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James Buckser
Staff writer

Simran Jeet Singh is working for equality.

Singh will speak on his own journey today at 2 p.m. in the Hall of Philosophy as part of Week Four of the Interfaith Lecture Series theme “Religious Faith and Everything Else We Believe In.” 

Singh strives for equal treatment of all people, regardless of race, class or faith, serving in several roles, including his work as an Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity with Columbia University and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, a Soros Equality Fellow with the Open Society Foundations, and executive director of the Religion and Society Program at the Aspen Institute. 

The institute works to ensure that all people “have the opportunity to thrive,” Singh said, no matter “what they believe, if they don’t believe, how they look, where they come from.”

“We do that in many different ways,” Singh said, “primarily by working with leaders in different areas who can help ignite change and resolve some of the biggest social issues that we face in our time today, around racial justice, around climate change, and ultimately, about learning the dignity in the people that we meet every day.”

Singh holds graduate degrees from Harvard and Columbia, and is a visiting lecturer at Union Seminary. He writes articles for outlets including Time magazine, CNN and Religious News Service. He is the author of a children’s book, Fauna Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of the Oldest Person To Ever Run a Marathon, and a nonfiction book, The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life.

In a recent article for Time, Singh wrote about the Sikh idea of seva. According to an article from the BBC, seva or “sewa” involves “acting selflessly and helping others in a variety of ways, without any reward or personal gain,” which is important to the Sikh faith.

“It helps us have a sense of perspective about where we sit in the world, how we relate to other people,” Singh said. “It … helps us to practice humility, and to see that the world is bigger than our individual lives, and that we can find meaning and happiness for serving the people around us.”

Singh said while some aspects of American religious inclusion are “getting better,” others are “getting worse.” What is remaining consistent is that Americans tend to be “unsure” about how to discuss religion and “uncomfortable” with conversations about it.

“I think that is unfortunate,” Singh said. “It leads us to not know important reasons for what makes us tick.”

While we’re “comfortable” discussing issues like “race and gender and sexual orientation,” Singh said religion often gets left behind.

“When we’re thinking about creating a culture where people can be their whole selves, but we don’t account for religious identity and religious experience,” Singh said, “we miss out on an important part of people’s lives.”

While often under-discussed, Singh said it is “increasingly clear” that religion plays an “important role in American politics.”

“You can look at any major hot-button issue like abortion or immigration, you can look at phenomena and movements like white Christian nationalism,” Singh said. “Religion is playing a really important role in our society, and we’ve gotten to the point now that we can no longer ignore it.”

While this is happening here, this is also true outside of “the American context,” Singh said, with the rise of right-wing nationalism often using religion as a driving factor.

“If we want to address these issues head on, we have to start taking religion more seriously and understand better what’s happening here so that we can deal with it,” Singh said.

Singh said part of the way to do that is to start talking about difficult subjects.

“We really make progress when we actually talk about the issue, even when our conversations are uncomfortable and even when we don’t have all the right answers,” he said. “I think with regard to religion, step one is really developing a basic comfort around curiosity, being able to ask the right questions and not expecting one another to always have the right answers.”

Singh also said a second step is “cultural and religious literacy” that could help, not “for the sake of having all the information,” but to “open our minds and our hearts” to people who are different from us.

Singh will offer his own unique experiences today, hoping to “share a story that people haven’t heard before,” the story of “a Sikh growing up in America” and share insights he’s learned from his tradition that have helped him stay “optimistic and hopeful amidst darkness.”

“I’m hopeful that the message will be both grounded in the real challenges of our lives,” Singh said, “but also the possibilities of the optimism that comes from it.”

Arden Ryan
Contributing Writer

Brian Greene was in high school when he realized he had a knack for explaining big ideas. 

He was once tasked with lecturing his class on the science of sleep, so he dove into the research to create an engaging presentation that would excite his classmates. The class responded well, and at that moment he realized that breaking down complex concepts may be part of his future.

Greene was right. In his career as a theoretical physicist and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, he has developed a reputation as a preeminent science communicator of the day. 

A leading proponent and researcher of string theory — conceptually explaining that infinitesimal strings constitute the universe at its most fundamental level — Greene makes it his daily work to break complicated theories into absorbable thoughts.

“The reverie, the wonder and the respect for life and mind that the cosmological perspective seeds, for me, is the most valuable lesson.”

BRIAN GREENE
String theorist, author,
Until the End of Tme: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

At 10:45 a.m. today in Amphitheater, Greene will continue the week’s Chautauqua Lecture Series theme, “The State of Believing,” with an exploration into humanity’s beliefs about science and the universe, bringing big ideas for Chautauquans to ponder.

Greene will share features from a life spent contemplating the cosmos, how humans understand it, and how humans have developed different — but not incompatible — beliefs about the world and its origins.

“As human beings, our sense of where we came from and what matters to us has an impact on everything that we do,” Greene said.

As he will share this morning, humans gravitate toward two innate belief systems: one of scientific facts and one of expressive origin stories. Humans have “a fundamental need to anchor” their perception of the universe and ideas about it “through an understanding of origins.”

Both the factual and the spiritual are valuable pathways to understanding the universe, Greene said, but the pair should not be confused. 

“It’s in the place of interface between these two that we find both richness, but also challenges,” he said.

He thinks that knowing your past can inform and give purpose to your present.

“We as a species have tried to understand where we collectively come from, where the planet comes from, where the stars come from – ultimately, where the universe comes from,” Greene said.

When early humans began to ask those questions, there was no science, no “logically reasoned, coherent set of insights” to provide answers. They then “filled that gap with wonderfully rich and potent stories of creation” to make sense of the world. With scientific advances, more useful stories answered queries about the future, Greene said, but that doesn’t mean the old stories should be discounted.

While these stories can’t make useful predictions, they are no less significant to humanity, Greene said, and there is value in recognizing the questions that each system is able to answer.

“(They) brush up against each other because they’re both talking about origins in the largest sense of the term,” he said. “There is a place for the stories that emerge, so long as you keep straight what those stories are particularly adept at providing insight into.”

The friction between frames of mind can be “destabilizing” when a “false competition arises,” Greene said. “If you have an open enough mind to hold these kinds of ideas simultaneously … then they can coexist in a harmonious way.” That is not an easy task, Greene said — people are not accustomed to accepting both at once, as distinct and equally important.

Theories about the universe can be taken as controversial by either side, if one doesn’t see from the other’s perspective. Greene said he believes the problem is less a failure of public education about science than it is a social bifurcation between groups with contrasting perspectives.

People hold close group associations, he said, be it with a religious or scientific community. Individual members often want the views of their group to triumph over their competitors, not taking the others’ into consideration, “gravitating toward (their group’s) perspective with a tremendous force.”

To find common ground, people need to feel heard and understood, Greene said, and given a fair chance to express their beliefs. He perceives a “deep sense of being dissatisfied and feeling of being ignored,” among many, which can drive people away from those who disagree with them and toward a group that can empathize instead.

The pull of people farther to one side “has nothing to do with lack of understanding of science or understanding of science,” Greene said. “It’s one’s feeling of how the world is treating them.”

Our current moment in the universe is unlike any other time that came before or will come after it, Greene said in a 2012 TED Talk. Now is the time to observe and learn everything we can from the universe.

“We are living through a remarkably privileged era when certain deep truths about the cosmos are still within reach of the human spirit of exploration. It appears that it may not always be that way,” Greene said in the talk.

That being said, more than 10 years later Greene does recognize that “everything that we value, all life in the cosmos … is just a snap of the finger” and will be gone in a relative instant. The human timescale for change is vastly different than for the universe. The things that seem so dire on a human scale are but trivialities in the history of everything, he said, which for him was a life-changing revelation.

Many people will be shocked and react differently to that insight, Greene said. Although the same cannot be said for everyone, in Greene’s personal view, the search for meaning and purpose in life should come from an inward search, and not from far out in space.

He said he’s inspired by the “wonder that life, that consciousness, can exist,” even if it is for a brief time on cosmological scales.”

“The reverie, the wonder and the respect for life and mind that the cosmological perspective seeds, for me, is the most valuable lesson,” he said.

Greene is most excited when immersing himself in the deep concepts of his area of study, engaging with “the words and conclusions (of) some of the great thinkers of the ages.” For him, being a part of the “ongoing human quest to make sense of existence is … so thrilling that it makes it all worthwhile.”

Alton Northup
Staff writer

“In its efforts to respond to the failures of institutions, and oh, there have been failures, we have turned to a more exhausting form of individualism,” said Kate Bowler. “We have tempted to do away with the church … only to reinscribe that meaning onto everything else.”

Bowler, an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School, spoke about decreasing association with a religion in the United States in favor of commercial individualism at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday in the Amphitheater, continuing the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Four theme, “The State of Believing.”

For decades, Bowler said, the country has avoided the secular fate of other Western nations. Throughout the wild adolescence of Baby Boomers, the economic turmoil of the 1970s and the “greed is good” era of the 1980s, the United States was “largely defined by the stubborn persistence of spirituality, not its absence.” 

But the 1990s proved to be a disruption to that trend – with the number of people who do not ascribe to a religious denomination sitting at 8%. By the 2000s, the “nones,” as Bowler called them, accounted for 18% of the population. In 2023, they make up nearly 25%.

“If you attend a congregation of any kind … you are now demographically, for the first time in a whole century, the minority,” she said.

How American society got to the point of potentially facing a radical cultural shift is complicated, but Bowler chalked it up to three moments in spiritual history.

At the height of the Cold War, Georgi Arbatov, a top adviser to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, made his country’s goal clear.

“Our major secret weapon is to deprive you of an enemy,” Arbatov said.

That goal would be accomplished with the fall of the Soviet Union just three years later. Without the Cold War juxtaposition of the “God-fearing” Americans against the “Godless” Soviets, the stitchings of America’s spiritual fabric started fraying.

“It was much easier in that framework to define religion with democracy and human rights, and atheism as an ally of the evil empire,” Bowler said. “When the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Bloc evaporated, it became easier to say ‘I have no religion’ without sounding inherently un-American.”

The aftermath of Sept. 11 and the resulting War on Terror brought about a more intense challenge to religious attitudes, as the rising New Atheist movement argued religion itself was hostile to reason, science and progress.

“This protracted geopolitical crisis and the unpopular wars that followed caused many to doubt whether something about religion itself as a force for good was damaged in the process,” she said. “The notion of a Christian nation and its public reputation became more difficult to defend.”

Evangelicals, however, did not have much difficulty defending the concept of a Christian nation. For more than 50 years, Evangelical Christians have been the largest faith tradition in America, creating its own subculture, summer camps, universities and music.

Alarmed by social changes and a growing belief that mainstream culture and Christianity are pulling to the left, Evaneglicals have remained steadfast in galvanizing a conservative voter base, Bowler said, resulting in a symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party.

“Wave after wave of Evangelical culture wars began to produce a new generation of ex-Evangelicals,” she said.

Bowler could be considered an expert on Evangelicalism; she has written extensively on the subject since her first encounter with it in her hometown of Winnipeg, Ontario. In immersing herself in the belief, she said she started to notice its influence on growing secular culture in the United States.

After televangelist Joel Olsteen published his book, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential in 2004, people were talking about how to “live your best life” almost immediately. The book remained a bestseller for more than two years.

As fewer young people grow up in the church, Bowler argued they are not without religious beliefs. She said the daily devotional has been replaced with self-help books – a $12 billion industry turning cheap advice into paperbacks hoping to solve the problem of being human. 

“The triumph of this paradigm is it neatly processes the American belief,” she said.

From an early age, Americans are told they can always score higher on a test, always lose more weight or always do their hair a little bit better. This new perspective of “living your best life” affirmed that perfection is a conceivable goal.

“It has taken every small hope and made all of us into televangelists in the gospel of good, better, best,” she said.

But this system is not sustainable, Bowler said. Because it portrays perfection as something obtainable, it forces people into hiding their struggles and their suffering. The exhaustion of reality, she said, requires more than self-help books.

“We have freighted our hopes and hobbies with the kind of existential weight that only God can bear,” she said. “So, next time someone says to you that the state of belief in America is no belief at all, I want you to shake your head. Something is carrying the weight of religion around here; look alive. We will see it everywhere.”

Sarah Russo
Staff writer

Many symphonic concerts pair composers and selections together for a performance of multiple works. But there’s one selection that can stand alone: Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 in E Flat Major. 

Bruckner’s will be the only piece played at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater by the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Rossen Milanov, music director and principal symphonic conductor. For Roger Kaza, principal horn for the CSO, the piece holds special nostalgia: He chose to play a portion of it many years ago to audition for the CSO. 

“I remember being very nervous about it because I’d never played the first part at that point,” Kaza said. “But I love this piece … because it’s got so much horn and so much brass and it’s a very epic work.”

Also referred to as “A Knight’s Tale” with a subtitle of “Romantic Symphony,” Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 tells the story of knights, the magic of nature and the mystical call of the horn all with ancient hunting connotations.

Composed in 1874, the full piece contains four parts, which the CSO will play in its entirety. 

Kaza said Brucker’s composition style isn’t as “connected” as his peers, which sometimes leaves Kaza to wonder: “I don’t know how he got from here to here.” However, he said that may be his only criticism in this piece.

“It’s a little loose, but I find the best way to enjoy it is just be in the moment and then just look at these incredible chord progressions and these beautiful, kind of timeless long stretches of melody,” Kaza said. “It’s a piece you don’t want to be in a hurry for.”

In Symphony No. 4, it’s “almost like (Bruckner’s) improvising on a gigantic orchestral organ … and these amazing, really brilliant chord progressions that ventured pretty far outside of the so-called traditional harmony,” Kaza said.

As Brucker’s symphony takes listeners on a journey throughout nature, Kaza said it made sense Bruckner composed the piece with heavy brass and the French horn, in particular. 

“The horn, when you think about it, was really kind of one of the most quintessential Romantic instruments,” Kaza said. “Any time (a composer) wanted to evoke a noble or woodsy or forest scene, they’d always use the horn.”

Bruckner can be a “very polarizing composer” with some critics opining that Brucker’s music is “boring” and “tedious,” Kaza said. On the other side, there are those who “worship” Bruckner’s work as a composer and musician; Kaza, however, fits in a different space. He said Bruckner’s work can be heard all over the world. 

“I did a trip down the Grand Canyon and those towering walls all around,” Kaza said. “At one point I thought, ‘This canyon is like a Bruckner symphony in geology.’ … It’s got that same sense of spaciousness and grandeur and just timelessness, which Bruckner evokes.”

Putting together a piece that’s nearly an hour long is no easy task. However, Kaza said, after taking solos or chorale tunes separately, at the end of it all — when the musicians achieve a “cohesive, beautiful sound,” particularly with Bruckner returning to the opening theme — there’s nothing quite as rewarding as a musician.

“It’s satisfying to nail all that stuff,” he said. “It’s just fun to hear how everything culminates at the end of the symphony and he’s finally bringing it home where he started. … Any time we play pieces like that, it’s rewarding just because you’re not going to see it for a while.”

James Buckser
Staff writer

Kate Bowler studies the stories people tell themselves. 

An author, educator and podcaster, Bowler has shared narratives of unconventional faith, from the arc of the American prosperity gospel to her own struggle with cancer. Bowler knows faith at its strongest and its weakest points, and she shares what she has learned.

Bowler will bring her perspective to Chautauqua Institution at 10:45 today in the Amphitheater as a part of this week’s Chautauqua Lecture Series theme, “The State of Believing.”

Jordan Steves, the interim Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education at the Institution, said that in a week taking an “expansive view” of faith, Bowler represents a more traditional take on the theme, approaching it through the lens of faith and religion.

Bowler speaks and writes widely about … stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves,” Steves said.

Bowler holds a master’s degree in religion from Yale Divinity School and a doctorate degree from Duke University. She is author or co-author of six books, an associate professor of American Religious History at Duke Divinity School and the host of the podcast “Everything Happens.” 

On her podcast, Bowler has spoken to a myriad of people, from celebrities like Matthew McConaughey and Priyanka Chopra Jonas to spiritual leaders like Bishop Michael Curry and Rabbi Steve Leder.

“Life isn’t always bright and shiny, as Kate Bowler knows,” according to the description of her podcast. “In warm, insightful, often funny conversations, Kate talks with people about what they’ve learned in difficult times.”

Bowler’s 2018 book, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved, tells the story of her life during and after her cancer diagnosis. The book is the story of her “struggle to understand the personal and intellectual dimensions of the American belief that all tragedies are tests of character,” according to Bowler’s website.

“At age 35, she was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage IV cancer, causing her to think in different terms about the research and beliefs she had been studying,” her website says.

Bowler’s other memoir No Cure for Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear) followed in 2021. Outside of these autobiographical works, Bowler is the author of two books on American Christianity, 2020’s The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities and 2013’s Blessed: A History of The American Prosperity Gospel.

Bowler is also the co-author of two books with Jessica Richie, the producer of her podcast: 2022’s Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection and her latest, The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days.

Bowler and Richie’s newest book offers “creative, faith-based blessings that center gratitude and hope while acknowledging our real, messy lives,” in the style of a prayer book, according to its description on Amazon.

Bowler will be the second speaker for this week’s theme, which Steves hopes leads people to “consider other points of view” and to “approach people who are different from us in good faith.” She’ll also close the week, in another fashion, as she’ll be in conversation with Duke Divinity School Associate Dean Katherine Smith Friday in the Hall of Philosophy for the Interfaith Lecture Series.

In this week, Steves said he hoped people reaffirm their own beliefs while coming to understand those of others, “understanding of how we all come to the conclusions that basically form our identities and the way we show up in the world.”

James Buckser
Staff writer

Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi believes faith is a powerful thing.

Moore-Koikoi sees “no difference” between the secular world and the sacred. She said she feels that “if sacred means where God is, then God is everywhere.”

“I don’t see it as a dichotomy,” said Moore-Koikoi, resident bishop of the Pittsburgh Episcopal Area of the United Methodist Church. “I see it as folks with faith in God and folks who are Christian, faith in God through Jesus Christ, us living out our faith in the world in ways that make the world a better place for everybody.”

Moore-Koikoi will speak at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy as a part of the Interfaith Lecture Series Week Four theme, “Religious Faith and Everything Else We Believe In.”

Today, she will discuss how faith is formed, whether it is “genetic, or we learn it, or it’s based on our experiences.”

“I hope that people will take home a sense that our faith formation comes from a number of different places and spaces, and it’s not linear,” Moore-Koikoi said. “There are times when we absolutely have trust in whatever it is we believe in, and then there are times where we have absolute doubt in what it is we thought we believed. That’s a normal part of who we are, and God has kind of provided for those ups and downs of our journey.”

Before joining the church, she spent 17 years as a school psychologist. Moore-Koikoi said her work then prepared her for her work now.

“There came a point when I felt as if God was calling me to do something different, to actually be in pastoral ministry in a local church,” she said.

Before she became a bishop, Moore-Koikoi served as district superintendent of the Baltimore Metropolitan Area, where she played a “key spiritual role” after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in 2015, according to her biography on the Western Pennsylvania United Methodist Church website.

There she “helped organize United Methodist churches to open their doors and minister to children and families whose schools were closed, and to meet other basic needs,” according to the website.

Ordained as an elder in 2010 and elected as a bishop in 2016, Moore-Koikoi has served congregations throughout Maryland and Pennsylvania. She is the president of the board of directors of the General Commission on Religion and Race and the team leader for the Mission Engagement Leadership team on the Council of Bishops. In her time as a faith leader, Moore-Koikoi has worked to improve not just the church, but the communities around it.

The General Commission on religion and race is designed to “help the Church deal with and move through the realities of racism in our culture and in the Church,” Moore Koikoi said. The organization provides cross-cultural training, annual conferences, training in anti-racism, and audits of annual conferences “if they want to look to see if their policies or procedures are unjust and unfair to people of color.”

Moore-Koikoi said people are initially “pretty open” to the work the General Commission does, but there can be some “unconscious resistance” once changes start being made.

“Once we start getting into the work of things and folks actually change some of their policies, some of their ways of being, that’s sometimes where the resistance comes in,” Moore-Koikoi said. “It’s typically unconscious, because as a Christian organization, nobody’s going to come out and overtly say, ‘I don’t want to deal with this racism in the church.’ They’re at least going to verbalize that they want to change in some way.”

The Mission Engagement Leadership Team, which Moore-Koikoi aids in leading, “helps bishops discern where there might be appropriate places for them to encourage the annual conference to be in mission together.”

Later this year, Moore-Koikoi will take the bishops elected in 2022 on a trip to Cambodia and the Philippines, so they can see how the church is “in mission as a denomination there, and get some ideas about how they can be in mission and ministry when they get back to their areas.”

Zoe Kolenovsky
Staff writer

In a night characterized by grief, loss, hilarity, and hope, students from the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory and Music School Festival Orchestra will guide the audience through an exploration of family and community that reveals the tragedy and comedy in our own lives.

The joint performance at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater represents a collaboration between the School of Music’s Instrumental Program and Opera Conservatory, and consists of two one-act operas written by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini of La Bohème fame, produced as part of a series titled Il Trittico, or “The Triptych.”

The program opens with the middle of the three in the original series. Suor Angelica is a tragedy, and the concluding opera, Gianni Schicchi is a comedy. 

Each is just under an hour long, but in that short amount of time, Puccini’s music “takes you to places you, emotionally, couldn’t even imagine going,” said Timothy Muffitt, artistic director of the School of Music and conductor of the MSFO.

He said handling such thematically conflicting scores requires technical expertise.

This dexterity of passion asks a lot of the orchestra’s members, but Muffitt said the highly-trained students are “accustomed to a broad range of expressive demands” and thus are “well adapted and ready to do this.”

Even without the first act, Il Tabarro, which stage director John Matsumoto Giampetro said requires more “maturity vocally,” the preparation process for this evening’s show is still incredibly demanding, as the program will include twice as much music in the same amount of rehearsal time.

“I’ve never done something like that before,” said Kate Reynolds, a violist in the MSFO. 

The students of Chautauqua Opera Conservatory have their own set of challenges that come with preparing for such an intense performance.

“It’s very difficult ensemble music,” Matsumoto Giampetro said. “It presents itself as a light, effervescent, luminous piece, but it is very complex musically.”

Muffitt has nothing but praise for the hard work of the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory in advance of this evening’s show, and said “the cast is absolutely extraordinary, dramatically and vocally. What John (Matsumoto) Giampetro does with the staging is so powerful and moving and funny and everything it needs to be. He’s a master at stage direction.” 

Muffitt has been attending Conservatory rehearsals for the past two weeks, in addition to the MSFO’s, in order to better coordinate the efforts of the two programs to prepare tonight’s show.

Matsumoto Giampetro, who serves as associate director of the Conservatory, is grateful to this partnership between the School of Music’s programs for giving his students the chance to develop technically and professionally.

“One of the best parts of this collaboration with the MSFO and one of the most important elements of a young singer’s development is having the opportunity to work and to sing with an orchestra,” he said. “They get to hear all of the orchestration, all of the colors. And they can react and respond to this, whereas in rehearsal, it’s a piano trying to be the entire orchestra.”

Facilitating this development is the principal goal for the Opera Conservatory, formerly the Voice Program within the School of Music which was brought under the same umbrella as the Chautauqua Opera Company in 2022. Chautauqua Opera Company and Conservatory has operated under the joint leadership of Chautauqua Opera General and Artistic Director Steve Osgood and Opera Conservatory Director Marlena Malas.

Less than two years after that integration, it was announced two weeks ago that programming for both Chautauqua Opera and the Opera Conservatory would be reduced in 2024 in response to lingering financial challenges brought on by COVID-19. By 2025, according to Institution officials, the plan is for Chautauqua Opera Company and Conservatory to be incubator of new works — pivoting away from large student performances and toward a workshop-based model. 

While community members have continued to express concerns over the program’s diminished capacity, Matsumoto Giampetro said the students’ training will remain a priority.

“Our mission is to focus on the development of young singers to train them to sing beautifully, to train them as singing actors, and to have more engagement with music and the world around them as they develop into artists,” he said. “So that’s our mission; that’s always been our mission. And that will continue to be our mission even as these changings and reimaginings take place. … (As for) what it will actually look like in 2025, there’s still a conversation going on.”

In the meantime, the students are throwing themselves wholeheartedly into tonight’s performance, which begins with Suor Angelica.

“Angelica is a young woman who has found herself ostracized from her family,” said Marquita Richardson, who is set to perform the titular role. “She has been sent to live in a convent and to kind of pay for her past, and she’s hoping to reconcile. But in the meantime, she has spent seven years with this community of sisters and tried to find her way, or at least try to find her place among them.”

This idea of sisterhood has become a grounding theme for the cast in the process of preparing the opera.

“John’s vision has really set a place and sense of community among these women,” said LaDejia Bittle, who plays La Zia Principessa, Angelica’s princess aunt. “Even though it’s not necessarily a religious idea that he has in mind … it’s still a very communal place.”

Richardson said this narrative extends to the cast’s journey, as they grow closer to one another through the process of getting to know the opera’s story.

“We did a lot of table work at the very beginning of just how we were personally impacted by the piece. Just hearing their stories and having people open up about where this piece met them has been really interesting,” she said. “It’s brought us closer as our own little community of women.”

The newfound community between Suor Angelica’s cast members has grown to include members of the MSFO as well, as their close proximity on the grounds and partnership in preparing for this opera has facilitated warm relationships.

“I think that the orchestra and opera collaboration is always a great thing,” said Bittle. “I’ve been to each of the Monday night concerts with the School of Music orchestra because I have a couple of friends there that my castmates and I like to support.”

With two more operas in the wings for the students in the Opera Conservatory this summer, tonight’s performance is the only opportunity Chautauquans will have this season to experience this collaboration on such a large scale. Muffitt said “there’s some vocal chamber music that may be happening, but this is the only big event” produced by the two programs in conjunction this summer.

The night concludes with Gianni Schicchi, the lighthearted complement to Suor Angelica’s earnest exploration of family and loss. 

The story follows the Donati family in the aftermath of the death of their patriarch, Buoso. A time usually marked by grief and despair is revealed to be more aligned with apathy and avarice, though, when they discover that Buoso left his fortune to a monastery instead of the remaining relatives. Outsider Gianni Schicchi steps in to help the family in their time of need, impersonating Buoso in what soon becomes a comically tangled web of deception.

“Gianni Schicchi is incredibly intelligent and a natural-born actor,” said YeongTaek Yang, who will be delivering his rendition of the character tonight. “This work has been a very beneficial time for me, and I’m looking forward to communicating that joy with the audience.”

There is truly much joy to be had this evening, with such talented performers giving life to a critically acclaimed score, Matsumoto Giampetro said.

“The music is heavenly; quite literally, heavenly,” he said. “Audiences respond to Puccini: the lushness, the melodic richness of the score. So they’re going to get a feast for the ears, but they’re also going to be immersed in this really human drama … and this magical comedy.”

Muffitt noted Puccini’s compositional prowess, that “he was a master at orchestration, at color, at ambiance, at writing character into music, at writing drama into music … To me, that sets him apart in the world of opera.”

“Puccini really created a little masterpiece,” said Richardson. “It has drama and little things that make you smile, but also just explores such depths of grief and loss and hope. … I’m really looking forward to being swept up in the sound and the story and finally being able to invite audiences to go along for the ride with us.”

Alton Northup
Staff writer

Journalists play a more important role than ever before as public trust in the news media declines, said Almar Latour.

“I like to say this is our moment,” he said. “The more challenging and confusing the times are, the more significant the role of journalists, the more meaningful contributions they can bring to society.”

Latour, CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, will open the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Four theme, “The State of Believing,” at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater. His lecture, titled “Dictators, Robots, Free Press and You,” will focus on declining public trust in the news media around the world, and what people can do to protect journalism’s role in a free society.

Latour described the American public’s attitude toward the news media as “checkered at best” in a time when so much change is happening. Developments in technology, geopolitics, economics and even what currency people use, all create a backdrop for journalists where there is not an answer for every question.

At a time with so many questions, the best thing journalists can do is continue to provide the public with reliable information, he said.

The way people get their news is also changing, as technology offers new methods of consumption. While some newsrooms may struggle, Latour is confident the media industry will adapt.

“The U.S. is built on a strong free press – it’s a cornerstone of U.S. society – and it’s an element of society worth fighting for, to be very conscious of, to be very respectful of,” he said. “The power of America in the course of history is the power to reinvent and to reinvigorate from generation to generation.”

In opening Week Four, Latour said he wants to set a realistic tone for Chautauquans underlining the responsibility to defend the free press.

He is no stranger to Chautauqua. In 1994, a 23-year-old Latour interned for The Chautauquan Daily as a religion reporter. He called the experience formative for him as a journalist and as an immigrant assimilating to American society.

“It opened up a world to me … where I wasn’t just reporting, which I had done before, but that I could report on big issues, big ideas, meet with experts and be surrounded by people who care about ideas,” he said. “This gave me a window into not just the U.S. I knew from the history books, or that I (had) gotten to know as an exchange student, but enacted how the decisions are made in society.”

Outside the United States, Latour said “there’s been a concerted effort from autocrats to fight against free press.” 

On March 29, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg, Russia, when authorities detained him on espionage charges. He had been covering the invasion of Ukraine and was accredited by Russia’s Foreign Ministry to work as a journalist. The U.S. government and the Journal deny the charges against him.

“This sends a signal that reporters for the free press are not welcome, and are not going to be treated fairly,” Latour said. “And that’s devastating.”

He described Gershkovich as a knowledgeable reporter with a “natural sympathy for the people of Russia” and a deep understanding of Russian society. The absence of his reporting, Latour said, is a loss for many.

“It robs, first and foremost, the Russian people of a fair and unbiased look at their own society during a time of war and crisis,” he said. “Second, it has taken away a vital instrument for the world to assess what is happening on the ground in Russia at a time of great change, most of it negative.” 

Russia has granted fewer consular visits than usual, Latour said, and contact with Gershkovich has been inconsistent as he communicates from Moscow’s Lefortovo prison through Russian lawyers.

“We can conclude that he is resilient; he maintains a sense of humor; he is reading a lot, and that all gives us hope,” Latour said. “I imagine he is as strong as his reporting.”

Latour said he is hopeful Russia can return to the robust free press it once had 25 years ago. For now, the Kremlin seems set on changing the rules of the game as it goes.

“It doesn’t mean that that cannot return, but at the moment that part of society has been minimized, brutally,” he said.

James Buckser
Staff writer

Casper ter Kuile uses spiritual expertise in secular spaces. 

Author of The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices and the co-founder of The Nearness and the Sacred Design Lab, ter Kuile’s work “explores how we’ll make meaning, deepen our relationships, and experience beauty in the 21st century,” according to his website.

ter Kuile will bring his perspective to discuss “Religious Faith and Everything Else We Believe In” to open Week Four of the Interfaith Lecture Series at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.

“Casper is focused on the experiences of individuals who might not describe themselves in religious terms but are nonetheless making meaning in community,” said Melissa Spas, vice president of religion. 

ter Kuile holds master’s degrees in divinity and public policy from Harvard University, where he was a ministry innovation fellow from 2016 to 2021. He co-created the podcast “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text,” which, according to its website, focuses on examining the Harry Potter series through “sacred reading practices,” which he co-hosted until 2021.

ter Kuile co-founded the research and development agency Sacred Design Lab with Angie Thurston and Sue Phillips. The organization is a “soul-centered research and development lab” which is “devoted to understanding and designing for 21st-century spiritual well-being,” according to ter Kuile’s website. Sacred Design Lab has worked with companies including Google, Pinterest and the United Methodist Development Fund.

ter Kuile also co-founded The Nearness, which his website describes as “an eight-week journey to nurture your spirituality.” The courses feature teachers from a variety of spiritual traditions and conversations in “supportive small groups,” according to the program’s website.

“… (W)ith more (than) 50% of Americans now disconnected from a local congregation, we know we need new structures of belonging and new rhythms of life to help us focus on what matters most,” ter Kuile’s website says. “The Nearness is designed to do exactly that.”

In 2020, ter Kuile published The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices, which focuses on finding new meaning in secular spaces.

“Casper’s book The Power of Ritual addresses the practices that often parallel, complement or intersect with belief,” Spas said. “I wanted to include that perspective alongside more conventional perspectives on religious faith or belief.”

ter Kuile’s book examines new spiritual outlets for people who are not necessarily religious. For example, he discusses how CrossFit and SoulCycle are like church groups and “gratitude journals” are akin to traditional prayer, according to the book’s description.

“We can nourish our souls by transforming everyday practices — eating together, working out, reading, taking a walk — into sacred rituals that can heal our crisis of social isolation and longing for connection,” ter Kuile wrote on his website.

Arden Ryan
contributing  writer

Belief is a powerful concept. It can inspire hope from disillusionment, maintain faith when doubters abound and fill the dispirited with courage and confidence. 

With Chautauqua’s annual Opera & Pops concert, this feeling will permeate the arias and Broadway standards set to be performed at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater, as Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, Chautauqua Opera Company Young Artists, and Principal Pops Conductor Stuart Chafetz take the audience on a journey through all kinds of belief — in love, in art, in religion and in oneself.

Through an iconic aria from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Young Artist Marquita Richardson, soprano, will sing of a strong belief in a love she has despite being surrounded by naysayers, persevering and believing that her love will come back for her.

In the “Composer’s Aria” from Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, mezzo-soprano Monique Galvão will sing of her firm belief that music is the holiest of the arts.

Bock and Harnick’s “Miracle of Miracles” from Fiddler on the Roof — to be performed by tenor Felix Aguilar Tomlinson, is grounded in Jewish tradition and makes numerous Biblical references, conveying belief with religious conviction.

A duet from Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore — portrayed by Tomlinson and soprano Angela Yam — tells the story of a man whose belief in the magical power of a bottle of wine, sold to him as a love potion, helps him realize the courage to chase the girl of his desires.

Along with others on Saturday’s program, these selections reflect the upcoming Chautauqua Lecture Series theme, “The State of Believing.” 

Carol Rausch, music administrator and choral director for Chautauqua Opera, programs the event every year with the week’s discussion in mind, chiming in with pieces from classic operas and popular Broadway numbers.

Rausch kept the nature of belief in mind while assembling tonight’s concert, a joint effort between the Opera Company and Conservatory. 

Opera Young Artists are given the rare and “fantastic opportunity” to perform onstage with a full orchestra, Rausch said.

In previous years, two separate concerts showcased opera highlights and orchestral pops. With the two now combined, Rausch still ensured each of the eight featured apprentices will sing a solo. 

This gives them the opportunity to perform in both opera and pops, while showcasing their individual strengths and talents.

Versatility is highly prized at the company, as is the professionalism and preparation needed to work in the wider opera world, Rausch said. 

Artists, she added, should be “ready and able to go back and forth between the different art forms,” opera and Broadway, and “be good at both.”

Rausch said she believes the audience will enjoy the juxtaposition and entertaining back-and-forth.

Some of the performers have experience with the pieces they’ll be performing, but many of them may be performing in front of a full orchestra for the first time, Rausch said — a completely different experience from singing with a recital piano or pit orchestra.

“It’s an essential part of the development of promising opera students or opera artists,” Chafetz said. “To have a full symphony orchestra playing this glorious music, there’s nothing like it.”

For Rausch, the new opportunities for the students makes tonight a marked occasion, as does the energy of the venue itself.

“Singing in the Amp is so special,” she said. “There’s an atmosphere and a vibe about it that is pretty hard to duplicate elsewhere.”

Vahn Armstrong, CSO violinist and concertmaster, called this concert a “great opportunity” for these young performers.

For some of the Young Artists, this performance may present “the best orchestra and professional situation they’ve ever had a chance to be in,” Armstrong said. “It’s a big night for them. They get a chance to step out and shine.”

Armstrong recalls having a similar moment as a emerging musician himself, and is excited to witness more young artists share the experience of performing with a full-scale orchestra.

“It’s all first-class,” Chafetz said. “They always have amazing singers during this concert, and it’s always one of my favorite shows.”

Steven Osgood, general and artistic director of Chautauqua Opera Company and Conservatory, will serve as master of ceremonies for this collaborative concert.

“Everybody had a hand in making this a success,” Rausch said.

Deborah Trefts
Staff writer

Many people want to change the world, or at least a part of it.

Aggrieved by civic, environmental, financial, health-related or social problems, they donate their time, talent, treasure and more to causes and organizations that they trust will make things better.

Philanthropists abound, whether they have much to give monetarily, or very little.  

At 3 p.m. on Saturday in the Hall of Philosophy, Kris Putnam-Walkerly will join the Chautauqua Women’s Club’s Contemporary Issues Forum series with a talk titled, “Unlocking the Secrets of Effective Giving: Avoiding Delusional Altruism in Philanthropy.”

Putnam-Walkerly is the founder, global philanthropy adviser and president of Putnam Consulting Group.

“Giving money away effectively isn’t easy,” she said. “… It’s easier said than done. The problems we face as a society are challenging enough. (Yet) donors are getting in their own way, impeding their ability to be effective.”

Having seen this pattern for over two decades, Putnam-Walkerly said she wants to help funders realize it.

“It’s not about shame or blame, but about recognizing this problem,” she continued.

Her latest book, Delusional Altruism: Why Philanthropists Fail to Achieve Change and What They Can Do to Transform Giving, is among the ways Putnam-Walkerly has been sharing her message and advice throughout the philanthropic community.

“You need a mindset of abundance, versus scarcity, to increase your clarity of what you want to accomplish, whether you’re giving away tens of millions or tens of dollars,” she said. “It’s a difference of scale. There are things we can all do to improve how we give.”

Much of the background and skills needed for counseling her clients — “ultra-high-net-worth donors, foundations, Fortune 500 companies, celebrity activists and wealth advisers” — came from the life and career path Putnam-Walkerly traversed before founding Putnam Consulting Group at the turn of the 21st century. 

Originally from Toledo, Ohio, she spent her high school years in Wooster, Ohio. After her mother purchased a house at Chautauqua, her first summer job upon graduating in 1990 was working at the gourmet food store on the ground floor of the St. Elmo, which had recently been redesigned and rebuilt. The following summer, she scooped ice cream at the Refectory.

At Indiana University, Putnam-Walkerly double-majored in political science and anthropology with minors in Latin American studies and Spanish, she became a student activist. 

Upon graduation, Putnam-Walkerly moved to San Francisco, and spent two years as a political organizer for the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, or CISPES.

“It was a great experience,” she said. “I went to El Salvador a couple of times during the civil war. I got burned out since I was literally working 100 hours a week (but people) were dying and I wanted to help them.”

Next, she worked as an administrative officer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Menlo Park, California, and to continue to challenge herself and learn more, she enrolled at San Francisco State University to earn a Master of Social Work.

The program “was very progressive,” she said. “It included a wide range of students economically, culturally and age-wise.”

After earning her master’s degree in 1996, she took on a role for a research center at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, evaluating the Youth and Gang Violence Prevention Program by traveling throughout California to high schools and other organizations.

“Because this effort was funded by a foundation, philanthropy really intrigued me,” she said. “Your main asset is money, though that doesn’t mean you do well with it. How do we tackle this problem systematically, at the state level?”

Next, one of the largest and most influential foundations in the United States – the David and Lucille Packard Foundation – hired Putnam-Walkerly as a temporary grant maker for the federal Child Health Insurance Program, which focused on families that made too much money for Medicaid, but were still struggling financially.

“My job was to support and fund the not-for-profits doing the outreach and enrollment, so that families would sign up for it and go to the doctor versus to the emergency room,” she said.

Putnam-Walkerly realized her undergraduate work in anthropology served her foundation work as much as it did her work earlier in her career at CISPES.

“Anthropology is about people looking at life and culture very differently,” she said. “Your perspective isn’t that of others. It helped orient me, and to appreciate what others are bringing (to the situation).”

Following that, she worked for the Packard Foundation in Silicon Valley. With the dot-com boom beginning, many young entrepreneurs were keen to be philanthropists.

“Their money was growing rapidly,” she said. “They were smart, but they didn’t know about not-for-profit giving. There was a lot of opportunity for consulting. I met a consultant who was interested in having me subcontract.” 

Taking the offer, Putnam-Walkerly said she started out by consulting on the side, then left Packard to advise clients full-time.

“I learned from that, that not only did I like philanthropy, but also consulting on my own,” she added.

She founded Putnam Consulting Group in California in November 1999 with the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation as her very first client.

Even though she loved California, her parents were still living in Ohio and a high school reunion took her back to Wooster, where she reconnected with a classmate. 

“We instantly fell in love,” she said. “We were engaged four months later.” 

At the end of 2006, she moved to Cleveland and “began working with clients all over the country.”

During her talk on Saturday afternoon, Putnam-Walkerly said she will focus on practical advice.

“There are things (everyone) can do (starting) tomorrow,” she said. “They don’t have to be high-falutin’, they don’t have to be Bill Gates. Everyone’s a philanthropist with their time, treasure, connections and expertise.”

Mary Lee Talbot
Staff writer

The Rev. M. Craig Barnes, president emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary, will serve as chaplain for Week Four.

“I want to contribute to the theme of the fourth week, ‘The State of Believing,’ ” Barnes said. “We are in need of healing and I want to be pastoral, to explore what different ways we have to integrate into our lives ways to be healed because the life of faith is soul-centered.” He will preach at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. 

The title of his sermon is “Healing the Healers.” He will also preach at the 9:15 a.m. morning worship services Monday through Friday in the Amp. His sermon titles include: “Healing Our Despair,” “Healing Doesn’t Hurry,” “Healing Faith in Ourselves,” “Healing Our Sins” and “After Healing?”

“I think many people are saying today ‘I believe, help my unbelief.’ We are coping with a mediocre faith and when we have tried something, tried a call, and failed at it, we are disappointed with God,” he said. 

Asked about the challenges seminarians face now, Barnes said when he went to seminary 40 years ago, “There was a well-defined, stable promising path (for ministry). We were not worried about outliving our congregation or it falling apart. The institution is more malleable today; that may be a blessing when it is figured out and sorted out.”

He continued, “Churches are not sending students like they did 40 years ago. Students have found their way to seminary on their own. Denominations are seen as a resource but not an identity. Students have little patience, understanding or empathy with denominations. They self-construct ministry on their own.”

Barnes retired in January 2023. “Retirement is a very different season of life. I feel like I have been sent out to be a missionary, but no one told me what the mission is. It is really a joy and an adventure,” he said. He spends his time speaking, writing and as an interim pastor.
With his wife, Dawne Hess Barnes, who is an interior designer, they have renovated a 100-year old house.

Raised on Long Island, New York, Barnes graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary. He received a doctorate in philosophy in the History of Christianity from the University of Chicago.

He served as the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Madison, Wisconsin, until 1992 when he became the pastor of The National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. 

In 2002, he began his work as a chaired professor of pastoral leadership at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary while also serving as the pastor of the Shadyside Presbyterian Church, where he is now pastor emeritus. In 2012, he was elected president of Princeton Theological Seminary and became the president emeritus upon his retirement. 

He has nine published books, including When God Interrupts, Pastor as Minor Poet, and Diary of a Pastor’s Soul. He has also served as a contributor and editor-at-large to The Christian Century magazine for many years.

Julia Weber
Staff writer

What does the future of ballet hold? Look to Chautauqua’s School of Dance students this Sunday to find out.

Students in Chautauqua Institution’s School of Dance program will leap onto stage to showcase the talent of the next generation of dance during the first Chautauqua School of Dance Student Gala at 2:30 p.m. Sunday in the Amphitheater.

For Sasha Janes, artistic director of the School of Dance, part of the value that the recent All-Star Dance Gala offered is the chance for current students to see the commitment and dedication that professional dancers have for their craft, and to apply that same drive and ambition to their own careers, bringing dance into a new generation.

The Student Gala, however, differs significantly from the alumni gala stylistically. Whereas most of the alumni performances were solo or pas de deux pieces, Chautauquans can expect to see group pieces during this weekend’s performance.

“When Jean-Pierre (Bonnefoux) created the program, he put a lot of emphasis on the performance side because that’s where you see real growth,” he said, referring to his predecessor.

“There is a strong emphasis on all the classes and the technique and all of that, but he always thought that getting students on stage early was a great way to build confidence and then they can apply what they’ve learned and everything back to their technique.”

Janes stressed the importance of creating an environment where dancers can explore, experiment and innovate without fear of making mistakes. 

“We have a safe place where they can really practice their craft,” he said. “The more we can get them exposed to being on stage and getting used to dancing with nervousness and adrenaline and how to cope with that, that’s just another learning tool.”

Dancers will perform everything from excerpts from The Nutcracker to Broadway musical numbers.

Faculty at Chautauqua’s School of Dance teach a base curriculum of ballet, incorporating a range of teachers who bring diverse contemporary techniques to the studio to build on traditional ballet techniques.

The performance, brought to life by School of Dance faculty, including Janes, as well as other renowned dancers involved with Chautauqua, will demonstrate the classical and contemporary ballet techniques that students have studied with faculty at the Institution throughout the season so far.

Janes said he is excited to see how dancers’ personalities will come to life when they take the stage, letting their identities shine through ballet. 

“It’s also interesting to see which kids are maybe somewhat reserved and then they get out on stage and sort of bust out,” he said.

The gala will welcome a blend of classical and contemporary ballet, providing Chautauquans with a glimpse into not only the formative technical training Chautauqua’s dance program provides, but into the next generation of dance itself.

Janes hopes viewers will take away an understanding of the high level of skill and technique that the Chautauquan dancers bring to the studio and stage. Especially given the short duration of the program so far, Janes said he is thrilled with the body of work that the dancers have learned and are ready to perform.

He credits the dancers with consistently pushing boundaries to improve their craft, raising the bar for the student performance.

“I think the standard continues to elevate from year to year,” Janes said.

Kaitlyn Finchler
Staff writer

Here comes the sun … and the RAIN, with The Beatles’ tribute band from Los Angeles. 

Set to give Chautauqua a trip down memory lane, RAIN will perform at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater. Lead singer Steve Landes, known on stage as John Lennon, said the show is a homage to “the most-loved band out there.”

“I hope our audience takes the feeling of peace and love … and the positive messages of The Beatles,” he said. “Their music has always touched the heart and soul of everyone who listens to and enjoys their music.”

Formed just five years after The Beatles disbanded, RAIN started in 1975 with different cast members. Currently, the tribute band is comprised of Landes on vocals and rhythm guitar; Joey Curatolo (Paul McCartney) on vocals, bass, and guitar; Alastar McNeil (George Harrison) on vocals and lead guitar; and Aaron Chiazza (Ringo Starr) on drums, percussion and vocals. 

Each of the four in the cast act as a member of the original band. The “authentic” look and feel of instruments and costumes help them set the mood.

“It’s almost a head game,” Landes said. “I have to act like this is the first time I’ve played this song (with) the enthusiasm, energy and spark of improvisation on my face, and it has to be exact.”

Lennon was often referred to as the “big brother” of the original band, and Landes said he feels he takes on a similar role. 

“I’ve been in RAIN longer than all of the other guys in the current cast,” he said. “In that sense, I’m definitely the big brother and band leader out on the road.”

While some people may be surprised, Landes said the audience can expect that RAIN “sounds and looks just like” The Beatles.

“If you don’t play it exactly like (the original) … from a subconscious point of view, the audience is going to say, ‘I don’t quite know what it was, but they didn’t quite sound like The Beatles,’ ” he said. “We don’t ever want that.”

One of Landes’ favorite parts of touring in a tribute band is seeing families bring younger relatives who enjoy the show just as much as the adults.

“The Beatles are so meshed in our culture and in our musical history,” Landes said. “There’s a sense of almost reminding people how great The Beatles were.”

Although most music can be streamed online, Landes said nothing compares to experiencing a band live, and RAIN offers that to generations of Fab Four fans.

“There’s still something special … (about) that interaction between the performer and the audience,” he said. “That’s a big part of why we do it.”

James Buckser
Staff writer

Dr. Darshan Mehta sees more and more healthcare professionals burning out.

An assistant professor of medicine and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; director of education at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; medical director of the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine; and Director for the Office for Well-Being at Massachusetts General Hospital, Mehta has spent his career working to help not just patients in need, but also the people who help them.

Mehta will speak on medical burnout, faith, and staying “sustained” in healthcare at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, closing out the Interfaith Lecture Series’ theme “Health and Faith: Considering the Center of Wellbeing in America,” in partnership with Interfaith America.

Mehta said faith and medicine are “interlinked.” When working with patients, he said medical professionals try to help patients live as well as they can, increasing “health span” –  not just lifespan.

“We are dealing with issues around suffering, meaning and purpose, trying to live in the best possible way,” Mehta said. 

Part of Mehta’s work is on complementary and integrative medical theories, which he said refers to “practices and systems of medicine that are not traditionally considered part of allopathic medicine,” including acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine and naturopathy. Mehta said while many people make use of these methods, they don’t always tell their healthcare providers. 

“Many of these practices do have utility for good health,” Mehta said. “We want people to incorporate the good – we also don’t want them to be unsafe, so leave out the bad, – and then study the things that we don’t know about.”

One of the better known parts of Mehta’s work is as the medical director of the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine. There, he confronts some more emotional needs of his patients.

“I work with patients in contemplative practice and its role in health and all sorts of health outcomes,” Mehta said, “(which is) anything from blood pressure to thinking about, obviously, conditions like anxiety and depression, and how do you have improved cancer outcomes and such.”

Faith can also play a role for the healthcare provider, Mehta said, in figuring out how to heal the physical, emotional and spiritual body. 

He said while there are medical professionals focused on the physical and emotional body, “very few will look at the spiritual body.” Mehta also worries about the providers’ own wellbeing, and what he calls “the wounded healer.”

“Healthcare providers are burning out at rates that are just not sustainable,” Mehta said. “We are losing people in the healthcare workforce.”

In his talk, Mehta will use his own narrative and an interfaith perspective to engage with this problem and confront the “disastrous consequences” it has.

“How do we actually stay sustained in this profession?” Mehta said. “And how does faith play a role in keeping ourselves sustained?”

Mehta hopes people leave his talk thinking about the “human-ness” of healthcare workers, which he says came to light especially during COVID.

“They have fears, they have struggles, they suffer,” Mehta said. “What is our responsibility as a society to keep the healthcare workforce sustained?”

Mariia Novoselia
Staff writer

Searching for happiness might be dangerously futile. Author Emily Esfahani Smith wants to discuss what is worth looking for instead. 

Smith thinks the four pillars that make life meaningful are belonging, purpose, transcendence and storytelling. People often overlook the value of meaning, favoring the pursuit of happiness. However, Smith pointed out, people who seek happiness and chase it often end up unhappy and lonely. 

“Happiness is great, but it’s kind of momentary, and comes and goes, whereas meaning is … something that’s more enduring,” said Smith, the author of The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life that Matters. 

Full of personal stories and tales of those she interviews, Smith’s lecture about searching for that meaning is at 10:45 p.m. today in the Amphitheater, closing the Week Three theme of “Can the Center Hold? – A Question for Our Moment.”

In 2017, Smith first talked about her four pillars in a TED Talk, “There’s more to life than being happy,” which has since accumulated over 5.8 million views. 

Since that time, she said, her understanding of the matter has deepened.

“I think one thing that I appreciate much more now is the role of searching for an identity, searching for self, and … knowing yourself,” she said. 

Understanding oneself, she said, is at the core of all philosophies and religions, and it is something she has been researching in the last few years. 

“If you lead a life in which you don’t know yourself or you’re lost to yourself, that’s a disaster spiritually,” Smith said, referencing Thomas Merton. 

The presence of the four pillars of meaning in life can change. Right now, Smith said, storytelling is most prevalent for her. As an author working on a new book, she is creating her own story. 

As a student-therapist in training, she gets to hear a multitude of stories from others. On the other hand, transcendence, or the feeling of connectedness to a higher power, is a pillar Smith wishes was a bigger part of her life these days, although she said it has always been important to her. 

The book Smith is working on right now will ponder the questions of identity and finding self – it will try to answer the question of “how we can come home to ourselves in a culture that’s pushing us away from being who we really are,” she said.

One thing Smith hopes people take away from her lecture is that meaning is not something unattainable, or a prize that requires becoming “a Buddhist monk.” She said there are sources of meaning all around; they just need to be explored. 

Meaning isn’t just achievable; it can also be extremely valuable when it comes to weathering hard times. 

Plenty of research shows that people who have a sense of meaning in their lives are far more resilient. In addition, Smith said hardships can help people who pursue meaning grow in ways that make their lives even more meaningful. They report deeper relationships and spiritual life, she said. 

The meaning of life can be fluid. While acknowledging that this may be different person to person, Smith said from both her personal experience and interviews she has conducted, a variety of things can bring meaning to life, and those things change. 

Philosophy has fascinated Smith since she was a teenager. She said she remembers watching a lecture series on television, when “something just clicked” and Smith felt compelled to investigate deep questions and ideas. The curiosity did not fade away, and Smith went on to study philosophy at Dartmouth College and earned a master’s degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. When she first discovered positive psychology, Smith said, she had a “light bulb moment.” 

“This is what I’ve wondered about … my whole life, and I didn’t realize there was a field that studies it,” she said. 

Her favorite aspect of positive psychology, Smith said, is that it “takes seriously the wisdom of the past and of the humanities.” The field uses ideas from philosophy, then tests them empirically with the scientific method. 

“I just think that’s such a great combination,” she said. 

Currently, she is pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology from Catholic University.  Sufism – a mystical practice associated with Islam – also had an influence on Smith’s worldview. She said it left her with values such as kindness, compassion, service and the importance of spirituality. 

Smith is excited for her Amp debut, and for her time among the Chautauqua community. 

“I think of (Chautauqua) as a camp for adults who are intellectually curious,” Smith said. “And that’s how I would describe myself.”