Originally published in Newcity 7/28/2017

“It’s true I didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but I came over as soon as I could,” said Anton Cermak in 1931, in response to xenophobic slurs made against him by the deeply entrenched, and deeply corrupt, Chicago mayor “Big Bill” Thompson. Threatened by Cermak’s political skill and alarmed by his growing support, Thompson resorted to a strategy of personal insults and dark hints that Cermak wasn’t “normal.”

This strategy has a familiar ring to it, of course; but Thompson’s xenophobic and alarmist tactics backfired wildly, and Cermak rode a wave of immigrant support into the mayor’s office. Unfortunately he was killed before he could finish out even his first term—shot in the lung at a political rally by a deranged gunman who was apparently aiming at FDR, with whom Cermak happened to be shaking hands at the worst possible moment.

Cermak’s sentiment that he came to America from what is now the Czech Republic “as soon as [he] could,” speaks powerfully to me. You see, I’m a sentimental sort, the kind of guy who gets all choked up thinking about the idea of America as a melting pot, as a place where diverse peoples from around the world can live together in peace.

And yeah, I read my history. I know that the country was founded on top of one of the world’s most appalling genocides. I know about the three-fifths compromise. I know that the idealism of the American dream in no way makes up for the many atrocities committed along the way.

But from the moment that humans first climbed out of the primordial ooze and sat blinking in the full glare of newly formed consciousness, we’ve devoted an appalling amount of time and energy to killing each other; so the idea that we would at least make the attempt to put our differences behind us and live in peace—well, it’s something I still believe in with every fiber of my being.

Cermak “came over as soon as [he] could” because America represented an irresistible beacon to the world. America was an escape from authoritarianism, persecution, hereditary government and power wielded by the few in service to the fewer. But when he came over he discovered what everyone who has come over since has discovered: the ones who got here first didn’t want him.

Cermak is mostly forgotten today, but his victory over “Big Bill” Thompson is still a major win for the little guy, and a powerful reminder that the American dream cannot be taken for granted, but must be fought for in every generation.

Interestingly, though, Cermak’s longest-lasting legacy is not political but musical. He started the Grant Park Music Festival to give hard-pressed Chicagoans much-needed relief during the ravages of the Great Depression, and the festival is still going strong today. Then as now, Chicagoans had the extraordinary opportunity to hear classical music performed by a world-class orchestra and chorus in the heart of the city, for free.  It was an audacious idea then, and more than eighty years later it still is—as well as an indispensable part of summer in Chicago for tens of thousands of people.

Grant Park was also, memorably, the scene for Barack Obama’s stirring reaffirmation of the American dream upon his election in 2008 and, eight years later, the site of his stunningly gracious, optimistic and inspiring farewell address, in which he managed to find hope even as the country faced an incoming president who made “Big Bill” Thompson look like Honest Abe. Obama’s dignity in the face of despair was an inspiration to the composer Aaron Jay Kernis.

“In the months following President Barack Obama’s farewell address in Chicago, I began to turn my thoughts to composing this new horn concerto, ‘Legacy,’ for the Grant Park Festival. The President’s inspiring summation of the last eight years of our history rests incongruously next to the daily turmoil that has taken hold since then,” says Kernis.

“A great deal has been written about the ideal of the former president’s legacy: a commitment to protect our air, water, health, children… which, since then is being torn down, many pieces at a time, every single day. As a creative artist, I think frequently about what I will be able to pass on to my family, and to our world, as I spend my life attempting to create works of beauty, healing, confrontation and ideas.”

“Legacy,” co-commissioned by the Grant Park Music Festival and given its world premiere this month, opens with allusions to “Amazing Grace” in the strings and horn, which eventually become a full-fledged theme-and-variations—leading the listener to inevitably recall Obama’s powerful, deeply moving response to a racially motivated shooting in a house of worship.

The French horn is the perfect vehicle for music with a noble ring that recalls the understated but firm resolve of the former president; and Kernis, throughout the piece, perfectly balances sentiment with solid compositional craft.

Our country is led at the moment by vicious people, a mafia-esque cabal that, far from serving a lofty ideal, exists only for personal enrichment and the entrenchment and perpetuation of their power: in other words exactly that against which America was founded in the first place. They are taking a sledgehammer to Obama’s legacy but they fail to understand that Obama’s true legacy is his belief in a humanistic ideal which cannot be destroyed.

Chicago’s Grant Park is central to the legacy of Obama, who in many ways exemplified the American dream and who provided as perfect a model of dignity, class and respect for all as I’m likely to see in my lifetime. Kernis’ piece is a moving musical portrait of that legacy and it’s fitting that it will be premiered at a music festival started by an immigrant who long ago left his country in pursuit of a dream that the majority of us still hold dear.

The Grant Park Orchestra performs Aaron Jay Kernis’ horn concerto, “Legacy,” on August 11 at 6:30pm and August 12 at 7:30pm, under the baton of Carlos Kalmar with Jonathan Boen as horn soloist.  More information can be found on their website.

I have to confess that, as the American people ready themselves for their annual pyromaniacal outpouring of frenzied joy at being liberated from the tyranny of a British king, I find myself yet again wishing there were another way to celebrate independence and our near-hysterical love of freedom than the traditional week-long (at least) fireworks displays and general blowing up of things.

I want to point out too that this isn’t just a sign that I’m finally losing the battle against the ever-encroaching crustiness brought on by old age, (although I am.)  No, truth is, I’ve never liked fireworks.  Even as a child I would stand at a fireworks display and count the minutes until we could go back home and I could get back to reading The Three Investigators and the Secret of Skeleton Island.

Yes, a nerdy kid to be sure and grown into a nerdy adult but I can’t be the only one who thinks that freedom from tyranny might best be celebrated with a visit to the library, museum or the cultural outing of one’s choice.  Or just a nice long nap in the A/C.

Fireworks, sadly, are by far the most popular means of celebrating independence days around the world, but after much digging I did find a few more sedate ideas that I’d like to bring to your attention.

Did you know for example that in India the symbol for independence is a kite and so they fly kites for their Independence Day?  Tell me that people spending the day serenely flying kites over a lake isn’t better than drunk people blowing off their own fingers.

In Indonesia they celebrate by attempting to shimmy up a greased palm tree. I’m not going to run out and do this but I would be fine if it took off here instead of fireworks.  In Cambodia they celebrate liberation from French rule by releasing thousands of brightly colored balloons into the sky.  Another win.

South Korea it seems has an odd tradition:  they celebrate their victory over Japan and subsequent independence by setting prisoners free which is kind of a literal interpretation but, hey, still better than fireworks if you ask me.

Every year though I’m reminded in no uncertain terms that I’m way out of the mainstream on this, so this year I’ll celebrate the holiday the way I always do: with earplugs, alcohol and a good book. Happy Fourth!

Summertime for me means long bike rides, outdoor drinking, walks to the ice cream shop, sitting in the park reading a book, and of course the country’s only outdoor free classical music festival, the Grant Park Music Fest.

I’m giving pre-concert talks for several fascinating concerts this summer so if you’re in town and coming out, stop by the big white tent just west of the stage an hour before the show to hear my stunning insights.

And this year I’m not just talking about contemporary music which is odd. I’ve been entrusted with talks on Mozart, Beethoven and other stalwarts from the dim past.  Wikipedia here I come!

The full schedule is here!

When I was a music student lo so many years ago, there were teachers who liked to tell us all the time how much better things were in Europe.  According to them people were more sophisticated, there was broad support for the arts and classical music was the background to daily life.

One professor, who shall remain nameless, even went so far as to suggest that people in Europe by and large preferred atonal music.  In retrospect this is a ludicrous claim but at the time it seemed plausible enough. What can I say?  Young men aren’t known for critical thinking and it was an attractive idea.

At any rate, you can imagine my surprise when some years later I began making trips to Europe and was hard pressed to find a cafe or store playing atonal music, or even classical. Everywhere I went, in every European country, they were playing pop music.

Now after much experience I can tell you that the situation in Europe vis-a-vis classical music is very similar to what it is here.  Some people like it, some don’t.  No one prefers atonal music.

I bring this up because I’m leaving for France in about two hours on a two-week trip with my wife Maria to celebrate both her 40th birthday and our 10th wedding anniversary and I’m really excited.  But I’m also aware of the irony of heading to Paris in the immediate aftermath of a certain presidential announcement yesterday.

We’ve always had a fraught relationship with Europe. During World War I there was so much anti-German sentiment that Americans were encouraged to refer to hamburgers as “liberty sandwiches” and of course you probably remember the whole “freedom fries” thing a decade or so ago.

But I’ve never seen anti-European sentiment hit the fever pitch that it’s at right now.  There are a lot of decisions being made on emotion alone – or in service to a political base devoid of the power of critical thinking and in service to an all-consuming, inarticulate rage – that will cause immense harm.  We may be confused, divided, angry and willing to lash out blindly, but Putin and others like him are not confused.

The weakening of NATO, the end of American influence on the world stage, the growing acceptance of authoritarianism and human rights abuses, a new alarmingly cavalier attitude toward the truth and the willingness to demonize whole ethnic groups or religions, all of this only helps spread the chaos that fascist leaders like Putin want.

I know that we’ll enjoy our vacation in France but I also know there will be a darker undercurrent to the trip as well and I know that every conversation we have will likely revolve around politics and that’s a shame.

Chaos comes out of order, there is no system that won’t break down on its own. But there’s also no reason to go around helping it out. I hope we can remember that Europe is our ally and a powerful and necessary one at that.

Even if they don’t actually prefer atonal music…

Originally published in Newcity Magazine 5/1/2017

Constellation celebrated its fourth anniversary last month without quite as much fanfare as was perhaps appropriate for one of the city’s most adventurous music venues. Begun by jazz composer, drummer and arts entrepreneur Mike Reed, Constellation is dedicated to programming forward-looking jazz, free jazz and contemporary classical music, and the Sunday night Frequency Series is not only the city’s only weekly contemporary classical music series but one of the few such weekly series in the country.

Peter Margasak, who has written articulately about music for the Chicago Reader for more years than most of us can remember, is the director of the Frequency Series and he had an ambitious goal for it: “When I started the series the primary idea was to provide a consistent platform for Chicago new music groups, since it seemed to me most of them struggled to find good places to perform. I also wanted to generate a kind of critical mass. There were and remain so many interesting ensembles in Chicago, and in general they’re ignored by the local media. I wanted people to know that they could go hear an interesting group on any given Sunday.”

The timing for the Frequency Series couldn’t have been better, as Chicago has seen a growth spurt in contemporary music ensembles over the last decade or so—and, yes, venues are always a challenge; but not the only one. There’s a reason that contemporary classical music ensembles are ignored, and there’s a reason for the very fact that they have to exist in the first place.

As anyone who has ever stood outside of Symphony Hall and looked up at the names of a select few composers literally carved into the stone can tell you, classical music isn’t exactly a welcoming art form for living creators. The truth is, if you’re a living composer, classical music institutions don’t particularly want you.

The reasons for this are complex, but in a nutshell it’s because music gradually grew more complex harmonically until, by the time of Wagner, tonality itself became a tenuous prospect. If you’re writing a five-hour opera about the death of the gods, after all, you’re going to need a large orchestra, a lot of pointy hats and spears and you’re going to need a sound a bit more otherworldly than, say, C Major.

Most people’s takeaway from Wagner is that operas last a long time, Norse mythology is dark and that the “Ride of the Valkyries” is the perfect music for strafing innocent civilians with machine-gun fire from a helicopter. But, in the early twentieth century, many other composers had a different takeaway. They decided that it was time to push tonality over the cliff and make atonal music the music of the future and, in a somewhat unlikely twist, this idea was very popular with the music establishment at the time. So popular, in fact, that for several decades composers felt that anyone who wasn’t writing atonal music was a reprobate.

Meanwhile the rest of the world decided that classical music had gone insane and moved on. There was big band music, swing and jazz and then Elvis Presley and rock, and it was just so much more fun. Classical music institutions responded by doubling down on the classics and ignoring modern composers, and so ensembles that specialized in contemporary music were born.

Of course not everyone was writing atonal music, and there were two fascinating responses to the “tonal crisis” as it was known: jazz and minimalism. Jazz composers rejected atonal music in favor of chord progression patterns that could be repeated in any key and improvisation that allowed you to stay within the lines of the song form, or not. Minimalism, pioneered by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, favored highly tonal musical cells that were played in rhythmic repetition patterns that changed very gradually over time.

I give you this brief and woefully incomplete history of twentieth-century music because it helps to provide context around why a venue like Constellation, that gives contemporary performers and composers a place to practice their art, is so important—but also because, to me at least, these swirling waters of atonality, minimalist repetition and jazz harmonies found a fascinating synthesis in the music of Chicago-born composer Joseph Schwantner. To listen to his music is to hear the propulsive rhythms of minimalism combined with seventh-based jazz harmonies in a complex tonal structure that very few composers could have pulled off.

“[It’s] like looking through a crystal prism with rainbows of light piercing the air around it,” says flutist Jennie Oh Brown. “Schwantner’s music has an energy and a vitality that is amazing to hear and play.” Brown released an album of Schwantner’s music last year and is producing and performing a concert of his chamber music at Constellation this month. She first met Schwantner when she was a student at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester where he was on faculty.

“Upon graduating, I followed his career with great interest,” she says. “I eagerly purchased every piece for flute that Joe published, and happily brought these to the stage and into my teaching studio. Many years ago Joe even met with one of my student flute quartets to give them a coaching on his piece ‘Silver Halo.’ I remain incredibly grateful for his generosity of time and spirit, which has continued from my student days through to the present. Additionally, it was exciting for me to have this rather significant body of flute music that was created by such an illustrious and highly respected American composer. Joseph Schwantner is simply at the pinnacle of the field.”

The concert features Brown and an all-star cast of musicians performing the virtuosic “Silver Halo” for flute ensemble, “Black Anemones,” a transcription for flute and piano of a song inspired by a fascinating poem by Agueda Pizarro, the vibrant “Taking Charge” for flute, percussion and piano and “Looking Back,” an appropriately titled piece that makes musical reference to several earlier works including two from this program.

Music changed more in the twentieth century than in the last four centuries combined. It was a fascinating, dizzying time and it was a time in which composers often took sides against each other. How refreshing then to find a composer like Schwantner who instead drew from everything and made it his own, and how wonderful to have a supportive venue in Constellation. Here’s hoping for many more years.

Frequency Series presents Jennie Oh Brown playing Joseph Schwantner on May 21, 8:30pm, at Constellation, 3111 North Western. $5-$15, 18+.

I’m writing from sunny Mexico where I just finished two shows at the Cineteca Nacional as part of the first ever Vitaphonc Festival featuring films with live music in several different contexts, including ACM’s long-running Sound of Silent Film Festival, live music from Stanley Kubrick films as part of an incredible exhibition and a xxx animation festival which, while not quite as titillating as it sounds, was still a lot of fun.

Today is National Worker’s Day in Mexico, similar to Labor Day in the U.S. but, as far as I can tell, with fewer BBQ’s.  Although if you’ve ever been to Mexico then you know that I’m not exactly starving.  Great food is never a problem here.

So I’m taking it easy today and thought it would be fun to celebrate the holiday by lying in the sun and typing up a funny work story from the past.  I got my first job as a paperboy when I was twelve years old and have been continuously employed ever since so there are a lot to choose from but I’ve settled on a little incident that occurred during my stint as a delivery driver in college.

I was studying music composition at the University of Missouri and insisted on having an apartment instead of living in the dorms so for most of the four years I was there I delivered sub sandwiches to anyone who could afford our minimum $6 order which, unfortunately for me, was nearly everyone.

The job was appealing to me though because they had their own cars and had found an insurance company somewhere that would insure a bunch of 20 year-olds, most of whom were male, which is crazy when you think about it.  So none of us had to worry too much about the cars and well, we didn’t.

One night I got an order to Highland Parkway which was in a tony suburb of sorts and was a very long street with no stop signs, causing us to refer to it as Highland Raceway.  I located the house and, for some reason backed into the drive which I never usually did, and would never do again.

I stopped the car, apparently leaving it in reverse, and craned my neck to make sure it was the right address.  At which point my foot slipped off of the brake and the car, having a fast idle, began moving. I panicked and tried to hit the brake but hit the gas instead and slammed into the garage door hard.

The door made a horrific sound and immediately collapsed around the back end of the car.  I got out and stood there stupidly holding the food. When the incredibly angry man came out of the front door I stood there like a moron and all I could think to say was “the sandwiches are free, man.”

I then had to gingerly hand him the bag, get back in the car, repeat the horrific metal grinding noise as I worked the car out and head back to the shop where I was greeted by my manager who was, well, less than pleased.

They paid for the damages to his door and, incredibly, I kept my job.  I wouldn’t get fired for nearly another year but that’s another story altogether.  Happy National Workers Day!

Shakespeare was half right when he said all the world’s a stage.  What he forgot to mention was that the world’s a stage and we the players but we’re mostly just starring in a revival.  For the four thousand years of recorded human history we’ve pretty much been playing out the same sordid drama over and over.

I first read of the concept of the hydraulic despotism in the works of historian Arnold Toynbee who did not coin the term but wrote compellingly about it. As soon as humanity left behind the hunter/gatherer way of life in favor of agriculture, it became necessary to control water distribution and to stockpile grain and crops and other resources.

A class of despots arose who claimed divine rights to the lion’s share of these resources and a priestly class arose who backed up their claim. It was also necessary to protect the resources from marauders and so the soldier class arose.  For the first time we donned our roles and not much has changed ever since.

The agrarian revolution was certainly a great thing in many ways.  It allowed for specialization which brought technological improvements and a class of professional artisans, doctors, philosophers and more, but we’ve never gotten over this idea that some people deserve more of the resources than others. It has, in fact, haunted civilization from the beginning.

In hunter/gatherer times if an individual were a selfish asshole, he could smash someone on the head and take his nuts and berries sure, but he had limited power to affect the group as a whole and the group always had the power of casting him out which in most cases was certain death.

There is a thought that human history is on a divine path from the muck of our beginnings through the various seismic shifts of agrarianism, industrialism and now technologism (which sounds kind of weird but is in fact a word, and not a dirty word either.)  But where does this path take us?

At the moment our greatest resource, money, is mostly invisible and psychological in nature. People get rich, and poor, merely by speculating on psychological reactions other people will have to various and sundry phenomena, many of which were manufactured to have the desired effect. The hydraulic despotism still exists but it’s now an economic despotism.

As recent political movements have shown, people are aware of this and unhappy but we have a new priestly class in propagandist media and their message is powerful, constant and, as it was in the past, meant to keep Pharoah in control.

I don’t call for a revolution because revolutions are never successful in the long term, merely another act in the drama.  Instead I wonder how we shift people’s focus from shortsighted accumulation of power and resources and instead onto the only thing that matters in a reality in which your individual self is fated to die: helping other people.

In the meantime another act in the drama plays out.  Again…

It was a gorgeous day in Helsinki in August of 2014 and I was sitting outdoors at a pub drinking a ludicrously expensive bottle of beer and thinking about what kind of music I wanted to write next.

In the past I had always let the music I wrote be dictated by commissions or projects and I would typically finish one and move right on to the next, but this time I wanted to do something different. I wanted to write something that wasn’t inspired by a story or visual art or anything external. I wanted to write something personal in my own artistic language that would challenge me creatively and take me to the next level as a composer.

I was convinced that all of this breathless careening from project to project was not allowing me time to think about what it was I wanted to say as an artist, that I was too busy meeting deadlines to do the really hard self-examining that an artist must do if he expects to ever say anything of value.

Somewhere in the middle of my second beer I decided that the perfect thing for me to do was write a piano concerto. I could tell that it was the perfect thing to do because I immediately got very nervous.  My heart fluttered and I felt shaky, which for me is always a clear sign that I’m on the right path, or that I need a third beer.

I got to work on the piece right away but as it turns out nearly everything I wrote in Helsinki was garbage and the only thing I kept was the opening figure in the piano, a kind of menacing, rhythmic figuration that you’d typically hear in a movie when things are about to go really bad for someone. (Don’t worry though, it all works out in the end.)

I didn’t find the real inspiration for the piece until a few months later in a conversation about art with friends. I was talking about my obsession with writing in my own language with as few outside influences as possible.  Meanwhile I had sketched another movement that was meant to sound like it was me improvising at the piano and one of my friends said the piece was a self portrait. I liked that idea and ran with it.

I called the piece Satori which is this wonderful Japanese Buddhist term that can mean self-knowledge, the search for self-knowledge or one who has attained self-knowledge. The finished work is in four movements and it’s getting performed for the first time next week by the Chicago Composers Orchestra with the wonderful Marta Aznavoorian as soloist.

They are sounding amazing and it’s just stunning for me to hear this piece brought to life after having existed for so long solely in my head.  It truly is like an out of body experience. Or at least, not having had an out of body experience that I know of, what I would think an out of body experience would feel like.  You know, like surreal and floaty.

Anyway, here are the details in case you can make it.   I’ll post videos too shortly after the performance.

It’s terrible when a normal dream turns into an anxiety dream.  At first everything is perfect. You’re sailing on a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea surrounded by friends, Yanni is serenading you, the wine sparkles like the sea, the bust of Homer on the prow of the boat nods his head in gentle approval, everything is dandy.

But then it all goes bad.  The sun starts crying, the boat somehow hits an iceberg, your elementary school bully speeds by on a sea-doo and throws lunch meat at you, Homer won’t stop singing Frere Jacques in a creepy stage whisper.  Everything just goes south.

I’ve been having more than my fair share of anxiety dreams lately but, perhaps strangely, not so much about politics, although I did have a dream where I woke up and was in bed with Betsy DeVos and I never want to have that dream again.  Never.

No, most of my anxiety dreams lately have been about the premiere of my piano concerto coming up on March 9.  I’ve had dreams that the orchestra members turn into clowns and start mocking me, that the audience consists entirely of barnyard animals who, while well-mannered, don’t seem to have an ear for music and then, just last night, I dreamed that the orchestra wouldn’t stop playing Happy Birthday. I yelled and yelled at them to stop and get on with my piece but they never did.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very excited about this premiere.  This is just how I get.  I’m a high-strung person and for me, having a piece played publicly creates a response in my body that is something like the fight-or-flight instinct but, like all of the fight-or-flight any humanoid creature on earth has ever experienced happening to me all at once.  Plus butterflies.

So, yes, I’m always nervous before a big premiere but this one makes me especially nervous because this piece is a kind of musical self portrait.  You know like visual artists do but with music instead of paint.

The piece is in four movements and each movement reflects a different aspect of myself, both the self I’d like to be and the self I’m stuck with. The title Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term for seeking self knowledge.

The pianist is Marta Aznavoorian which is just amazing.  I’m so happy.  And nervous.  I hope that you can come.

Thursday, March 9
7:30 pm
Ganz Hall @ Roosevelt University
430 S Michigan Ave, 7th Floor, Chicago

The Casa Mas de Miquel in Barcelona is a striking building on the Avinguda Diagonal in the heart of the city.  Designed by Domènec Sugrañes i Gras, one of Gaudí’s protegés and the man entrusted with finishing the Sagrada Familia after Gaudí’s death, the building combines Gaudí’s modernist style of windows with classicist pillars and features a stunning tiered oval courtyard capped with an ornate, highly decorated cupola.

I first saw the building in a brochure in July when I visited the Open House Barcelona office to talk about a musical collaboration and, even looking at it in a black and white photograph, I knew that if they agreed to the project, this was the building I wanted to write music for.

As it happened they agreed and I wrote a piece for violin and cello to be performed in the courtyard on the day of the event, October 23rd, a day which I consider to be the highlight of my artistic life thus far.

The building had recently been converted to private residencies and a lot of people wanted to get a look inside it so the line went all the way down the block and around the corner.  The managers allowed 140 people to come in at a time.  The Open House volunteer told them about the architecture and then introduced me and I talked about the project and my music and then the musicians performed the piece.

When it was over everyone hung out for a bit taking in the space and then they were ushered out and another 140 people were ushered in and we started it all over again.  In all well over a thousand people heard my music that day and the responses were wonderful.

I was really moved by the concentration that the audience gave the performance and by the conversations I had. I remember thanking a woman for coming and she said to me, “no, es un regalo” or “no, it’s a gift.”

The day was magical for me because not only was my music being performed in an incredible space for oodles of appreciative people but also because it was happening in Barcelona, a place for which I’ve long had a fascination.

After the final performance the musicians and I had lunch in a nearby cafe with the videographer and a few others.  We talked in a mixture of Spanish, Catalan, English and German and I felt like I was in heaven.

I spent nearly three months of 2016 in five different European countries and, there as well as in the U.S., I heard the same thing.  Close the borders, expel the foreigners, bring back outsourced jobs, preserve our cultural heritage. I don’t know where it’s all heading but I do know that travel, language study and international projects have enriched my life incredibly and opened me to all kinds of different ways of seeing the world.

The new year is a time of hope and I have a very sincere hope that we won’t let fear get the better of us this year and in the years to come.  I like cultural diversity and I like the idea of a global village in which we recognize the humanity in others and I hope we get there.  In the meantime I’ll always have that magical day in Barcelona.

Open House Barcelona 2016 – Casa Mas de Miquel from ACM on Vimeo.