The text threads in my phone today are filled with melancholy, angry, depressed variations on the same theme: that most of the people who have my phone number simply do not have the heart to celebrate American Independence Day today.

I’ve always felt pretty mixed about the way we celebrate this anniversary of America’s birth…

I don’t remember what I did on the evening of September 10, 2001. Whatever it was, I was so tired that I recall blearily resolving to skip my early dance class at the Manhattan School of Music on the morning of the 11th, just days into the fall semester…

“There was another full moon earlier this week, on Monday. I do hope you’ll forgive me for missing the actual evening of the full moon. As life has begun resuming a sense of normalcy in fits and starts, I am finding myself being unaccustomed to balancing a slightly more complicated schedule now that I am fully vaccinated, and it is safer to go out in the world again…”

“It’s another full moon tonight, so here is the second installment of my little Moon Song project for 2021. This month, I was drawn to Ned Rorem’s setting of Walt Whitman’s poem, Look Down, Fair Moon…”

Even before beginning work on the Emerging Voices project a couple of years ago, I had a strong internal reaction whenever the subject of identity came up, especially in the way it has with the recent intense waves of nationalism and the racial bigotry often associated with it…

The United States underwent a radical cultural shift in 1917 when the nation decided to abandon its neutral stance and enter World War I on the side of Allies. America’s significant population of German immigrants and their descendants, which had been easily able to assimilate into American life…

The private salons of the Belle Époque presented important and serious music on a par with what could be heard at the larger public venues in Paris. These salon programs were not restricted to chamber music: they often included pieces on a much grander scale, at times with full orchestras and choirs and even operas…