Greg Stepanich

Farewell, friends and music lovers

After four years and almost 500 entries, it’s time to say farewell to the readers of this blog.

As you may already know, The Palm Beach Post has offered buyouts to many of its staff members, and I’ve decided to accept that offer and move on to other things. I’m quite nervous about it, but also very excited: This will be a chance to get back to the music I’ve tried over the years to finish writing, and even to think about exploring other careers altogether.

For the time being, I’ll still be here in South Florida, and I plan to write about local classical music events for my own blog — which I plan to set up over the next couple days — and for another Website, so look for me on the Web if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read here.

I have been privileged to hear a great many fine afternoons and evenings of music over the past 10 years here at The Post, and it’s been a joy to get even more coverage of them into the paper, at least digitally, by means of this blog. The most important thing I’ve discovered is that this part of the country has a classical music community that is bigger and more active than I had thought. There are literally times at the height of the season in December through March that there are three or four good events on each weekend day, and sometimes I’ve found it necessary to get to a couple of them on the same day.

I’ve heard from a lot of fascinating people as I’ve done this blog, and I hope to keep hearing from them in the future, once I reestablish my Web presence.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for loving the music.

Here’s a young pianist named Kimball Gallagher playing the first movement of Beethoven’s Les Adieux sonata: