A little over two years ago, just after arriving in Amsterdam to study for a semester, I started reading Life After Life, a book written by Kate Atkinson, a somewhat cynical, beautifully vivid British author with a biting sense of humor.
Life After Life is the story of Ursula, a girl born just a few years before the beginning of World War I, who lives her life over, and over, and over again. Each time she dies no matter when or where, she is born again, in 1910, to the same family, in the same house in the English countryside, carrying only subconscious, embodied memories of what came before.

In tonight’s concert, I consider the broader implications of Life After Life: both the concept of cyclical return and the reality that structures, events, or moments that are obscured or invisible to us are often the most consequential in shaping how we move through the world.