What’s the most vivid expression of human unity across all boundaries of time, culture, language, and self-interest?  It’s music, dear ones.  It’s MUSIC.

This idea is so unoriginal I almost hesitate to discuss it as though it had just occurred to me alone. Like, where have I been all my life?  Lately, though, I’ve been feeling it personally and profoundly. I’ve been prompted to this fresh appreciation mainly by the experience of orchestra concerts.

Bill and I are fortunate to enjoy live performances by the excellent Kansas City Symphony, whose new director, Matthias Pintscher, promises an exciting musical future for the orchestra and the community. Frequent attendance at the Kansas City Symphony brings us face-to-face, like friends, with our professional musicians and with our neighbors in the audience, too.

Meanwhile, at home, I have subscribed for a number of years to Medici.tv, an online library that furnishes an ever-enlarging selection of symphony concerts, virtuoso soloists, operas, ballet, and music-related documentaries from around the world. With this resource at hand 24/7, many hours of my life have been saved from on-screen doom-scrolling, from anger, hate, hopelessness, and…well, from self-induced boredom. Immersed in Beethoven, thrilled by Joyce Di Donato, delighted by conductors like Klaus Mäkelä, awed by, say, the orchestra of young musicians brought from Peru to their European debut by opera star Juan Diego Flores….I embrace endless choices. Every hour spent with these artists erases whatever dismal view of humanity the headlines might be selling.

I particularly dote on orchestras–musicians who, in collaboration without regard to color, gender, age, nationality, or any other division, devote themselves to their instruments, to each other, and of course to the music itself.

Whether I’m viewing a symphony performance in person or on a screen via camera close-ups, I see the faces of musicians alight in the joy of the moment, skillfully playing their unique parts.  Each contributes to a whole creation where every kind of sound signifies. I see people from all over the planet, literally hundreds of accomplished individuals, listening to each other, lending their souls, blending their individuality into one beautiful unity.

“Make me an instrument of Thy peace,” prayed St. Francis of Assisi.  Am I a piccolo or a piano? A trombone or a triangle?  Whatever. Let my single irreplaceable note be written in perfect harmony, along with everyone else’s, by the Eternal Composer.