Winter Newsletter
"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."
― Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth, Untitled, 1961, watercolor on paper.
Collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, B0920.
© Wyeth Foundation for American Art/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Ever since returning from our October trip to South Africa via Amsterdam—my enthralled impressions of “The Venice of the North” are here in case you haven’t already seen them—I’ve been like a bee in a bottle. It’s always a busy time at WBJC with the arts season underway, and I’ve been working with the Apprentice House design team as we look ahead to the spring release of The Deceived Ones. The interior layout designer has been a picture of patience as I’ve been seeking out widows and orphans—those solitary words or phrases that hang in limbo at the tops or bottoms pages looking forlorn and out of place—along with myriad other tweaks. The cover is still a work in progress, but I’m hoping for a cover reveal this month.
Winter has made its presence felt with below freezing temperatures in Baltimore this week, and all the arts seasons are in full throttle. The dynamic conductor, Jonathon Heyward, has officially begun his tenure as the Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony, and it’s heartwarming to see the concert hall so full of ebullient audiences. The fabulous Shriver Hall Concert Series has luminaries including the Tacáks Quartet; cellist, Johannes Moser; and pianists Angela Hewitt, Garrick Ohlsson, Mitsuko Uchida, and Marc-André Hamelin on docket this season. The exhibition, Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800 at the Baltimore Museum of Art is extraordinary, gathering together not only more than 250 paintings, prints, and sculpture, but also scientific illustrations, textiles, metalwork, and furniture, to show the astounding diversity and breadth of women's contributions to art of the pre-modern era. And so it goes. All my superlatives are warranted; we are spoiled for choice with arts offerings, which is something I continue to marvel at and will never take for granted.
Also, seasonal events are just around the corner, and I’m looking forward to taking part in a couple of them. The Baltimore Choral Arts Society has a 40-year tradition of presenting Christmas with Choral Arts at the Baltimore Basilica, the oldest cathedral in America. They’ve invited me to narrate again on Tuesday, December 5th this year, and it is such a gift to be perched up there in the lectern in that gorgeous space, watching conductor Anthony Blake Clark at work, and being more or less in the midst of the full throated music making of the choristers the orchestral musicians.
There are slightly smaller forces for the other seasonal event, which will be part of After Hours at the indie bookstore Bird in Hand in Charles Village on Friday, December 15th. Cellist Molly Aronson and I have come up with a seasonal program-with-a-difference pairing the music of Bach and familiar carols with the words of Maya Angelou, e.e. cummings, Mary Oliver, and others.
Sandwiched between these two seasonal events, I’ll be emcee for the Lit & Art Reading Series as it starts up again following a Covid hiatus. This series of art, music, and readings is curated by Baltimore writer, Eric D. Goodman, and you have to love the venue he’s chosen this time around: the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower in downtown Baltimore. This Palazzo Vecchio inspired tower has been a feature on the skyline since 1911 when it was built by—yes, you've guessed it—the man who invented the headache remedy.
On Veterans Day this year, the Iranian-American poet, Pantea Amin Tofangchi, launched her memoir in poems, Glazed With War, and it was my privilege to be in conversation with her. How can it be that we now find ourselves in the throes of two wars? And that one has knocked the other from the forefront of people’s urgency?During the Q&A after our discussion, Pantea was asked about her response to the war in Gaza. Her answer was simple: “They are both wrong.”
Before the launch, Pantea was my guest on BookNotes, and you can hear the podcast here.
We've had a particularly luminous fall, with the trees looking as if lit from the inside; but most of the leaves have fallen now, the quintessentially American holiday of Thanksgiving is behind us, and I’m starting to feel the slowing pulse of winter. The tree is up, the candles are in the windows, and there's that Dickensian crackle of expectation about the festive season.
I hope yours will be marvelous, whether you are bundled up in snow or having a braai around the swimming pool. I’ll be in touch again in the spring, if not before.
Take care!
Judith