music & nature

the past four days my life has been consumed with attending to the details and people involved with three concerts we put together in three very different venues by a world- renowned pianist and messianic jew, sam rotman. he is absolutely amazing and his music is breathtaking.

while all three concerts were magical, the one that sticks out most in my mind was sunday afternoon (5-7pm). it was held in the garden of a wealthy and very generous business couple's home. they live a bit outside of madrid and their estate is elevated a bit on a hill where you have the perfect view of the mountain range to the northwest of madrid.

so sam began to play pieces by beethoven, debussy, rachmaninoff, chopin, and schubert. before each set of songs he gave some history or explained the songs. for example with "the sunken cathedral" by debussy, he talked about how we'd hear a sunken cathedral and then 3 bells would sound, the water would stir, and the cathedral would emerge in grandiose spender, after some time it would descend back into the water, the water would stir again and then become still, the bells would sound and the it would return to the way it was before. and then when you listened to him, that is precisely what took place. amazing.

so the day in the garden, sam is playing, but in addition to his music nature seemed to be responding as well. when he played the deep, low notes with force, the thunder sounded (really!) to the point that i was sure it was going to rain. when he played some of the more playful trills the dog that was there began to jump and run across the yard. when the piano began to soften, the birds began to chirp melodically. and when the piano played turbulent sounds, the wind blew causing some of the fabric surrounding us to dance and move almost in sync with the music. then at the end when sam finished, he shared his story of how he had grown up and how he had come to know the messiah Yeshua, or Jesus, and then play one final song, the sun came out and illuminated where we were. it was pretty amazing. as if the Lord was directing all of creation and that sam and the piano were just one piece of it all.

the sunset then came, lighting the mountains and bringing a multitude of colors to the sky. it was definitely a great night.