Breathe in. Give it everythingyour lungs were savingfor an emergency. A flute can suggest a bird.A violin can remember a sorrow.The tuba enters carrying furniture.

Not long ago I lost an old friend after pointing out what I saw as sympathies in some of her writing that read to me as offensive. I wasn’t trying […]

Years earlier he’d played with a drummer he despised. The drummer rushed. Not dramatically. Perhaps three beats per minute over the course of a song. Nobody in the audience noticed. […]

You cannot decide beforehand what the other musician is about to play and then congratulate yourself for responding to it. Then you are playing with a person who exists mainly […]

Mara had the kind of depression that didn’t always look like depression. She answered emails. She bought groceries. She laughed at jokes. She could play a ninety-minute concert and talk […]

A very nice show in Wolfville, back at the Al Whittle Theatre. Beforehand, I had convinced myself that perhaps three people had bought tickets. It turned out to be thirty. […]

I did not sleep well in my hotel room in Truro, Nova Scotia. The sheets gave off the unmistakable scent of a hotel trying to establish an alibi. This is […]

I was reading about a university in South Korea rejecting applicants who had excellent test scores because of bullying incidents in their past. On one hand, good. There ought to […]

The Port Royal/ Annapolis show was uniquely magical. Every time you arrive somewhere and are told that advance ticket sales are already healthy, you find yourself facing the best problem […]

After the final song at the Greenslades concert in Sackville, I walked offstage and a woman turned to me and said, “Marry me.” I believe this was less a formal […]