The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.
–Wolfgang Mozart
The layers of the forest create an ever-changing melody of light and shadow.

near Ann Arbor, Michigan
The layers of the forest create an ever-changing melody of light and shadow.
near Ann Arbor, Michigan
If there were a hue called Arctic blue, that would have been Michigan’s sky this morning. The dazzling sun belied the temperature: a frigid minus 9 F. The afternoon was warmed, not by a Southerly breeze, but by the passion of Tchaikovsky played by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The program featured a favorite of mine, the 1st Piano concerto. The romantic theme of the first movement carried me to a different emotional space. The second movement’s graceful solo, like a water bird stepping delicately among the waves, seemed to bring time to a stop, before the Russian dance fanned the flames of the finale. When I ventured back outside among the concert goers, whose breaths appeared as puffs of vapor before disappearing into the night air , the cold seemed tempered by the promise of a not-distant spring.