Tags
Berkshires, Betty Freeman, Eikando Temple, Henry David Thoreau, John Cage, Kyoto, Lake Buel, MItsuyo Matsumoto, Quartets by John Cage, Red Fox Music Camp, Seiji Ozawa, Tanglewood
A path in the Berkshire woods near Lake Buel.
I awoke yesterday morning to the sound of soft rainfall on the leaves and trees. The birds were an amazingly diverse choir, tweeting and humming and cooing and singing me out of sleep into emerging daylight.
The Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts are a locus for my life. They provide a genuine home for American musicians at Tanglewood in Lenox, where in 1979 I met my wife Jan. Her mother was born in Pittsfield in 1928 and her grandparents are buried there. Her aunt and uncle still live in New Marlborough, her old Cousin Andrew is a farmer in Sandisfield and young Cousin Rebecca is getting married on Saturday in Great Barrington.
But as I heard the rain fall softly I remembered, with birds and rainfall my soundscape as I awoke, music by John Cage inspired by the old colonial composers and Henry David Thoreau.
Sound Travels with Jeff von der Schmidt 