Common Link

Sit beside our beautiful blue Pacific, and you can’t help but know that the same water—the lifeblood of all living things—touches every land on earth. Take a deep breath of pure Rocky Mountain air, and your lungs fill with the same air breathed on every mountaintop in the world. Look at our children, in any corner of the planet, and your heart fills reflexively with hope—for them and for us.

What could matter more in this war-ravaged world than to recognize that we all inhabit this small planet? And what more potent tool of healing than music, which speaks the language of heart, of soul, no matter where it is from. Though we do all breathe the same air*,* we don’t all love the same music. But we all sing the music of our own lands, and the ecstasy that its beauty brings us is something we all share.

During our 20th season, Pacific Serenades reached across boundaries of style, blending elements of jazz, rock, and world music with our “own” classical roots. This year, we cross boundaries of culture and nationality. Music from three different countries fills each program, and we have invited our living composers to open their ears to influences from non-Western worlds.

With chamber music at the cutting edge of what matters now, as it has mattered always—beauty, love, feeling connected with other people, excellence, seeing beyond ourselves—Pacific Serenades begins its third decade of concerts with a plea for peace. And though this might be only the smallest of steps in a world in which we seem to have so little voice, let us take inspiration from what the heart knows: that music is supposed to be beautiful and moving, that music transcends all borders, and that music is as important to each of us as the very air we breathe.

We don’t all love the same music, but we can learn to appreciate the humanity of all of us by hearing what others love.