Creativity!

Many musicians are challenging themselves in new ways. While we’ve been able to create YouTube performances like this one—“Saints”—for quite a while, the limitations imposed by quarantines have inspired a flowering of activity in which technology—itself a product of the human imagination—facilitates musical creation and then allows us to share it.

This performance of “When the Saints Come Marching In” by Greg Strohman and his father Tom Strohman offers a wonderful example of what’s possible. Greg conceived and created most of the arrangement and produced the video. Both teach at Lebanon Valley College.

New Brazilian music that bridges the Pacific Ocean

A Brazilian friend, composer Rafael Lindemute, shared this recent YouTube performance of one of his beautiful compositions, which combines Western concert instruments with the wonderful sound of the Chinese erhu. O Bem a Todos (Good to All People) is scored for a rich tapestry of erhu, flute, piano and string quartet. I met Rafael in Annville, Pennsylvania, while he was visiting Lebanon Valley College, and he wrote me from his home in Brazil.

With the help of electronic communication, music helps bring us together during this period of physical separation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=216DMFncCos