On a summer day, Rosi and Brian Amador were walking together on the pilgrim’s way, the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain, and they were singing …
Read article
We’re thawing into winter festivals
The crowd was spilling onto the sidewalk, and a young man I’d never met came up to tell me how to say the name of the Polish poet I’d just been reading aloud …
Read article
10×10 Festival
The city in the hills is at play. The annual 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival is in town, and you can watch a new play or an ice sculptor, listen to music and slide though the snow …
Read article
Africana Studies grow at Williams across 50 years
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 …
Read article
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 …
Read article
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 ...
Read article
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 …
Read article
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 …
Read article
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.
Read article
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.
Read article