A Moment Beyond the Noise photos and words by Jonathan Levitt
On September 18, 2026, I felt genuinely blessed to encounter something beautiful in the heart of New York City.
Inside Adler Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, I experienced an evening of music that meant far more to me than simply attending a concert. It was an encounter with extraordinary musicianship, but it was also an opportunity to step outside the relentless noise of everyday life and enter a different kind of space, a space of beauty, contemplation, rhythm, and perhaps something spiritual.
I think we all need those spaces.
We are living through a time when it can feel almost impossible to escape the constant barrage of terrible news, political conflict, economic anxiety, and the seemingly endless stream of things demanding our attention. We wake up and reach for our phones. We read another headline. Another crisis. Another argument. Another piece of bad news.
The noise never seems to stop.
And then, sometimes, something happens that allows us to step outside of it.
For me, that something was music.
L. Shankar’s performance on his extraordinary double violin was not simply technically impressive. It was transporting. The music seemed to exist in a place removed from the ordinary concerns of the world outside those walls. The extraordinary interplay between Shankar and the percussionists created something that felt alive, immediate, and deeply human.
There was virtuosity, certainly. But virtuosity alone isn’t what moved me.
It was what the musicianship made possible.
The music created room to breathe.
Shankar’s double violin is an extraordinary instrument, but watching him play it, I became less interested in the instrument itself and more interested in what emerged from it. At times the sound seemed almost impossibly expansive, while at other moments it could be delicate and intimate. The music moved through different emotional landscapes without needing words to explain where it was taking us.
And perhaps that is one of the great gifts of music.
It doesn’t always tell us what to think.
It gives us a place to feel.
The rhythmic interplay between the violin and percussion was mesmerizing. The musicians were not merely performing alongside one another. They were communicating. One musical phrase seemed to invite another. A rhythm would emerge, develop, and transform. There was discipline and precision, but also spontaneity and conversation.
It reminded me that great musicianship is not simply about technical mastery. It is about listening.
Really listening.
And in a world in which so many of us are constantly talking, reacting, scrolling, arguing, and consuming information, there was something profoundly beautiful about simply sitting still and listening.
I also found myself thinking about the spiritual dimension of music.
I don’t necessarily mean spirituality in a strictly religious sense. Perhaps it is something deeper than that. Perhaps it is contemplation. Perhaps it is simply the feeling of connecting with something larger than the narrow concerns of our everyday existence.
What that deeper thing is may be different for every person.
For me, I don’t feel the need to define it.
I only know that I felt it.
For a few hours, I was able to step outside the relentless circumstances of the human condition and simply experience beauty. And that relief was meaningful. It was therapeutic.
There is something profoundly restorative about being reminded that the world is not only the headlines we read, the arguments we witness, the economic pressures we experience, or the tragedies that occupy our attention.
There is also beauty.
There is creativity.
There is human connection.
There is music.
And there are people who dedicate their lives to creating it.
That is why I believe live music is so important.
There is something fundamentally different about experiencing extraordinary musicianship in the same physical space as the people creating it. You aren’t listening through headphones or speakers. You are sharing the room with the musicians. You are hearing the vibrations travel through the air. You are witnessing the communication between performers in real time.
You are there.
And that presence matters.
The musicianship that evening made me profoundly grateful, not only for L. Shankar and the extraordinary artists who shared the stage with him, but also for the people who made the evening possible.
I felt particularly grateful to the wonderful team at the New York Society for Ethical Culture for helping create a place where an experience like this can happen.
In the middle of New York City, one of the loudest and most relentlessly energetic cities in the world, they created a space where people could stop.
Listen.
Think.
Feel.
And experience something beautiful.
That is something worth supporting.
Arts organizations, musicians, concert presenters, and cultural institutions do something that can be easy to underestimate. They create opportunities for human beings to experience something beyond the immediate demands of survival and daily life.
They remind us that life is not only about getting through the day.
It is also about experiencing the day.
About being moved.
About being surprised.
About encountering something beautiful enough to make us forget, even temporarily, everything that weighs on us.
That evening, L. Shankar’s music gave me that gift.
I left Adler Hall carrying more than a memory of an extraordinary concert. I left with a renewed appreciation for the importance of beauty itself.
Maybe that sounds overly sentimental.
But I don’t think it is.
I think beauty is necessary.
I think contemplation is necessary.
I think we need moments when the noise stops.
And I think music, particularly live music performed at this caliber, can provide exactly that.
It doesn’t solve the world’s problems. It doesn’t make the terrible news disappear. It doesn’t change the political arguments or repair the economy. It cannot eliminate the difficulties that are part of being human.
But for a little while, it can give us somewhere else to be.
And sometimes that is incredibly powerful.
Sometimes relief is not insignificant.
Sometimes beauty is not frivolous.
Sometimes a few hours spent listening to extraordinary musicians can remind us that there is still something deeply beautiful about being alive.
That is what this evening meant to me.
I feel grateful that I was there.
Grateful to L. Shankar and the musicians who shared their extraordinary gifts.
Grateful to the people at the Society for Ethical Culture who helped bring that music into the heart of New York City.
And grateful simply to have been given the opportunity to sit quietly, listen, and be transported somewhere beyond the noise.
I don’t know exactly what that place was.
Maybe it was spiritual.
Maybe it was contemplative.
Maybe it was simply a moment of profound human connection.
Perhaps each of us gets to decide.
For me, it was a reminder that despite everything happening in the world, there are still moments of extraordinary beauty available to us.
And when we encounter them, we should cherish them.
We should support them.
We should make room for them.
Because sometimes music doesn’t merely entertain us.
Sometimes it gives us back a little piece of ourselves.
And on that September evening in New York City, that is exactly what I felt I received.
