This weekend marks the first Independence Day since the nation’s four-year calamity lurched to its foregone bloody conclusion. As the dregs of that depraved era persist in uncoiling their tentacles, artists and others continue to hash out the role that art can play in the face of social regression. When things get really bad, what difference can it really make?

In an interview published this week in The New York Times, the pianist Igor Levit reflects on the recent death of his friend and mentor, the politically committed composer Frederic Rzewski: 

“Frederic was never so naïve as to believe that [his compositions] would change the world’s political outcomes. But he must have believed in the possibility of what music can do to people. It can provide people with an idea. A piano piece can’t save the world. But we can.”

— Thomas Micchelli, Co-Editor, Hyperallergic Weekend