Once upon a time there was a man who believed consciousness was like playing the piano: he was at once the player and the listener, the hand striking the keys […]

“Once upon a time,” her mother began, tucking the blanket a little closer under her daughter’s chin, “there was a musician who loved to play the piano late at night. […]

After rehearsal, walking down the same fire escape they used to enter, he told himself the same story he’d been telling a long time: They don’t get it. They’re safe […]

There was once a man who sang the blues. He’d lived hard years dirty bars, long highways, lovers left, debts never loosened their grip. Night after night, he sang on […]

The band was called Late Prophet. On tour again, small-town churches, rec rooms, dark bars that still smelled like decades of Budweiser. Their press kit said they played “post-folk spirituals […]

Once, in a city of traffic reports, a young man named Simon Bell started a label. Dust and Echoes, was what he called it because music felt like that to […]

In Thunder Bay, where Lake Superior broods like a secret no one can name, there was once a man called Mr. Frosinone, who played harmonica every Thursday outside Robins Donuts […]

There was a conductor who spent his life learning how to shape sound. He knew more than one language. Italian when rehearsing Verdi, German for Brahms, French for Debussy. One […]

There was a woman named Sally who sang in a cover band. She wasn’t really into most of the songs but it was a living. She carried debts in her […]

Halid Frochill wore scarves indoors and referred to himself as “a curator of genius.” His voice was syrupy, his handshake just short of sincere. He carried a leather-bound datebook, always […]