Something Slows Down

Something Slows Down

Someone once asked the Dalai Lama if he ever took a break. And his response was “a break from what?” If we are committed to living our lives in the freshness of the present then it doesn’t matter where or what - summer or winter. If we are fully alive and fully aware,...

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Japan Tour 2015

Japan Tour 2015

I am writing this letter while sitting on the high speed Shinkansen line from Kyoto back toTokyo.  It is my last full day here before I head back to Boston tomorrow morning. So many of you have read these annual letters that I write while on this train.  I have been...

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Finishing our third season with a bang!

Finishing our third season with a bang!

Our chamber-jazz quartet,The Why, is currently wrapping up its third and by far most productive season yet. We break each summer as our cellist, Catherine Bent, heads off again to Brazil to play Choro music in the vibrant Rio scene down there.  This gives us the...

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Back From Israel

Back From Israel

I am writing this while returning on the 12 hour flight from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel to Newark, New Jersey and then finally to Boston. And like I often do when I am coming home from my annual trips to Japan, I thought I would send a letter with some of...

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A Musical Life In Progress

A Musical Life In Progress

As we emerged from our three days of hibernation after the first combined nor-easter and intense cold snap of the season, we decided to go to see the movie “Inside Llewyn Davis.”  It is a terrific movie with real-life pacing about a musician on the folk scene in New...

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Returning to Facebook

I took a deliberate four month break from Facebook at the beginning of the summer just as an experiment to see if I might learn anything about my relationship to this form of media/expression.  I had planned to come back to it, so this past weekend I looked at...

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