Music is a temporal art, and one that breathes. I have been thinking so much this week about time and breath - essential elements of life and of music. Eight minutes and forty-six seconds is a long time. It’s about the average length of a performance of Barber’s Adagio for strings, and longer than the second movement of Florence Price’s 3rd Symphony. I have listened to these pieces contemplating time and breath and the last minutes of George Floyd’s life.
We continue to mourn him and the other lives lost - Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and the many others whose names we know and those we don’t know.
Their lives matter.
Prayers and mourning and silent messages in solidarity are not enough.
We must act against racism, brutality, and hate so that millions of people will not need to live in fear.