Written by Richard Knox Hope is the theme of the New Hampshire Master Chorale’s spring concerts, on June 15 in Concord and June 16 in Plymouth – why we need to hope, how dark and despairing life is without it. Master Chorale director Dan Perkins says the concert program was inspired by Hope On, a recent composition by Polish-American Martin Sedek that the composer calls “socially conscious music.” “Sedek challenges us to maintain hope in today’s social, economic, environmenta

It’s astonishing that we’re still considering Matthew Shepard two decades after his murder at the hands of two young men who hated him for being gay. After all, hate crimes are lamentably common in 21st-century America. The FBI reports more than six a day, most involving violence against persons. (A quarter involve destruction of property.) Experts say that’s a gross undercount. And not uncommonly, hate crimes are deadly. Some of these penetrate our consciousness, such as the

A Meditation on Time and Human Existence Time is the ocean we all swim in…infinite, invisible as air. We spend lifetimes trying to find our bearings in the unpredictable currents of this vast ocean. In one way and another, this concert is a meditation on time and human existence. It’s a radically different take on the human condition from the one offered in last spring’s Master Chorale concert, From Time to Time, a rollicking voyage from the tender hope of infancy to the lust