The last two months of 2025 were primarily centered in Asia, with stops in four countries. But one event on the first of November generated much excitement, and it was not in Taiwan, Seoul, or any place outside the United States.

The time for taking it easy appears to be over. Conducting and other activities filled up the calendar in October. Sadly, this also marked the end of barbecue season. The cover will adorn my Big Green Egg until March or so.

Musical matters began in New York with a week at the Manhattan School of Music. This annual trip is always enjoyable, as each year brings new students. Programming a concert without knowing the skill set of an ensemble can be tricky, but all the pieces worked well because this crop of young musicians at MSM is excellent.

If variety is the spice of life, then I am certainly enjoying some very pungent meals.

September turned out to be one of those months in which it was not possible to compare one set of events with another. And just when I thought that all the 80^th birthday celebrations were over, there was one last hurrah.

It’s a quiet Sunday morning in Boonville, Missouri. Neither Maggie’s Bar and Grill nor the Main Street Diner are open yet. The shoe store is closed for the day, and the Hotel Frederick is seeing several musicians checking out.

Boonville is a quiet little town located about halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City; about 8,000 people live and work here. The community hosts events that celebrate its history—an early Civil War skirmish took place here in 1861—as well as a Heritage Festival that occurs every August.

From Transylvania to Pasadena—those are words I never expected to write, but they represent two of the very interesting visits that occupied the past month. The former region is not the one associated with vampires, which, as far as I know, do not inhabit the mountains of North Carolina.

Let’s start with what turned out to be a surprisingly wonderful experience at the Brevard Music Festival. I had always heard of it but knew very little of its history. Its origins date back to 1936 with the founding of a summer music camp, and the annual festival began ten years later. That places it among the oldest of festivals in the United States.

Not a Marx brother in sight, but I spent many June days and nights at the opera enjoying Britten’s fun and fantasy-filled adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Several years ago, on this same site, I wrote about putting together a standard opera production at the Metropolitan Opera. That journal entry turned out to be controversial, but I still think it is valuable to understand the process that goes into bringing a work to life from the planning stage to performance. This month, I will take you behind the scenes at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and explain how we put it all together.

Everything was fine until the missile landed at the airport.

Do I have your attention now? More about that in a bit.

May picked up where April left off, with another outstanding week in Las Palmas. This time, we had an all-orchestral program that truly tested the musicians in three stylistically different works. With the memories of an outstanding Bruckner’s Fourth, we dove into Brahms, Cruixent, and Tchaikovsky with fervor and energy.