I wrote to a friend the other day that I didn’t think music crucial for my survival. I might have to revise the comment. A couple of times this week music has moved me to awe and tears. I think those are necessary elements in a life…

The first was after a workshop with Stephen Taberner when twenty of us practised ‘sobbing manfully’ as a prelude to grasping the rudiments of Georgian singing in three deep and soulful parts. The following night we heard his trio ‘The Secret Lunch’ in Chicks Hotel at Port Chalmers and were wooed into putty by their skin-stirring harmonies, eccentrically wondrous lyrics and musicianship.

Then I found Stephen combining music with a spot of social activism, stirring up shoppers in the most decent way possible: with one song, many singers. Coincidentally a friend alerted me to Il Travatore bursting forth in a Spanish marketplace which led me along the youtube path to the Antwerp railway station. This is where the tears spilled. Such delight and vigour penetrating the mundane, transforming the moment, the day, binding the crowd into one appreciative whole … Who knows where that will end and what further creative acts have already been engendered by such generous outpouring of talent and joy.

This small cry of pleasure, for one.