David Noel Edwards is a writer, composer, and recording artist from Canaan, New York. He has been writing for the Berkshire Edge since 2015, mainly about music, but also about books, birds, and reptiles.
President Roosevelt had to deal with plenty of dissent and resistance in his day. Nevertheless, the values he articulated in his 1941 speech have, until very recently, been recognized as fundamental American values, and there’s never been a more appropriate time to affirm them.
Enjoying Bach in full-blown glorious detail is something both Yehuda Hanani and Kivie Cahn-Lipman have been doing as a matter of course all their lives. They revel in it.
“Blind Willie Johnson’s music is imperishable. His music speaks to us as it laments the human condition; it speaks to us as it praises the steadfastness of an unchanging God.”
-- Jeffrey Gaskill
In the very darkest days of deepest winter … there comes a great light; a perennial beacon of hope and cheer shines from the East: The Boston Symphony Orchestra begins to publish updates to the full Tanglewood schedule.
These studio pieces and commentary provide an unprecedented glimpse into the shadowy world of the outlaw street artist. The practice of illegally scribbling text in public places is, by any measure, nothing new. It predates the cuneiform script of ancient Mesopotamia.
As its most ardent aficionados are well aware, chamber music occasionally gets even better than “perfectly fine.” Sometimes it rises to the level of sublimity.
Andris Nelsons will lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra in its first-ever full-length performance — anywhere — of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” a monumental undertaking that could easily break all Tanglewood attendance records.
Jurian Hughes’ reading of a well-chosen selection from Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was especially gripping. Yes, it’s definitely time to re-read this Pre-Civil-War classic.
When an all-Russian ensemble like Chamber Orchestra Kremlin performs Shostakovich, the listening experience is strangely gripping and uniquely satisfying. Why? Because the music is about them.
Great music may not save the world, but it may make the world worth saving. “We know that music cannot stop a bullet or feed the hungry, but it can bring empathy and joy to places where they are in short supply.”
-- Yo-Yo Ma
