America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Hey, friends. I have a message for America in this angst-ridden season of public life. It is not so much to America as it is from America. It is a word of affirmation that was carried on the notes of North Carolina’s premier orchestra as the musicians played music that was not so much aspiration as it was confirmation.

It was, in the words of Rogers and Hammerstein, Some Enchanted Evening.

At least that was my experience Tuesday evening. It was an event that sat well in my soul, causing optimism and peace to filter all the way down into my heart and beyond.

Rebekah and I grabbed some folding chairs, walked two blocks up the street, and joined hundreds of other good people on the Town Common where we listened to the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra play their summer open air concert, featuring honest-to-goodness American music in celebration of our 250th birthday as a free nation.

The concert, opening with the National Anthem, sampled some of the most familiar of our compositions, ranging from “America the Beautiful,” to “West Side Story,” to Frank Sinatra’s “Fly me to the Moon,” to some dynamite big band jazz, to Aaron Copeland, to all five of the service branch songs, to John Philip Sousa and then some.

This music comes directly from the soul of our great country and it captures the American spirit beautifully. Music like this simply rings true, and it speaks eloquently of the aspirations and the imagination and the confidence and the sometimes brash audacity that is the U.S.A.

Two thirds of the way through the concert, the orchestra played a deeply sonorous richly expressive pitch-perfect interpretation of Shenandoah – and I could not help myself I cried.

Here’s the thing. This was the North Carolina Symphony offering an open air concert… in the historic district of an idyllic Norman Rockwell-esque classic North Carolina town… playing from the great American songbook… with people of all political parties and races and religions and cultural orientations joining together in a love-feast of simply being a community.

Clear Message:

We met a group of college-students from Durham, great kids who have traveled here to experience our unique town. They were wide-eyed and bursting with enthusiasm: for the concert, for the evening, for the people, for the atmosphere – for the sense of understated authentic Americana.

“I have never experienced anything like this,” one young man told me.

Well, this is America. This is what created all that optimistic, imaginative, truth-telling music we heard. This is what not only tells the story and speaks to my heart, it also counsels me – shouts even – that we are going to be alright. America is going to be okay.

I believe it. I believe it from sea to shining sea – DEREK