2022: year and gone.

December 29, 2022

A selection of my favorite images from an action-packed year.

Lunar New Year celebration at Navy Pier.

Bald eagle above the Mississippi River.

Anthony McGill performs with Dame Jane Glover and Music of the Baroque.

Victor Yampolsky conducts the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra in his final season.

Mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux performs with Third Coast Baroque.

Music of the Baroque releases its recording of Handel’s Messiah with my image on the cover.

Jazz trumpeter and composer Orbert Davis performs at Jazz Showcase.

The Chicago Children’s Choir celebrates Latino music.

Violinist Holly Mulcahy performs George S. Clinton’s “The Rose of Sonora” with the Lakeview Symphony.

Soprano Nicole Cabell performs with Haymarket Opera Company.

Third Coast Baroque throws a party at Epiphany Arts.

The Supermoon rises behind Navy Pier’s ferris wheel.

Opera Festival of Chicago presents Verdi’s “Il Corsaro.”

The Tyrolean Alps, Austria.

Sunset behind Stephansdom, Vienna, Austria.

Grant Park Music Festival’s season finale.

Orbert Davis and the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic.

The Chicago Children’s Choir changes its name to Uniting Voices Chicago at Navy Pier.

Abstract self portrait in The Bean.

Eric and Toty get married!

The Milky Way and star trails above a secluded lake in Minnesota.

Pianist Yunchan Lim performs at Northwestern University.

The Chicago Sinfonietta throws its annual masquerade gala.

Fourth Coast Ensemble performs “Laughterreise.”

Music of the Baroque’s annual Christmas celebration at Alice Millar Chapel.

The Civic Orchestra of Chicago perform its final concert of the year at Symphony Center.

2021: We're back! Are we back?

December 30, 2021

A look back at some of the good things I saw this year.

Wide Angles and Long Views: my year in photos

December 31, 2020

Some days, it was enough to take the camera out and see what happens. As always, it helped me find new vantage points, new life, new ways through the dark.

The photos in the beginning of this gallery are fond reminders of the communal beauty of music. I have come to see in them not what was lost, but what can be regained, and the importance of those things that have never left us.

As the year went on, I found myself expanding my view. I hiked through prairies, forests, and mountain trails, looking for details of changing seasons. I gazed upwards at the vastness of space and found light from impossible distances. I reveled in the predictability of moonrises, sunsets, and orbital paths.

I married Bridget. It was the best day, full of sun, flowers, love, and beauty.

Here are some of the things I saw, heard, witnessed, and experienced this year.

Here’s to getting through. Here’s to new directions forward.

January 19

Fourth Coast Ensemble records music by Lori Laitman for her new album.

January 23

Acclaimed trumpeter Alison Balsom performs at a private event with Jane Glover and Music of the Baroque.

February 29

The Chicago Children’s Choir makes a joyful noise during its Englewood Community Concert.

March 1

Scott Speck leads the Chicago Philharmonic in an all-strings program.

March 3

Sir John Eliot Gardner leads the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in a beautiful, though bittersweet, performance of Beethoven at the Harris Theater.

March 20

Millennium Park in downtown Chicago falls silent and empty as the stay-at-home order takes effect.

April 7

Getting used to staying indoors.

May 21

Needing a break from the city, I drove to Headlands International Dark Sky Park along the northernmost shores of Lake Michigan to watch the stars dance.

June 17

Finding comfort and new life at the Kent Fuller Air Station Prairie in Glenview.

July 4

Fireworks under a full moon on the Fourth.

July 13

The newly discovered NEOWISE Comet makes a faint appearance in the pre-dawn hours.

July 24

The brightest, happiest, most magical day of my life: Bridget and I got married! (Photo by Eric Snoza)

August 11

Stars swirl above Bear Lake, while Hallett Peak is illuminated by a half-moon, in Rocky Mountain National Park.

August 31

From the stage of the Green Mill, Kurt Elling’s live performance is beamed out virtually to a worldwide audience.

September 22

Chicagohenge: the sun sets along Chicago’s east-west street grid during the autumnal equinox. This year, the haze from the western wild fires created an eerie gray sky.

October 20

Took myself on an artist retreat to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to catch the last of the fall colors and the brilliant turquoise of Lake Superior.