What's in the pipeline? Tea, Humanities, and something more

During the coronavirus pandemic, there have not been many opportunities for music journalists and reviewers to attend concerts and compose essays about performances. However, most writers have a few tricks up their sleeves, and I am no exception.

While continuing to teach Humanities courses at Thomas Edison State University and Southern New Hampshire University, I am working on a few writing projects that reflect my love of music, the humanities, and Asian culture and philosophy.

These include plans for a new book which weds the art of tea to the spiritual classics of China. This follows in the wake of the successful launch of my latest book, Dao and Daoist Ideas for Scientists, Humanists and Practitioners (Nova Science Publishers, 2019), co-edited with Yueh-ting Lee, Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of Psychology at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
https://tinyurl.com/yb4oy7xh

As to be expected, Beethoven is never far from my writing desk. I have a number of "Beethoven and..." articles and papers in mind, and may be tempted to pen another chapter in the Beethoven Chronicles (Invictus and The Black Spaniard). I am also planning some essays relating to music in time of pandemic. In March and April of 2020, I must have seen more operas (thanks to online archival streaming) than in the last 30 years combined, including four different castings of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio.

While catching up, I want to express my gratitude for the judges and administrators of the Artblog emerging writers competition this winter. There was a cash prize for the top winners in art and music writing, designated, I am sure, for young people hoping to start a career. But since there was no age limit indicated, I qualified for and was thrilled to receive an Honorable Mention for writing about music; specifically, an unpublished review of the Mozart Requiem performed in Philadelphia.

At the beginning of the pandemic, many of us despaired that arts organizations--struggling in the best of times--would not survive. But the emergence of small, socially distanced groups and online streaming such as Hope@home and World Piano Day, rekindled the embers of anticipation.  At this writing I have just enjoyed Deutsche Grammophon's stream of Nine World Premieres by Dmitri Shostakovich (July 5, 2020) with performances by Avdeeva, Masleev, and Trifonov.

As business studies have proven for decades, people do not work for money alone; indeed, their greatest effort may be in service to an ideal or passion, which as often as not is an expression of artistic culture. Despite my initial pessimism, I now know that the arts will survive and thrive once more. The arts are rooted in the human soul, and no force can extirpate or remove them from their ground.

They may not immediately resemble the arts we previously knew. But like the biblical words of Handel's Messiah, "The trumpet will sound..."

And we shall be changed.