Connection: sharing ideas, sharing stories, sharing time with friends and family is a powerful and lasting aspect of life. Connection with acquaintances and people less well known also has its place in creating and sharing community.

In challenging and shifting times, honoring and nurturing connection, in whatever ways might be safe and available, are healing and grounding things to do.

Music can invite and encourage contemplation and connection, solitude and community.  Participating in arts of all sorts allows, invites, and encourages perspective and reflection.

At times, this also makes space for a place of rest.

With those ideas in mind, take a listen to the differing ways these musicians invite you into all of this.

Maybe you have offered a hand to steady someone -- friend or stranger -- on an icy sidewalk.

Perhaps you've been the person who accepted that assistance.

There are surely times when you've confided in a friend, secure in the knowledge that what you talked of would be kept between the two of you. Could be you are the friend who has respected that confidence.

These and many other large and small acts are acts of trust. 

Fires and floods, wars and famines, political uncertainty all across the globe: it is a time of change. Within those shifting circumstances, it can be helpful to remember the power of connection, and the power of music to help make and renew connection. Connection can renew hope, too. Here are music ideas to explore with those thoughts in mind.