting it. We both got our vaccinations at the same time, but it seems that his worked to protect him.

I'm doing everything you are supposed to do: herbal tea, lots of water, chicken soup (home-made), and rest. But I'm getting tired of not being able to go outside, not being able to sit at the piano for more than half an hour, not being strong enough to practice violin for more than a few minutes at a stretch, and not being able to sit in a chair to even attempt to compose.

[The seat cushion I ordered from one online retailer was lost, and the one I ordered from the company that makes the product isn't coming until Monday.]

My friend Martha recommended a Korean series on Netflix from 2000 called "Do You Like Brahms", and I have been able to watch it on my iPad while sitting on a foam chair that has a decent mix of support and softness. I have made it through almost ten of the fifteen episodes.

The series is set in a Korean university, and the lead actors are all musicians. Much of the playing is dubbed, but all the motions are real. They use mostly Henle editions, though there is an International Music Company presence here and there (represent!). The main characters are shown practicing, talking about practicing, eating in the cafeteria, planning to eat in the cafeteria, walking with instruments on their backs, and talking about their careers or the careers of others. That is a nice slice of realism, though the practice rooms are far nicer than anything I have seen in America, even at Juilliard.

I have seen one of the violinists (her name is Song-ah) carry at least twenty different purses and bags in the first ten episodes. The lead pianist (his name is Joon-Young) always carries the same backpack: a nice leather number with room for all of those Henle editions. Nobody carries a laptop, and nobody uses a cellphone case. The books that people carry are small and light. In offices people use colorful hard-bound notebooks.

The music is kind of limited in scope: well-known pieces by Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Franck, Ravel, Schubert. Except for the opening episode that includes a full orchestra, I have seen nary a wind player, a brass player, or a percussionist. I don't even know if there is a violist anywhere. But there is a luthier (a main character). With so many string players in town, I imagine he is never short of work to do.

The core cast are all people who are either thirty or turning thirty. There are a bunch of birthday parties. These thirty-year-old musicians have the kind of emotional depth that one would suspect from people in their thirties when it comes to matters of love (emotions run very deep, and manners remind me of those Jane Austen elaborates on), and the kinds of professional worries that thirty-year-old musicians with advanced degrees have. But in many ways they seem very young. Many of the characters live at home, which could be either a cultural norm or for economic reasons. Maybe both.

There are also interesting matters of social and economic class, teachers who play power games with their students (rather than teach them about the music itself), and beautiful camera work that captures the excellent acting of the consistent and disciplined actors. Well, I'm going to check in on my friends in episode 10. So far the two love interests have never played together. The violinist, Song-ah, is supposed to be the worst violinist in the school, but she sounds fine to me. I hope that she and Joon-Young do play together, and that it is an exceptional and meaningful experience for both of them.

As I remember, that’s what music students who are in relationships do.

A New Year's Gift for Bec

I'm greeting 2026 with a song set to a poem that Jonathan Swift wrote for his friend Rebecca Dingley to greet 1724.



You can find the music here and on this page of the IMSLP.

Stella is Esther Johnson, a companion of Rebecca Dingley. Stella could have secretly been married to Swift. Quilca was the name of a house in County Caven, Ireland that was owned by Thomas Sheridan. Swift wrote wrote some of Gulliver’s Travels there.

I have been on a Handel "bender" for the last few weeks, which, no doubt, provided a lot of influence.

All the best for 2026.