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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...