A Tribute to Navarro and His Fine Performers

a note from our website visitor:

I've just watched and listened to the film of Oscar Navarro's piano trio, and was thrilled by the work and the performance. Thank you for making this exciting work accessible to a wider audience.As a tribute to Navarro and his fine performers, I'm enclosing below a poem I wrote after another wonderful chamber music concert I attended. Viva Classical Underground!

Judith Searle
http://www.judithsearle.com/

IN THE TEETH OF TIME

Music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
--T.S. Eliot, "The Dry Salvages"

The violinist is dying, the pianist is dying, all of us
in this high-ceilinged room on our chairs are dying.
The roses in the sunlight streaming through the windows
are dying, though their scent is strong.

Outside a dog howls as the violin pours forth
its intricate filigree, its amazing leaps and moans.
Poor howling dog, howling for all of us sitting here
on this Sunday afternoon in the teeth of time.

We are forever brothers and sisters,
held together in this womb, birthed
through the throes of the music into the sunlight.
We howl with pain and joy.

This musk of mortality mixes with the fragrance of the roses.
The moans and sobs of the violin are indistinguishable
from the blood leaping in our veins on this
Sunday afternoon in the kingdom of forever.

The cutting edge of time is essential to the ecstasy.
The performers are our high priests, flinging themselves
into the silence to bring back treasures for the tribe,
which we devour in this ritual communion.

We ride their backs as if on dolphins,
soaring into the sunlight scattering diamonds,
plunging through the depths, lungs bursting,
our exuberance edged with panic.

In this moment of alchemy, discipline is inseparable from freedom,
fierceness from tenderness, focus from abandonment.
The music is a lover with a hundred hands, and we are reeling
with the sudden touch of sound after a moment of silence.

Worth it to be mortal on a day like this,
with the sunlight, the roses,
the music rising to heaven, swooping back
to earth, our vehicle to eternity.

--Judith Searle
from her book IN THE TEETH OF TIME