June in Sound: Music for Minds That Won’t Sit Still

This month’s music selection is made for the busy brain — not the background-music crowd. These are pieces that hold your attention without hijacking it, each with something to say. We start with almost an entire day's worth of the string quartets of Shostakovich — music that fidgets, thinks, and never quite settles — before rising into Holst’s Hymn of Jesus. There is plenty in here that reminds of the better known Planets suite. It's a luminous piece that grows from quiet invocation to blazing affirmation. Bernstein’s West Side Story suite brings rhythm and rage in equal measure, and then we finish with my personal favourite: Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony. It’s a symphony, yes — but also a protest, a warning, and a memory.

​

Use these as you work, write, and wrestle with the world. Let them match your mood or shift it. They’re less background, and more ballast.