We are living in a difficult time. As Americans feel the impact of tariffs and the Trump/Netanyahu war in Iran, beyond our borders the suffering of others is far worse.

But there is another world out there where respite might be sought and found… music.

Not the stadium music of Taylor Swift, with glittering dresses and howling crowds, costing hundreds, even thousands of dollars, per ticket. The music to which I refer is quieter and more intimate, as it softly penetrates the open heart.

We have had that music in Nahant. It was called the Ellingwood Chapel series, and it had its roots on Swallow Cave Road where, long ago, a group of neighbors who loved to sing gathered together. One of them, Nancy Cantelmo, continues to sing in Nahant today. They called themselves the Swallow Cave Singers and included Winnie Hodges, Karen Falat, and Dick Carter who, at that time in the mid-1990s, sat on the Board of The Boston Conservatory. Another Nahanter, Andrea Nelson, led the group.

Other voices were sheltered in Nahant. Acclaimed bass-baritone Don Wilkinson performed from Boston to New York, from Europe to Australia, and eventually, ultimately, in Nahant’s Ellingwood Chapel. A turning point in the town’s musical history came in 2005 when the Austrian soprano, Ute Gfrerer, arrived in Nahant to marry Dr. Christophe Wald, also a musician but who chose to follow the medical profession instead. They took up residence on Swallow Cave Road in the very house where the Swallow Cave Singers first sang.

A few years before, as part of the Nahant Cultural Council, I had established the Ellingwood Chapel Concert Series. It was to last some 25 years. The arrival of Ute Gfrerer and her extraordinary talent drew much wider attention to the series. Though most attendees were still from Nahant, suddenly they were from all over Greater Boston and the North Shore. Performers ranged from the Harlem String Quartet to Jose Lezcano on Spanish guitar; from Tanya Blaich, a pianist from the New England Conservatory, to Thomas Stumpf, a pianist from many places, who performed Beethoven’s 9th Symphony transcribed for piano!

A music reviewer in the Musical Intelligencer, Alex Ludwig, attended a concert and was captivated by the Ellingwood Chapel. He wrote, “This intimate stone hall, with white stucco and stained-glass windows, sits atop a small hill rising from Nahant Bay. It is an ideal setting for chamber music.” Maggie Cole, the American/British pianist and Haldan Martinson, principal violinist with the Boston Symphony, performed a work there by the Finnish composer Arvo Pärt, Spiegel im Spiegel. As it came gently to an end, it was joined by the clear soft sound of weeping in the audience.

In 2009, music in Nahant suddenly appeared in the Town Hall, where musicians came to celebrate the retirement of legendary Town Clerk Harriet Steeves. One of them was the internationally known Nahant harpsichordist Don Angle who astonished the crowd (including other musicians) with his theme and variations based on “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

Also on stage at the Nahant Town Hall was the soprano Shea Mavros. Born in Nahant, she sang the role of Mimi in La Boheme, the Italian opera set in Paris. In the more intimate setting of the Ellingwood Chapel she sang the sadly lilting Irish ballad The Fields of Athenry.

For many years Nahant’s Victor Dal Pozal created musical programs with the students at Johnson School. The Nahant Cultural Council, which I chaired at the time, brought students from the Johnson School’s sixth grade (and parents) to the Chapel to hear and engage with the extraordinary Boston Symphony pianist Vytas Baksys.

In the early years of the 21st century, from the glare of brass on the heights of East Point, to the softly intimate sounds of weeping in response to violin and piano in the Ellingwood Chapel, accompanied by the occasional cries of gulls, the sounds of music lingered with the sound of the sea along the shores of Nahant.

On Saturday, Ute Gfrerer, who raised the Ellingwood Concerts to its highest level, will take the stage at the Nahant Community Center to sing of love in its many forms. She has brought music to the children of Nahant as well as to incarcerated women in Essex County. She has sung in Vienna and Salzberg, New York, and Paris. Saturday evening she sings in Nahant. There are still some tickets available (email [email protected]).

She will sing from the stage of the Serenity Room. I and others will seek and find it there.

Also, can’t believe that you rejected “Multiple Tonal Infinite Regressions Through Personality, Across Time, in Music” but… fine. We’ll go with “Violin and Piano: In the Mirror of Time.”

Jim Walsh is a writer who lives in Nahant.