I grew up on Long Island, New York. Summer was and is my favourite season. For as long as I can remember, summertime meant my summer camp second home, and the moment I could drive meant any spare time spent at the beach. The ocean and sand are so much a part of me that I moved to live beside them for a decade (and later flipped coasts to relish their brilliance all year long).

In the northern hemisphere, it’s officially summer. It’s the season where shoes are optional, schedules flung out the window, and s’mores an everyday occurrence. It includes days of drippy ices, water-logged joy, and vitamin D drenched humans. We adventure easily, leap without question, and reacquaint ourselves with risk. 

In my youth, I spent some of my best summers at a rustic sleepaway camp on the edge of the Long Island Sound. Decades later, I can still tell you what those leaves smell like on a rainy day, what the beach rocks feel like on the souls of my feet, what color my tongue turned after drinking the colorful ‘bug juice’, and the taste of the crumb cake baked with love by Maryanne the cook. When crumb cake shows up on any menu, I smile—and no matter where I am in the world, one taste flings me right back to camp and the extra bites that Maryanne would leave out on the counter for all to enjoy. 

It’s arrived! That time of year where life feels like it’s full speed ahead and nonstop glitter-filled energy. The educational year is in its groove, every week there’s a game or a concert or a special event, and even taking a moment to find your own breath seemingly involves a calendar invitation. We’re officially in that final quarter of the year when resolution inklings creep in, ‘to do’ lists pile up, and many of us feel pulled in multiple directions. 

In these final months of the year, how do you tend to show up?

It’s summer. The season of sandy feet, sun-kissed cheeks, and firepit chats that go on till dawn has returned. While the world is still in chaos and a global pandemic is still afoot, school’s out, camp’s in session, and children everywhere are in summer mode. 

It’s that time where everything is flooded with sunlight, fireflies dance amidst the sky, ice cream is a daily meal, dreams are big, possibilities are endless, and imaginations run wild. 

Music for shifting times is what we decided to name this series, back several years ago. Circumstances continue to shift, in political situations, in nature, in personal lives, in what happens day to day. In the music, there are several sorts of change, and several ways musicians have thought about and created ideas around them.