In 2002, when Bill Mares of Burlington was 61, he decided he could sing a three-hour performance of Bach’s emotionally draining St. Matthew Passion on a Sunday afternoon and then run the Boston Marathon at noon the next day. That he not only did so but published a book about the experience a decade later — titled The Bach Road to Boston — is proof of an extraordinary optimism.... Read more

Middle Eastern flavors have been floating around Montpelier since last fall, when Capital City Concerts founder Karen Kevra opened her chamber-music series with a Middle Eastern dinner for nearly 100 people. Kevra, an Arab American flautist, helped five other women cook the meal. The guest of honor was a young, increasingly acclaimed Arab American composer from New York City named Mohammed Fairouz.... Read more

Woodstock poet Partridge Boswell’s debut collection is titled Some Far Country, which raises a question right from the start. Are these poems about a desire for distance, a longing to escape to “some far country” of the mind or geography? Or are they about being consigned to distance, banished? ... Read more

When Burlington violin maker Joe Cleary first toured the Integrated Arts Academy at H.O. Wheeler — the Old North End magnet school where his daughter is now in second grade — he wanted to know what kind of strings opportunities were available. At the time, there were none, but Cleary had read about a Venezuela-born program called El Sistema that has successfully brought orchestral access and instruction to underprivileged schoolchildren in several countries for more than 30 years. So he knew it was possible.... Read more

Vermont composers of contemporary classical music are about to gain well-deserved home-state exposure. The professional choral group Counterpoint and the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble will both perform concerts dedicated to the work of living local composers on the first weekend in April. As it happens, most of those composers are men — four out of five on VCME’s program, and five out of six on Counterpoint’s. Which raises the question: Where are the women?... Read more

In today’s classical music world, the phrase “chamber music” refers to instrumental ensembles — string quartets, piano trios and other reduced versions of an orchestra. But the first chamber music was written for voice, according to Scott Metcalfe, the founding director of the Boston-based early-music vocal ensemble Blue Heron. This was in Europe during the 15th century, when “singers were by far the most learned and best-trained musicians,” he notes, and the continent’s star composer was Johannes Ockeghem.... Read more

Americans are writing new, intriguing-sounding operas all the time. In the last five years alone, operas about Walt Disney and John Brown have premiered, and a work based on author Annie Proulx’s story “Brokeback Mountain” will be sung next year.... Read more

It would have been nice to interview Jaime Laredo in person for a piece about the Vermont Symphony Orchestra conductor and world-class violinist, but the man’s schedule is insane.... Read more

American sex education teaches young people to protect themselves from the dangers of sexual activity. But does it teach them how to treat one another with respect?

Not enough, says Shelburne resident Sharon Lamb, author of a new book directed at teachers-in-training called Sex Ed for Caring Schools: Creating an Ethics-Based Curriculum. Lamb argues that even progressive sex-ed programs don’t go far enough, because they don’t address sexual behavior in an ethical context.... Read more