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Another Sea
Scotland is a beautiful place and its music never fails to hit me right in the feels. (I mean, who doesn’t shed a tiny tear at “Parting Glass” or “Wild Mountain Thyme”?) And when I fall in love with a particular type of music, I tend to want to make it my own through songwriting.…
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Breaking: Choir Director’s Eyebrows Ascend into Heaven as Choir Goes out of Tune
13 October 2019 Los Angeles, California – A local church choir has been thrust into the spotlight as reports are circulating that its director’s eyebrows have been prematurely raptured. “It was truly a miracle,” said long-time congregation member and greeter Jim Dennison. “I was sitting in the pews listening to the choir and suddenly I…
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Nation’s Organists Rally to Fight Stereotypes as Halloween Draws Near
9 October 2019 Los Angeles, California Nearing the middle of October, spooky season is in full swing and Halloween celebrants across the nation are gathering their pumpkins, brooms, and ominous soundtracks in preparation for their night of revelry. Halloween has long been a time of community, of neighbors sharing chili on the front porch, children…
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Hallow Hill
The hill was ghostly. Even before finding an old sign revealing its history as an early Christian burial site, I could sense the tension between life and death in the air that chilled my face. It was a place pulsing with potential, yet quiet and lonely as a sleeping giant. Insignificance and eternity confronted me…
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Theme and Variations
Not long ago (though it seems a lifetime), I wrote about modulations. The idea that the dissonance of post-college life would eventually resolve into normalcy was comforting; considering the modulations in music were consoling to me as I felt keenly the sudden transitions I experienced after four years of relatively little change. Several months later,…
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Maybe it’s Because of Winn Dixie
I’m reading Gone with the Wind again for what is somewhere between the fourth or seventh time. It seems that anytime I am between books, unsure what to read next, or feeling unsettled, I turn (second to my Bible) to that enormous novel for no better reason than that it is a darn good story. But my…
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Schumann’s Arabeske: A Musical Love Letter
It is my conviction that one must fall in love to play Schumann well. I did not at first enjoy practicing his Arabeske, Op. 18; while I understood the piece theoretically, I did not truly understand it emotionally or spiritually until I, like the composer, fell in love. Then, all at once, its nuances and…
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Up the Ladder, Down the Ladder: on artistic affection
“He now is struck with wonder by what’s wonderful in him. Unwittingly, he wants himself; he praises, but his praise is for himself; he is the seeker and the sought, the longed-for and the one who longs; he is the arsonist— and is the scorched.” – The Metamorphoses of Ovid In his Metamorphosis, Ovid paints perhaps…
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Poetic Love
A year ago today I picked up a copy of Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey in a Waterstones in Cambridge. I read it cover-to-cover without sitting and — admittedly — without purchasing it. I was intrigued, but, when I closed it and placed it back on its display, I realized that the fascination I’d felt with…
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Consumption
I fear we are dying of consumption… It’s 2019 and it seems that everyone seems has some sort of food sensitivity. (Someone recently suggested that I cut gluten, which nearly made me cry as I reached for another slice of bread.) Our nutritional awareness is becoming more and more acute and, on the whole, I’d…
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Modulations
A modulation is a “change from one key to another in a piece of music.” Seems simple enough. Often they are, and, being a rather lazy songwriter, I’m a huge fan of a common-tone modulation, where a single note is sufficient to transpose one key into another, often in a single beat. Right now, though,…
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Bedtime Stories
As I grow older, it is often more difficult to fall asleep. I know I’m not alone in this. Age brings with it more anxieties and activities than the sheep we might otherwise be counting and, honestly, the only cure I’ve found (aside from melatonin) is to return to reading bedtime stories. As I recently…
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Ryanne Molinari 