Feb. 9, 2005

Michael S. Glaser, Maryland's poet laureate, wrote a poem for the dedication of The Music Center at Strathmore.

Sitting atop the poem, entitled "The Luminous Dream," are these words of Goethe:

"Whatever you think you can, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

Most of our dreams become the victims of fear and doubt. So, we abandon them.

And, even if we summon the courage to withstand the slings and arrows of the forces that oppose our dreams, perhaps the mysterious ingredient that makes some dreams come true and others not is the genius, power and magic of the dream itself.

During the decade that I worked with my good friend, Eliot Pfanstiehl, the head of Strathmore Hall Foundation, generous volunteers, like current board chairman David Phillips of Lockheed Martin and a hundred other wonderful people who joined us, we mostly believed The Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda was a dream visited upon us.

We never sought it, but once we saw it, we felt accountable for fulfilling it.

The journey was such that it kept us humble. We drew our energy from this vision, that one day tens of thousands of people in our community -- of all ages, of all races, of all means -- would have their spirits inspired, uplifted and encouraged in a place that people would seek out and never want to leave.

At the opening concert on Saturday night, what lies before us was self-evident.

As the extraordinarily talented cellist Yo-Yo Ma ended a piece, a soft, quiet note traveled to the far reaches of the concert hall in its purest form. We all listened. We all waited breathlessly for the note to end on its own volition. There was silence and then the audience soared to its feet in applause.

Moments later, Yo-Yo Ma joined a group of cellists, including four of Maryland's finest young cellists -- Jeffrey Chu, 15, of Gaithersburg; Rachel Gawell, 16, of Arnold; Colin Stokes, 17, of Baltimore; and Tim Wang, 13, of Boyds. Sitting next to the world's greatest cellist, Tim, focused intently on a rendition of Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 with soprano Janice Chandler-Eteme. The music ended, Yo-Yo Ma smiled at Tim who smiled in return and the audience rose to its feet in applause.

The evening closed with world-famous conductor Yuri Temirkanov directing the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Dmitri Shostakovich's Festive Overture, opus 96. It was as if a thousand instruments filled the hall with sound so full and rich that only the most somber of humanity could not be elevated to wondrous heights in the revelry of this moment.

Again, the audience rose to its feet in applause that went on and on. We did not want to leave this place.

This dream, this "Luminous Dream," was here for our community to know, to celebrate, to be bound together one experience at a time for generations to come.

And so may we accept this gift of fortune, in humility and gratitude, in the spirit reflected in these words of our poet laureate, Michael S. Glaser:

The Luminous Dream
A Blessing for the Opening of the House
Bless this home, rising from the earth
in a shimmer of glass and wood and stone,
so that what we bless we may also call our own.
Bless these walls as they embrace
a hundred thousand dreams, the imagined
and still unimagined magic of this place

and consecrate the joy such blessings bring,
the bold crescendo of transforming fires,
the stirring melodies our souls desire.
                          * * *
For now the outer work is done and it is we
who must become the luminous song,
the light that brings the outside in,
a symphony of soaring strings
dancing like seeds in sudden flight
singing in this garden, "new life, new life."
-- Michael S. Glaser