New Music

My musical life has languished for years, taken a back seat to raising kids and earning a living and making a home in the suburbs. It's not just the playing of music that's dropped away but even the listening. Being at least two generations behind in recording technology (pre-MP3, pre-CD — most of my treasures are in vinyl), I've contented myself with the radio.

The radio, of course, is potluck, taking what you're given and, in the case of D.C.'s current classical music offerings, listening to the same "greatest hits" over and over again.

But a couple weeks ago an iPod nano entered my life and I'm finding tunes I haven't heard in years, downloading show music and folk tunes and arias, mixing them all together and coming up with playlists that start with Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime" and end with Gilbert and Sullivan's "He is an Englishman."

To paraphrase someone (Churchill?) who said, "It's not the end, nor even the beginning of the end ... but perhaps it is the end of the beginning," I say, It's not the revival of my musical life, or even a reinstatement. But it is, at least, the end of its dormancy.