Pianist Yael Weiss has embarked in a thoughtful and timely project in preparation for the 250’s anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2020. At some point she reached out to me about women composers from Venezuela and Cuba, but at that moment I did not realize the full impact of her concept.  Beethoven was, after all, a man who espoused and defended the ideals of liberty and justice;  the famed anecdote tells of his tearing the original dedication of his Third Symphony to Napoleon, when he betrayed those ideals by crowning himself emperor. Thirty-two individual piano pieces evoking Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas will reaffirm these values, composed by artists from countries and nations who struggle against wars and tyrannies of different political persuasion but the same predictable atrocities.  I will look forward to listening to this project, which represents so well the role that artists must continue to have in our communities, asking us to connect with the best of our humanity.