Aaron, Margie, and Benjamin

Margie: “This would have been our 13th summer to teach and perform at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina. It is an intense 7 weeks of teaching, practicing, rehearsing, and performing with colleagues and friends, some of whom we have known for decades. Brevard is an important place for our family, as my elderly mom visits each summer to be with us and to hear the wonderful concerts. Our now grown boys think of Brevard as their second home and have always tried to visit at some point in the summer.

This summer, we miss the daily communication with students and colleagues, the daily rehearsals where a conductor wants us to play a phrase faster, lighter, more together or with more understanding, more compassion, more breadth. We miss being on stage, playing an emotionally draining Shostakovich or Mahler Symphony which seems to mirror much of the angst and heartbreak we feel in the world today. We miss playing chamber music.

We are fortunate. We are healthy. We are growing vegetables in our backyard. We have had visits from both our boys. We have spent the past 35 summers traveling to teach and perform, and this summer we are trying to find a rhythm of our days, which can pass surprisingly quickly.

Amidst the slowness and quiet is an underlying sense of unease. We want change. We stand for #BlackLivesMatter and we are listening to difficult conversations, reading, learning about history through a different, more accurate lens. When this summer has passed, these truths are the ones we want to remember.”