There are few ways more effective to connect with people than through music. Take a simple, familiar melody and share it, urging folks to join in. The music takes over, whatever your troubles, especially when one hears the same music pouring out of those around you.
The North Carolina Symphony, the state’s largest performing arts organization, is counting on that in these extraordinary times. With venues closed due to the pandemic, the staff and players are tasked with seeking ways to reach the audience beyond the state’s concert halls with educational programs and virtual concerts.
Daring naiveté is one way to describe the Enlightenment ethos on display in the German writer and historian Friedrich Schiller’s 1785 poem “An die Freude” (To Joy). The text was long admired by Beethoven, who eventually used it to stunning one might say revolutionary effect in his Ninth Symphony. Both Schiller and Beethoven embraced the idea that all humanity might be released from the sh