It is December at this writing, a season of darkness and light, of looking forward and looking back.

There are many journeys each of us makes in the course of a day, not to mention across a week, a month, and a year from January to December.

These may be physical journeys to a new land to explore, down the street to help a friend, across a room to greet a stranger.

They could be journeys of thought, imagination, storytelling, learning, and reflecting on changes brought by these.

Shifting times indeed.

Autumn is always a season of change.  It is also a season of hope, of sharing, of community, of sharing stories and taking time for reflection.

All still true as times continue to shift.

Music is a fine companion for all that, through all the changes. That is still true, as well.

Autumn: change in weather and in landscape can happen overnight.

Autumn’s changes may also come in more subtle ways. There are seasonal changes such as turn of color in leaves, and more permanent ones, such as those caused by autumn storms.

Autumn is often a time of change in areas of life beyond the natural world, adjustments of all sorts. It is also, in many parts of the world, a time for political change.

From varied ways love may be expressed to courage to take good journeys to reflection on hope through shifting times, musicians consider all these things, too.

Music is one of the ways we tell each other stories. Through music, we can share ideas across time, make connections across geography, reach across languages, open doors to learning and teaching. A friendship can begin or increase through love of music. And how many times has a song or tune brought you back to a time or place or person you once knew?

Music, with or without words, is a powerful way to share stories.

All across the world, politics and social life continue to shift and to change.

At certain times and in certain places, those shifts and changes seem to lead toward peace, toward connection, toward progress. At other times and in other places, chaos and fear haunt present and future.

In the midst of these things, hope can be a constant. Hope offers the idea of connection and the possibility of brighter future.

Times are shifting indeed, all across the world.

There are many ways music can come into such changing circumstances. That is an idea we’ve continued to explore through the years in this ongoing series.

Perhaps you feel the need of songs to rally around, to sing together?

As circumstances of all sorts continue to shift, and information of all sorts arrives from all directions, making time for centering and focus can be useful.

It can also be challenging.

Music can help with that. Giving the time needed to focus on one song, to center on repeated listenings of a favorite—or a whole orchestra piece or a whole album—can be refreshing. It can also offer space for new ideas to appear, new perspectives to evolve. Both of those may well be needed in these shifting times.

Connection.

That’s an idea and a theme that has been part of this series from the first days of Music for Shifting Times. Connection to ideas, to places, to friends, to strangers, to memories: all are good ways to find and renew stability as times continue to shift.

Consider the creative ways these musicians find connection in shifting times.

Music for Shifting Times: that is what we decided to all this series when we began it back almost eight years ago at this writing.

It seemed that things were shifting then; little did anyone know how many ways things would shift across the world.

Need for connection and community have remained constant across these years; so has the role of music in making these connections possible.

You may want to reflect on those ideas as you consider the work of these musicians.

In the season of spring, nature reminds us of change, of resilience, of hope.

Spring months see at least two other times which include elements of change, resilience, and hope in their stories: international celebrations of women, and celebrations of Ireland connected with the time of Saint Patrick’s day in mid-March.

All of those come in to the creativity of the musicians whose work you will find below.

In whichever season you may be reading this, may the work of these artists be a good companion to you.