Spoiler alert: Spelling Bee once again breaks my heart

(I lived there for a dozen years, and have lived only a mile away ever since, so I swear to the algorithm I haven't forgotten Cantabrigia and its ways...)

As a resident of the next town over, I'm amused to be getting Visit Cambridge ads in my Instagram feed.

This is how we find out that he makes his doctors dress up as Jesus when they shine light into his perfectly healthy body?

See you tomorrow at noon at "The Mahler Sessions" at Tufts, a conversation with Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons hosted by Jeremy Eichler's "Mahler Then and Now" class. Stick around to hear a musical response from me and the M.A. composers and our professor John McDonald.

What is this superpaternal tea-drinking style of which you speak?

The Street: Nico Muhly & Alice Goodman - YouTube

Holy Week listening recommendation: Do you know about Nico Muhly's collaboration with Alice Goodman, "The Street," a provocative take on the Stations of the Cross for harpist Parker Ramsey, narrator, and choir? Unsettling and beautiful. Start at track 21 here: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Log on to the Tufts Music live stream tonight at 8:00 EDT to watch performances of new chamber music by me and my two fellow Masters students! Pretty good stuff, not gonna lie. as.tufts.edu/music/news-e...

Passed two pop-up #nokings rallies that weren’t on the map on the 1-mile drive from our house to the train station to the Boston rally: one with dozens at a rotary (how perfectly MA); the other a few women with pre-schoolers with cute signs at a corner.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is easy to spot in her red suit on the screen above the knitted green frog hat, on Boston Common today. #NoKings

Greetings from the #nokings rally (or rallies: there was a second stage, too) on Boston Common this afternoon, where I got to hear our governor and both senators celebrate Massachusetts’s commitment to constitutional democracy, civil liberties, and care for the vulnerable.

I'm contributing four pieces to the program: an original fiddle tune arranged for string quartet; a four-movement trio for violin, cello, and bassoon; a duet for viola and piano; and a septet for winds and strings.

Graphic with a nearly abstract photograph of hazy blue mountains in three dark wavy stripes in the bottom two-thirds of the image and an orange and slate-gray sky at sunset at the top, with bold lettering in the middle: "Scenic Sounds."

🎵📣 Music announcement! 🎶🎻 You're invited to "Scenic Sounds," a concert next Tuesday evening (3/31) of new chamber music by me and my two fellow Tufts MA in Composition students! 8:00 pm, live streamed from the Granoff Music Center. as.tufts.edu/music/news-e...

We will very much want to know!

Screenshot of Tufts University Department of Music events listings: Apr 6, 12pm Granoff Music Center Colloquium: “A Vision for the Humanities at the Boston Symphony” - Chad Smith (Boston Symphony Orchestra) Apr 6, 8pm Tishler Competition Finals Apr 7, 12pm The Mahler Sessions: Andris Nelsons (Music Director, Boston Symphony Orchestra)

Tufts is going to be the place to be at noon on April 6 & 7: Previously scheduled public conversations with Boston Symphony Orchestra CEO Chad Smith about the orchestra’s vision for the humanities (Tuesday) and Music Director Andris Nelsons about Mahler (Wednesday). as.tufts.edu/music/news-e...

if you look at the New Music Calendar here for the greater-Boston area, you might notice some interesting things, and if you are among the people who produce concerts and work hard within this rich local scene, I think they are things worth paying attention to...

newmusiccalendar.com/boston.html

Gas station in Quincy seeks strolling violist to play for customers - The Boston Globe Harvey Kertzman has long tried to offer his customers a more refreshing experience than one might expect at the pump. Now he wants to elevate it even further.

This A.Z. Madonna story is wonderful. “[The viola] massages the heart of the person listening,” he says. “You can’t get that from any other instrument. And what better place to hear wonderful music than a gas station?” Didn't see that coming, did you?

Whoa

still caring about opera, thanks for asking

Deep in the thorough and impressive Meet the Artists bio of a rising conductor I saw this weekend was this entirely surprising sentence: "Born and raised in [...], [the conductor] returned to music after an early career as a semi-professional motorcycle racer"!!!

Back in the day, my toddler was very disappointed upon arriving at the pharmacy. “Where are the animals?”

Initial thoughts about Boston Lyric Opera's 50th anniv season, announced today: Intrigued by Andre Previn's "Streetcar Named Desire" (which I didn't know about) and excited to hear Osvaldo Golijov's "Ayre." Guessing "William Tell" will be creatively staged. Always happy to hear "Marriage of Figaro"!

Another fortuitous @crbclassical.bsky.social programming choice for my teen passenger on an afternoon drive this afternoon: John Adams’s “Short Ride in a Fast Machine”! 👏👏👏👏

Rev. Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders prepare for the commemorative march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 8, 2015. (© Christopher L. Walton)

Another photo from the March 8, 2015, commemoration of the Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery. Here you can see Rev. Jesse Jackson and other leaders joining the march.

Rev. Jesse Jackson greets people outside Brown Chapel in Selma, Alabama, on March 8, 2015, before the start of a service commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery. (Photo © Christopher L. Walton)

Here's a handful of the photos I took at the 2015 commemoration of the Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, where I saw Rev. Jesse Jackson among members and leaders of countless Black community groups, religious groups, HBCU groups, labor unions, political organizations, and others.

I saw Jesse Jackson in person only during the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the Voting Rights March in Selma, Alabama, which I was covering for UU World magazine. Tonight I'll see if I can find my mediocre photos from that truly amazing weekend. RIP, Rev. Jackson.

I tripped three circuits at once in my family with that comment—breaking from the professed superiority of our religion, our politics, and (let’s be frank) our race. Jesse Jackson’s vision and eloquence helped me do that. (I did not win over the rest of the family with my teenage advocacy.)

I didn’t mean to start an argument, but my frustration with the worldview I’d been given was growing. Grandpa mused aloud at one family gathering that no one was a better public speaker than the always alliterative LDS apostle Neal A. Maxwell. I said I thought Jesse Jackson was much better.

My formative memory of Rev. Jesse Jackson, from my Utah Mormon childhood, was watching his DNC speeches and thinking, now *that’s* the way to preach! (We didn’t even use the word “preach”: just “deliver a talk.”) I got in quite the argument with my Idaho farmer grandpa about it.

Public Comment Period Open: White House Ballroom Proposal | National Trust for Historic Preservation The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) has opened the public comment period on the East Wing Modernization Project, including the proposed construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom additi...

Time for all of us to weigh in on the monumentally corrupt process the president is using to bulldoze the East Wing of the White House and build a garish ballroom in its place with private "donations" (bribes).