Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_miS8YuWWo. The first time I watched The Red Violin, I thought that its story was intensely ominous, and laced with menacing superstition. But lately, I’ve begun to believe that it is also achingly beautiful, and as searing a testament to the importance of an instrument as ever there was. The Red Violin tells the story of… Continue reading The Red Violin – Soundtrack

Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEfLkUxhBCI I listen to the title track of a Scottish detective series called Shetland, and recall what (most of) Europe must have lost. It’s a world that I cannot actually recall of course, having never lived in it. But as the violin reaches up towards the sky, I feel a deep inquiry stir within me– the… Continue reading Shetland – Soundtrack

Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYTlw8nEUTA&list=PLeNCRyoxRPrVUN8ZLuGMPxe-0BlPn8jae. As the sun sets and the mystery of darkness takes its place, I wonder about the places I have never been to. I wonder about this world, its waters and its skies and its beings. I wonder at what we call the miracle of life, and I wonder where that miracle resides. Does… Continue reading Life of Pi – Soundtrack

Once upon a time, on a frosty day in January, I was on a domestic flight from one city in the United States of America to another. I was seated next to a fellow named Joe, who spent the first thirty seconds of the flight flipping through the airline magazine, and the next thirty talking… Continue reading Random

Part 14/14 of Travel Writings: Listening to Maharashtra and Goa (2017-18). Music & the Earth International, 2022. Available here. Between the second century BCE and 480 CE, Buddhist monks cut and painted twenty-nine caves on the rock faces of Ajanta. Today, the Ajanta Caves are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and are widely considered to be… Continue reading The Caves of Ajanta

Part 13/14 of Travel Writings: Listening to Maharashtra and Goa (2017-18). Music & the Earth International, 2022. Available here. The landscape on the drive to Ajanta is absolutely beautiful — bucolic, mild, rolling fields that remind me of the central Italian province of Tuscany. Tuscany is where the city of Florence is located, and it is… Continue reading Home Heritage

Part 12/14 of Travel Writings: Listening to Maharashtra and Goa (2017-18). Music & the Earth International, 2022. Available here. Nashik is an ancient city located about 170 kilometers northwest Mumbai. After a quick breakfast of two slices of toast, and my self-determined minimum of three cups of hot chai, we piled into an Uber and began to… Continue reading Goshala, (re)visited

Part 11/13 of Travel Writings: Listening to Maharashtra and Goa (2017-18). Music & the Earth International, 2022. Available here. After Matheran, we returned to Mumbai, for a few days of music, and of talking about music. I am lucky to have a couple of good friends living in Mumbai — it made it far easier for… Continue reading Upaj

Part 10/13 of Travel Writings: Listening to Maharashtra and Goa (2017-18). Music & the Earth International, 2022. Available here. We returned to our hotel in Mumbai late afternoon, and the neighborhood looked peaceful and quiet and dappled in golden sunlight. A group of boys played cricket in the middle of the street, and the fact that… Continue reading High Tea

Part 9/13 of Travel Writings: Listening to Maharashtra and Goa (2017-18). Music & the Earth International, 2022. Available here. If so far, I have given the impression that India is a “sonic oasis” — far removed from the cacophonies of everyday life in the West — let me pour cold water on that wishful thinking right… Continue reading Rowdies