On March 14, I went to see the launch event of Sam Harris’s Waking Up Book Club, where he and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker shared the stage at the Dolby Theatre to discuss Pinker’s new book Enlightenment Now and a range of philosophical topics. Among the things they touched on were science, humanism, politics, and artificial intelligence. About halfway into their conversation, Sam prompted Pinker to speak about the rise of the alt-right....

This weekend, I attended South Bay Horn Day 2017 where I was reunited with my teacher and friend, Daniel Wood. As he announced at the end of the evening concert program, this happened to be his last year at the helm of the South Bay Horn Day event, with no one as of yet having stepped up to take the reins. The event has run for six consecutive years, and in that time has built some great relationships among the network of horn players in the Bay Area, while also offering an environment in which some really beautiful musical moments have been crafted....

A symphony really doesn’t deserve to be delivered to its audience through the copper filament of a pair of headphones. For all the labor that goes into a 40-minute work (both in composition and preparation on the part of the ensemble) that sees its finer details realized at the hands and lungs of sixty-some-odd musicians, it’s really a disservice to have the sound injected directly into one’s head cavity. It is not possible to really experience a “wall of sound” when the sound begins and ends as a whisper from a mere earbud....

Singing in a boys choir when I was younger and later singing with my high school chorus, there were few opportunities to perform a cappella music. A cappella frequently emerged in rehearsals as an ear-training exercise, but it wasn’t till I encountered what seemed to be an army of a cappella singers and groups in college that I got my first, real taste of the form. As a freshman, I auditioned for a bass opening in Cornell University’s Last Call, but after not getting the part, I more or less abandoned a cappella for other pursuits....

First order of business: I am living in Taiwan (since August 19th). I am taking an 二胡 (èrhú) class, and thus far have learned the basics of bowing. The proper grip and bow placement is tricky, and having never played a string instrument, the entire experience is foreign to me. In the first two lessons, none of my previous musical training has volunteered itself to be of any use, and the class is furthermore taught entirely in Chinese, so you know, there’s that....