The Expansiveness of Music

Oct 26, 2025

Normally, I share here about photography but today it is about music (with some photographs thrown in of course). While I have very little musical talent (my short-lived attempt at guitar lessons did not go well and I basically have three notes that I can sing - lower, medium, and higher) I do deeply love music. So many points in my life are marked by specific songs (including hearing Cinderella’s Don’t Know What You’ve Got ’Til its Gone playing on 105.9 KBPI Rocks the Rockies after I was driving home following an ugly breakup) and specific musical experiences (the list of concerts is long and quite unique ranging from bands like Def Leppard, Scorpions, Metallica, and Tesla to U2, Carrie Newcomer, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, David Wilcox, and many others). This week had two beautiful musical experiences that are still resonating with me.

The first was my wife and my anniversary present to each other - seeing Jon Batiste performing in Cincinnati this past Tuesday night (we actually both almost bought tickets for the other when the tickets went on sale - it was only a 2FA request from Ticketmaster that spoiled my wife’s surprise buying them for us after I had purchased two other tickets a few hours before). Few concerts that I have been to have been filled with as much joy, beauty, diversity, and even generousness. One of the things that was so beautiful to see were the ways that Jon centered the other artists in his band during the show. It wasn’t that he gave them a 5 second time during band introductions to do a riff but instead he really gave them moments where they were truly featured - vocally and instrumentally.

Another was how the concert lived out the sentence that was on a banner above the stage...

This is the circus of love // Under our tent there is revival and joy

And goodness did the concert live that out - love, revival, and joy all in a bit of circus atmosphere.

But there was also how diverse the whole of the concert was. It was diverse in the people on stage - just a beautiful collection of people reflecting the breadth of who we are as human beings - skin tones, body shapes, gender, age.

But there was also an incredible diversity of music - classical (ish) piano, rock, Gospel, R&B, jazz, and probably some more that I cannot name.

And it was a truly spiritual experience - Jon even introduced it as such as he shared that music, meaning, and community are spiritual disciplines as he introduced a song that centers on environmental care and climate change. But he wanted the whole night to be a sharing back and forth between those on stage and those in the audience.

One thing I tried to do was to keep my phone in my pocket for as much of the concert as I could - I simply wanted to be in the moments with my wife and with this amazing person and musician. I especially noticed the feeling of the music throughout my body both the physical feeling the sound waves but also the emotion stirred by it all. (And bonus for us in the balcony is that he started off the show by going through the balcony down to the stage and then returning at the end!)

The additional aspect of music this week came the next day as I was part of a three person conversation with Troy Bronsink and MaryAnn McKibben Dana on the power of music in our lives and in community. Troy and I were both at the concert the night before and started by sharing our experiences of it and our love of Jon Batiste as a person and as a musician. The three of us shited into resopnding to different questions about music in our lives:

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life
Song that unlocks tears/emotion
Song that saved your life
Last song you shared with someone else

Here’s the video (including the screencapture that definitely gives off some major Mike Wazowski energy for me) if you wanted to take an hour or so to llisten in. The conversation also led to the creation of playlists on Spotify and Apple Music of the songs we shared about.

Here’s the link to the video

MaryAnn and my next conversation will be in celebration of Spooky Season as we go a little more on the lighthearted side and spend some time with my personal favorite Charlie Brown special, “Its The Great Pumpkin ,Charlie Brown!” - we’ll be live on substack at noon ETD on Wednesday, October 29

PCPH - Great Pumpkin - Wednesday, October 29

And let’s close things out with a few photos of Autumn around the Cincinnati area: