We are so visually oriented, but music is another way of sharing and perceiving and, I suspect, is universal to all cultures. Music offers a wide range of emotions and composers shape their sounds to create pictures in the mind. But where do they find inspiration? And how does one create a work of substance? Well, sometimes, you need to listen to the silence. For me, I often need to block out the "background noise" before I can find the inspiration I'm looking for. So I was very tuned into the story of contemporary American composer, Robert Kyr as broadcast recently on NPR. Kyr journeys to a remote monastery in New Mexico to seek the silence of the desert. And I found this story on he finds his muse very moving. And if you'd like to explore his music further, here's a link to one of his CDs.
