Habitual Harmony

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." - Benjamin Franklin

Dear all,

hopefully you’re enjoying the supposedly last days of summer! I just spent a couple of great days at the Bregenz Festival for the very impressive world premiere of Emily - No Prisoner Be.
Catch the show with Joyce DiDonato and Time For Three on tour in the US in February 2026 - for example at Carnegie Hall on February 19 - and enjoy the marvelous music by Kevin Puts and splendid staging by Andrew Staples!
While this is the first of hopefully many collabs of this exact ensemble, both Joyce and Time for Three have worked together with Kevin independently before which prompted me to make a new playlist. Opus Offbeat #4 includes a movement of Kevin’s concerto “Contact” (TF3) and a track of his opera “The Hours” (JDD) as well as some of TF3’s very own songs and a small glimpse into Joyce’s immense variety of repertoire - listen here:
Apple Music | Spotify

To get around the hilly Lake Constance area I mostly used the old race bike that I recently got. Get on your bike, too! If everybody cycled like the Dutch, we could offset the UK or Australia’s entire carbon footprint.

I really enjoyed reading these essays and very much agree that Taste Is The New Intelligence while I also constantly ask myself Why Is Quality So Rare?

Also: No One Knows When They Don’t Die

The tragedy of prevention goes like this: The most effective way to save lives (prevention) is the least noticeable, which leads us to undervaluing it in our individual choices, in what we celebrate, and in public policy, and that undervaluing of prevention leads to a great deal of needless death and suffering.

Until next week -
David