An overshadowed musical life
The close sibling relationship between Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn intrigues me—because of the close relationship I had with my own brother, Peter. For WBJC, I put together an 8-minute reflection on her overshadowed musical life. You can listen here.
ONW at The Owl
This evening, I was scheduled to be in discussion with the author, Tony Peake (North Facing), at the Owl Bookshop in Kentish Town, London. Like all other book events, this one had to be cancelled/postponed—in fact, Tony was one of the poor souls who succumbed early to...
Audio reading in lieu of Charm City Books event
This is the watercolor painted by my mother, Joan, which inspired the print at the opening of Part Six—the last segment of Old New Worlds. Part Six: Chapter Thirty-Seven
Creative thinking in the time of COVID-19
"Thinking outside the box" has taken on a whole new meaning during the Covid-19 response. Musicians offer virtual concerts from their living rooms, commencement addresses are streamed, happy hours are zoomed, businesses have to rethink how they do … well, business....
How do you program music during a pandemic?
“THE MUSIC YOU OFFER US HAS ALWAYS MATTERED, BUT RIGHT NOW IT’S EVEN MORE IMPORTANT.” This wonderful comment from Linda Cades is one of the many we have been receiving from WBJC listeners during the COVID-19 response. Linda was reacting, in part, to the interview I’d...
Reading in the time of COVID-19
Old New Worlds Part II Chapter Fourteen As my contralto-nutritionist friend Monica Reinagel has pointed out, “By now, you've gotten emails from every website and business you've ever visited, announcing how they are responding to current...
Belatedly posting my spring newsletter
My friend Kristine—the genealogist who helped me to search for Sarah in Old New Worlds—sent me this quote from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: East Coker after I lost my sister, Anne, to pulmonary fibrosis three weeks ago. Anne was the one who brought our family’s African...
Outside In: Sarah Kendrew
The Harvesters by the Netherlandish painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, is part of a series of six works commissioned by the Antwerp merchant, Niclaes Jongelinck, for his suburban home. The paintings show the times of the year, and this rural scene of the Low...
Outside In: Dariusz Skoraczewski
Chopin’s monument in Warsaw is deeply ingrained in every Pole’s memory and heart—as it is in the memory and heart of Dariusz Skoraczewski, the principal cello of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The statue is located in a big park where many outdoor concerts take...
Agatha Christie from the page to the stage
It’s fun trying to mix it up with the BookNotes segment on WBJC each month, and when I heard that Everyman Theatre was putting on the first-ever stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s iconic whodunit, Murder on the Orient Express, my interest was immediately piqued....
New Book
