First, this: I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Mary Claire Murphy of WGTE Public Media in Toledo, Ohio. You can view our breezy eighteen-minute conversation here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu89ECl8B18

Now, to business!

If you’ve seen Thornton Wilder’s play, “Our Town,” you’ll remember these lines from the final scene:

“EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?"

STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.”

Those lines encapsulate the play, bringing home the message: you’re alive, so realize it. Being alive is the most precious of all gifts. Don’t sleep walk through life. Be awake, be aware. Even the most trivial moments are miraculous.

Yet, can anyone live like that? Saints and poets maybe, but not the likes of you and me.

What did Thornton Wilder do in response to that beautiful, shaming, melancholy thought? He taught; he wrote novels and plays. He acted, too. When “Our Town” and later “The Skin of Our Teeth” played on Broadway, he played the leading roles.

And me? What did I do? Lots of things.

And you? I can’t speak for you or Mr. Wilder but I admit that Emily’s question challenges me. I’ve fallen far short of “realizing life … every, every minute.” I couldn’t bear the strain of it.

Thoreau puts it this way: “I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”

Still, I keep trying. For instance, I’ve rediscovered clouds. What marvels they are, emerging, shifting, glowing in grays and blues and tones of salmon and lavender. Not just white. Walking the dog, I stare at them. While the dog is ‘doing his research’ I try to ‘realize’ them.

And I do my art. Last August through November, I wrote three works for string trio. One is subtitled “Saints & Poets” in acknowledgement of the inspiration, those lines from “Our Town.”

All three trios have now been beautifully recorded by three marvelous Cincinnati musicians: violinist Doug Hamilton, violist Rose Gowda and cellist Michael Ronstadt. These recordings will be issued on a new CD / album that will also feature two single-movement works for string quartet and my piano quartet. The cost of producing this album is partly covered by the generous contributions some of you made when I asked for help last Spring. Thank you.

The opening movement of the Trio #4 shares, I think, the simplicity and some of the beauty and melancholy of Wilder’s lines. See what you think.

To hear the first movement of my String Trio #4 “Saints & Poets,”
click the link above. There's also a link to a PDF of the score.
 
I'd love to know what you think about this music; feel free to reply if you're inclined. But please don't feel that you are expected to reply. I'm just glad to share my work in this way.

As always, feel free to forward this message to friends who might enjoy it. Maybe a friend who enjoys sailing.

Anyone can be on my little list of recipients for these mpFrees (as I call these musical emails). To sign up, people can email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes." I'll know what it means.

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Near the beginning of the third act of “Our Town,” the Stage Manager looks the audience in the eye and says:

“Now I’m going to tell you some things that you know already, things we all know. You know ‘em as well as I do, but we don't take ‘em out and look at ‘em very often.

I don’t care what they say with their mouths, everybody knows that something is eternal. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.

All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.”

Hearing this, the audience is hushed. No mention is made of denominations, creeds or theology, yet we find a religious assurance in these words.

The Stage Manager speaks for all of us -- we in the audience but also all of us in the past 250 generations -- telling us something which he says we “know in our bones.”

Just think: pert near every culture we know of has expended huge amounts of capital and energy to construct vast monuments in response to this notion. These monuments are scattered all over the globe. That new-ish Mega-Church just off the interstate, yes, but also the Pyramids of Egypt and of Central America. Chartres Cathedral in far off France and the Serpent Mound just 50 miles east of where I live. Chaco Canyon way out west and that tomb in China where all the clay figures of soldiers were found, along with a lot else.

And that is just the architectural response. Think of all the art, literature and music that has been created in response to this notion that “something is eternal” and that that something “has to do with human beings.”

Believer and infidel alike admit the strangeness and wonder of it, that our species has undertaken so much in response to something which no one has ever perceived with their senses. Except for a few saints and poets, maybe, who may claim to have heard a Voice. Many who have never heard that Voice have felt, nevertheless, that their lives have been directed in some unfathomable way by “something that is eternal.”

I certainly feel that now. How I would have scoffed at such a notion forty years ago! But the decades slip away and we ask ourselves how we got where we are. And the answer is, we traveled paths we did not foresee but which somehow combined to form a route, plopping us down at length just here and nowhere else, precisely where we ought to be.

“Now what?” That’s the question I ask every day. Now what? I am waiting for direction. You, too?

While we’re waiting, let’s listen to music almost no one has heard yet: a NEW recording of the Cincinnati String Trio -- violinist Doug Hamilton, violist Rose Gowda, cellist Michael Ronstadt -- performing the wistful, delicate third movement from my String Trio #4 subtitled “Saints & Poets,”
click on the link above. There's also a link to a PDF of the score.
 

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I have a little skill as a cartoonist. I can sketch just about anything and you’ll at least recognize what it is supposed to be.

Since late last winter our daughter, who is employed by the Federal Government in Washington DC, has been fearful that she will lose her job. She has no “Plan B.” The stress is intense. And now she is unpaid because of the government shutdown. She is not sure she’ll receive her back pay when it’s over. Jo and I have asked, “What can we do?” She said to send her cheery cards in the mail.

I made a DIY card. I penciled a cheery cartoon on a sheet of 8.5” by 11” paper and mailed it in a large envelope so that it would not need to be folded. She loved it. So I drew and sent another one and another one after that. Then Jo bought colored pencils for me and making these drawings got to be really fun. I’ve sent our daughter almost fifty drawings for far this year.

I’m struck by the differences between drawing a cartoon, writing a story, and composing a piece of music.

The biggest difference lies in what is required to convey the finished work to its intended audience.

Cartoons are easy to access. With hardly more than a glance, my daughter can take in one of my cartoons. After a perusal of ten seconds, tops, she “gets” it.

Similarly, my daughter (or you) can quickly read an email I’ve written, such as this one. Ten minutes, tops, you’ve taken it on board.

There are no intermediaries. Viewers have a direct relationship with a cartoon, just as readers have with verbiage. There it is, in front of you; all you have to do is LOOK.

Music is not like that. When I finish a piece of music, what do I have? A file in my computer, waiting to be printed. Waiting and waiting. I have written several pieces for string trio in the past year and these are some of my best work. No one will hear these pieces until they are brought to life by musicians.

How can they get heard? I cannot hire three string players to go to my daughter’s home -- or yours -- to play this new music. At best, I can recruit good players to rehearse and record the music and then put up the recording on the internet, accessible with a “link.” That is exactly what I offer in these emails I send you.

My cartoons ask a minimum of careful attention. My writings ask a little more. But my best work is as a composer. That is the work I most want to convey to my family, friends and fans but conveying it is very difficult to do.

My music is most effective when it is played live. For example, in a service in my church where some of my friends -- the congregants -- are there to listen. Really listen. But my wife does not attend church; my son lives in Chicago; my daughter in Takoma Park, MD. Like most of you, they never hear these church performances of my music.

Another example: I have organized “home concerts” and my children have been on hand for some of those, my wife for all of them. We can host about twenty-five friends here in our home, a tiny audience.

Short of my dispatching a string trio to perform in your home, the link provided below is the only way for you to access this music. This is why I am so grateful to my musician friends for recording these piece and to YOU for listening to them via the links provided.

Let’s pass four cheerful minutes together, you and me, listening to the lively second movement of my String trio #4 “Saints & Poets” performed by the Cincinnati String Trio: violinist Doug Hamilton, violist Rose Gowda and cellist Michael Ronstadt, click on the link above. There's also a link to a PDF of the score.

I'd love to know what you think about this music. Feel free to reply if you're inclined. But please don't feel that you are expected to reply. I'm just glad to share my work in this way.

As always, feel free to forward this message to friends who might enjoy it.

Anyone can be on my little list of recipients for these mpFrees (as I call these musical emails). To sign up, people can email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes."

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Oct. 12, 2025

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Good things happen every day.

Clouds, for instance. Clouds are free entertainment, just like these emails I send.

They are here to stay. Whatever nonsense unfolds down below, you can always look up at the clouds.

There have always been clouds.

Well, not always. We learned in 8th grade science that our planet was, for a couple billion years, a ball of boiling lava. No water.

Yet we also learned that, today, 60% of the surface of the earth is covered by water … which raises a question that stops me in my tracks: where did all the water come from?

Don’t ask me! I’m a composer! But even I can sniff around for answers …

The dominant theory seems to be that asteroids, carrying huge cargoes of ice, hit the earth, delivering the goods.

But can you imagine how much ICE it would take to bring THIS MUCH water to our planet? An asteroid striking the earth is a rare occurrence. Even given a billion years or two, to deliver that much water, a staggering number of ice-laden asteroids would have had to find their way to this one little planet floating about in the vastness of space. It seems impossible.

But if not ice-carrying asteroids, then what? This question is one reason why clouds are mysterious.

When I see a cloud I sometimes wonder how far away it is. I can guess the distance between myself and a far off tree, a hill, even a mountain. But a cloud? How far away is it? A quarter mile? a mile? five miles? I have no idea and I will never know. Another cloud-mystery.

Just as no two snowflakes are alike, so, too, with clouds. Yet every cloud is alike in one way: every cloud is beautiful. Even big, dark, ominous clouds. Hurricanes and tornadoes can be tremendously harmful to us and to trees and animals. Yet, observed objectively, the clouds that give them birth and surround them and linger afterwards are, yes, beautiful.

We tend to think of Beauty -- in music, in clouds, in Nature -- as something that is soft, languid and sinuous, sometimes soaring, sometimes serene, but always smooth. Wrong. Often but not always. There is a rough beauty in certain clouds and in certain works by Beethoven and other masters.

The final movement of my new String trio #4 “Saints & Poets,” written exactly a year ago, has a dark energy and aspires to that same rough beauty. I want to share that music with you today.

The entire work, by the way, along with five other new chamber works of mine, will be featured on a CD now in production. The new CD will be titled “Checkerboard” and I will send you an announcement about it when it comes out.

Meanwhile, another new CD of my music, titled “Ronstadt plays Sowash, Vol. 1”, was released just two days ago. It features my new cello music played by my friend, the great cellist Michael Ronstadt.

To learn more about it and to order yours, copy and paste this link into your browser:

https://kickshawrecords.com/product/rsp-15-ronstadt-plays-sowash-vol-1/

You’ve sometimes heard Michael playing on the links I provide in these weekly emails. In fact, you are about to hear him again, right now.

That’s Michael, playing in The Cincinnati String Trio with violinist Doug Hamilton and violist Rose Gowda, the finale movement of my String Trio #4 “Saints & Poets.” To hear it, click on the link above. There's also a link to a PDF copy of the score.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Oct. 26, 2025