The Sacred Symphony Essays

I want to write you a letter about my love for reading. Even now, after graduating college, my interest in books feels very...new and fresh. I was a late bloomer growing up, my education somewhat complicated by a severe language disorder, which I still have to this day. It’s called MERLD, and it stands for Mixed Expressive-Receptive Language Disorder. Have you heard of it? It means exactly as it sounds: a profound difficulty with both receiving and expressing language – with

If there’s any piece that encapsulates my childhood, it’s the Hummel Trumpet Concerto. I listened to Tine Thing Helseth’s beautiful...

Note: I wrote this poem while listening to the last three movements of Das Lied von der Erde: "Von der Schönheit", "Der Trinker im...

If you're like me, you love listening to podcasts with their transcripts. So, below is the transcript to the first episode of "The Sacred...

(Please note that I wrote this when I was seventeen years old. Some of my views have evolved since then, but I leave this here as a snapshot of an earlier stage of my thinking.) When I was six years old, I didn’t understand the concept of God, so I didn’t believe in him. I did, however, understand the concept of synesthesia and believed that this ability to see what is heard, was closest to whatever higher forces existed. It sounds strange, but when I first heard Maria Call

If I had to name one piece that consistently takes my breath away (without giving it back), it would be The Avatar for trumpet and piano by Steve Rouse. In eleven minutes, this music describes the evolution of our lifetimes: from descendance onto Earth, years of struggle and suffering, and finally to one’s release and ascendance to the heavens. It’s an age-old story -- one so universal that even our gods share it. Both Jesus Christ and the Hindu deity, Vishnu, divine figures

Kathleen Battle and Wynton Marsalis’s album “Baroque Duet'' captures the true essence of the word “baroque,” derived from the Portugeuse...