Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
If it’s not about classical music, ballet or the violin, you’ll find it here.
I hate deaths. At the risk of stating the obvious, they hurt. They leave a giant gap. You walk around with an ache that can’t be assuaged. Those are precisely the reasons I love “celebration of life” events for the recently deceased. Sure, you’re still going to grieve. Cry. Feel that emptiness. But the word … Read more
I know what you’re thinking. “It’s winter. It’s the dead of winter. We’re in the grips of the coldest of cold winter this week, and The Classical Girl is talking about … poison oak? She’s in the Northern Hemisphere, right?” Turns out poison oak is a thing, any time of the year. Even in long-dead … Read more
You might notice more white space on this blog. Less words. That’s on purpose. Space feels great. It’s a hard commodity to come by as we approach the holidays and the end of the year. Everything gets squeezed in, condensed. More food than usual. More family time than usual (leading, admittedly, to … Read more
My return to Africa — if only in my mind — started early one morning last week in the most curious of places: my local classical music station. Something wonderful was playing, a suite of five movements, each one telling its own story in a distinctive musical voice. But who was it? I discerned a … Read more
As a lifelong Catholic, I’ve always taken Holy Week seriously in a personal way, and the reading of The Passion on Palm Sunday always deeply affects me. You’d think I’d never heard the story before, of Jesus’s triumphant arrival into Jerusalem, his Last Supper, praying in the garden of Gethsemane, his betrayal by one of … Read more