Fairfax Music: "In The Tradition & Beyond"

08/22/2025

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. ”
- Maya Angelou
“When we pay attention to nature's music, we find that everything on the Earth contributes to its harmony.”
- Hazrat Inayat Khan
“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”
- Plato

08/20/2025

08/19/2025

"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." ― Martin Luther King Jr.

08/14/2025

“My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls.”
- John Coltrane

08/11/2025

“To live is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins. Everything living has a rhythm. Do you feel your music?”
- Michael Jackson
“[...] our technology and our economic system seem to produce the present bad situation: millions of people feel themselves poor and powerless; millions feel that music is something to be made only by experts.”
- Pete Seeger

08/10/2025

On this new excursion in the ROUND TRIP series, we explore and experience the ancient wonders of conduction, which is defined as the process by which sound waves travel through a medium, the transmission of impulses along nerves, or the conveying of fluid through a pipe or other channel. The word origin in mid-16th Century Europe meant provision for, and leadership in safe passage, which relates to the terms "safe conduct" and "letters of transit" that have been significant in recent history and current events. We connect these connotations to those in Ta-Nehisi Coates' marvelous novel “The Water Dancer,” where Conduction is a power that can physically move slaves from the South to freedom in the North, using a Conductor to lead them. Furthermore, we relate this power toward freedom musically, as it was pioneered by the late composer Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris and is continued by others like Craig Harris. As I composed this piece, I began to perceive that its qualities, in certain ways, embody all of the above attributes of conduction. So, I am delighted to present it for your listening pleasure and invite responses. Thank you!
- Richard Fairfax

08/07/2025

“… lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?”
- Wassily Kandinsky

08/05/2025

“Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.”
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig?”
- Thelonious Monk

08/05/2025

“Music is, for me, like a beautiful mosaic which God has put together. He takes all the pieces in his hand, throws them into the world, and we have to recreate the picture from the pieces.”
- Jean Sibelius

07/30/2025

“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”
― Henry David Thoreau

07/30/2025

“Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”
― Johann Sebastian Bach

07/29/2025

“The freedom songs are playing a strong and vital role in our struggle,” said Martin Luther King, Jr., during the Albany Movement. “They give the people new courage and a sense of unity. I think they keep alive a faith, a radiant hope, in the future, particularly in our most trying hours” (Shelton, “Songs a Weapon”). https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/songs-and-civil-rights-movement