Dash-cam video

Thanks to Ty Burr for writing such an eloquent and moving piece about Sandra Bland and other “found footage,’’ maybe his best of the year (“Hollywood had no hand in the most important movies of 2015,’’ Thursday Scene, 12/31). The process of waking up from the dream, from the official cultural narrative, is a difficult one, but essays like this one put our entire lives — from the movies we watch to the events we experience every day — into a much fuller context that helps us all to awaken. Much appreciated.

THERICKLES

Posted on Bostonglobe.com

Conducting grief

It feels like a personal loss that conductor Kurt Masur has passed away. Perhaps this is because his son, Ken-David Masur, has, as a Boston Symphony Orchestra assistant conductor, brought the same integrity to musical interpretation. Perhaps it is because the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Masur’s orchestra, has formed a partnership with the Boston Symphony.

Also it comes down to an important memory. The months after my mother passed away were a very difficult time that stretched from the autumn of 1982 into the spring of 1983. It was so painful for me to hear any orchestral music that I only listened to chamber works. That was until I heard that Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra were visiting Symphony Hall. It was early spring. The orchestra members were obviously East German; they were dressed austerely and came onto the stage in a disciplined manner.

Then there was Brahms’s Symphony No. 3. Masur and the orchestra played the work without embellishment, and as I watched the music simply unfold upon the stage, it was as if, after the dead of winter, I was watching the grass grow in the early spring. It was an experience that included and transcended my grief. I will never forget how it brought me back to my own heritage.

Kurt Masur has passed away. The world has lost a great exponent of the German symphonic tradition.

Maurice “Rick’’ Laurence

Newton

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