Benjamin Klemme

@gordoncollege Conductor & Associate Teaching Professor of Music

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

“[Elrond’s] house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, or a pleasant mixture of them all.” —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit #SummerReading

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

I love discovering outliers.

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

Every day I am struck by how similar seeing Coy Pond from my office is to experiencing Monet. It brings back wonderful memories of my years @cim_edu, when I would go to @ClevelandArt during practice breaks to see Water Lilies (Agapanthus).

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

Transitioning back to our school schedules with some early hikes this week. @thetrustees Coolidge Reservation was the perfect place to start—a beautiful, cool morning!

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

“Look! The elephants are dancing. How high they lift their feet. And they go round and round. And oh, look!—how they lift their trunks. And how ceremonial they are. It is like a minuet of giants.” —C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength #SummerReading

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

Thrilled to be back at Csehy Summer School of Music making music with so many incredible young musicians and inspiring colleagues. Thank you, campers, for a marvelous week, and congratulations on your tremendous Week 1 concert!

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

No better way to beat the summer heat than with family at the ballpark! Amazing crowd for @RedSox and @Royals @fenwaypark tonight.

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

A perfect day to experience another iconic #Boston landmark—thank you, @fenwaypark, for the introduction!

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

“Now high in the air above him, now welling up as if from the glens and valleys far below, [the song] floated through [Ransom’s] sleep and was the first sound at every waking…As a bird’s voice is to a flute, so this was to a cello…” —C. S. Lewis, Perelandra #SummerReading

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

“The images we have and which endure for most baseball players are those fashioned by a cumulative process…it is of uncommon deeds…fashioned again and again by a given player reflecting both excellence and consistency…” —David Halberstam, The Teammates #SummerReading

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

“[Great Groups] can coalesce only around something to which every member contributes but that exists outside the minds of the members, something that can only be achieved collectively.” —Warren Bennis & Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius #SummerReading

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

“But it was the Earth he was seeing...It was all there in that little disk—London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare...There, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk.” —C. S. Lewis, Out of The Silent Planet #SummerReading

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

Fingal’s Cave straight-ahead! Hearing strains of Mendelssohn over the sea at Giant’s Causeway...”train oil, sea gulls, and salted cod...”

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

Awed by the abundance and elegance of these Irish bluebells!

“...What is begun

Is unfinished. And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration...”

—Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 1979

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

“In and for that exalted moment all acts of peace that then had being through the world were deepened and knew their own nature more clearly....disordered beauty everywhere recognized again the sacred laws that govern it.” —Charles Williams, The Place of the Lion #SummerReading

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

A lovely commute to campus for today’s 2020 and 2021 Commencement ceremonies!

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

“He knew it was the right tree at once, partly because it stood in the very center and partly because the great silver apples with which it was loaded shone so and cast a light of their own down on the shadowy places where the sunlight did not reach.” #Narnia #ArborDay

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

On January 3, Tolkien’s birthday, my boys and I started reading The Lord of the Rings aloud at bedtime. Tonight we finished—a powerful, moving journey. “At last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water.”

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

Mesmerized by the emerging cherry blossoms, audacious fiddleheads, and stealthy barred owl espied at Long Hill. Grateful to @thetrustees for their work in helping to provide access to places of such beauty and respite.

[Benjamin Klemme @BenKlemme]

Even amidst the exams, projects, and papers of this busy midterm week, these dedicated musicians continue to invest in one another through generous listening and imaginative collaboration during our evening rehearsals. It is a joy to experience their artistry.