Saying “Thank you,” is one of the first lessons that a mother teaches her child; a simple formula that reinforces and responds to an act of kindness or an attention to the child’s needs. From such a modest beginning an entire structure of social interactions will be…

The summer solstice reminds us that this is the season of light, the longest day of the year, the furthest away from the winter solstice and the beginning of our long slow cycle back into the dark.  “Do you have to bring that up?” I hear you say. Yes, I…

As most schoolchildren can tell you, the calendar year is divided into four quarters or seasons – spring, summer, fall, and winter. The precise point at which the seasons change is marked by four special days – a winter and a summer solstice and a spring and a fall equinox. Equinox is…

From mid-September onward, The Christmas Revels’ Chorus meets once a week to make a joyful noise in the Watertown rehearsal hall. Throughout the fall, our primary identity is ‘chorus.’ But come early December, when everything moves to Sanders Theatre on the Harvard campus, we are reminded that we’re actually…

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day, the other end of the year from the winter solstice that Revels celebrates every year in Sanders Theatre. “Solstice” refers to the ancient concept of the sun standing still in the period between waxing and waning. In fact we know…

Recording is hard work… surrendering to long hours of often repetitive music-making with hypervigilant attention to detail, patiently waiting for the airplane to pass overhead or the truck to rumble out of earshot on the adjacent gravel driveway, tuning and re-tuning temperamental, multi-stringed bowed instruments in ever-changing temperatures…

My smart phone is getting precocious. Returning from our annual directors and producers conference on the west coast, I was checking my photos of the local beach when a file popped up entitled “Malibu Memories.” With a dreamy California soundtrack playing in the background my phone had assembled…