When the opportunity allows, I attend the wonderful concerts of music of the Torbay Symphony Orchestra, conductor Richard Gonski. The Gods of Music uplift our consciousness into the heavenly realms – rich in spirit, rich in joy and rich in appreciation. I wrote this poem a few years ago after one of the concerts in St. John’s Church, Bridgetown, Totnes to go in my next collection of poems for publication. The poem had an extra relevance after attending an evening this weekend of a TSO concert.
An Extra String to the Violin
In this concert of togetherness,
Where there are no shadows
In the glow of the solitary light.
We listen to the other,
With softening eyes to the gods of music
As the violinist
Talks with the hands,
And plays in our heart.
Our lives are stretched across all this,
While embryonic movements gather
As figures on the canvas of life.
Distances dissolve into togetherness,
In the passion of the violin,
Nothing could feel so sublime,
As immensely precious
As this magnitude of sound.
There’s an extra string to the violin.
PS.
In St. John’s Church, we listened to the Concerto for Violin no 5 in A Major.K219. Sophia Jackson, who joined the orchestra six years ago in her teens, offered the packed hall a violin solo with conviction, flair and quiet humility. Sitting in the front row, I witnessed her playing her violin a metre or two away. At the end of the concerto, the orchestra, with many years of experience in the concert hall, along with the audience, clapped loudly and stamped the feet in appreciation. In the interval, I spotted Sophia with a circle of people talking to her. In a brief interruption, I said: “Sophia, Six Stars. It was a privilege to listen to you.”
Click on photo
Practise time in St. John’s Church, Bridgetown, Totnes. Sophia is on the left of the picture.