Today students read graphic novels and James Baldwin. They follow the music in his novels, and then they write their own songs. They dance to marimba and jembe drums …
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Wishing you joy and Wassail (December 15 newsletter)
Imagine gathering around an apple tree at night. The trees are wet and starred with early snow. You stand around a bonfire, and people are singing under the full moon …
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Contradance and caroling share a living holiday music
On the floor, one man with a fiddle had the whole room in his hand. People danced in each other's arms, and I had walked out of the snow into the music ...
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Firelight and music transform NightWood at the Mount
The flame streams sideways in the wind. The bowl of the torch is gleaming copper — it’s an oil lamp, essentially the same as the lamps that burned in Constantinople 2000 years ago, or in the temple of the Macabees …
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Emily Isaacson leads a Classical Uprising
Emily Isaacson remembers attending classical concerts as a teenager, feeling the music viscerally, connecting with the sound. The music was exciting, passionate — it made her want to move …
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Women transform rooms into life-changing moments
Marie Tattiana Aqeel is sitting at the kitchen counter, strumming a guitar quietly, and two friends pause in their conversation to listen to her sing. … More than 65 artists have come to the Berkshires from across the country to create a new work of theater together.
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Change the universe until Iphigenia lives (November 3 newsletter)
Wayne Shorter, internationally acclaimed composer and saxophonist, and esperanza spalding, bassist, vocalist, both Grammy winners many times over, are transforming a Greek classic with a new voice.
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Improvising the energy to make connections (October 6 newsletter)
Mountain Day came last Friday morning. It happens almost spontaneously — Students caravan up to Stony Ledge and sit in the grass with cider doughuts while a cappella groups perform.
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Walk across time in hiking boots (Sept 29 newsletter)
Abigail Haynes-Lennox is directing us — a soprano in the extended company of Roomful of Teeth, up here on a mountain leading a damp and sweaty bunch of hikers in Shaker hymns.
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Climbing Holy Hill revives a Shaker pilgrimage
Two music ensembles, Our Native Daughters and Roomfull of Teeth, and artist Allison Smith transform a walk in the woods into an experience of art and music in Climbing Holy Hill at Hancock Shaker Village.
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