Brian Dolzani
Winter Blues Concert Series
State House Square Food Court
Hartford
February 10, 2026
I wish that Brian Dolzani had held his concert on Feb. 9 instead of 10. On the 9th, I was having a conversation with my son that turned into one of those “life lesson” lectures that I didn’t plan beforehand, so I ended up rambling for an hour.
It would have been much easier to pull out my recordings of Dolzani, who sang movingly about the cyclical yet unpredictable nature of life during his hour-long set as part of the ongoing Winter Blues concert series.
Dolzani opened his set with “Open to Surprise,” a song about how the only certainty in life is that things change. He sang about friends growing apart and children growing up. What I liked most about the song was the refrain, “chasing a sound only they can hear.” It’s an important reminder that the people in our lives have their own destinies, and we have to accept that our lives and theirs may intertwine only for a time.
But Dolzani doesn’t frame these changes in terms of woe and loss. “I Wonder” is a good companion piece to “Surprise” because it expounds on the idea of moving on. In the song, Dolzani wonders about all the great mysteries of life – love, death, fate, and the interiority of others. According to him, there’s only one way to find answers:
Hold me, but someday let me go
The endless sky is where I point my arrow
Cause I wonder just how far there is to go
One of the most difficult skills to learn as we age is how to hold contradictory ideas together. Yes, we need love and companionship, but we also need space and freedom to grow. Letting go of something or someone you love is a painful but necessary process.
The song “Moonlit Love” deals with how important that pain is to our lives. Despite its title, “Moonlit Love” isn’t really a love song in the traditional sense. It’s about how love shapes us and transforms us. That kind of transformation can only occur at night, in the moonlight, away from the sun that Dolzani describes as “overexposure. As is his style, the thesis of Dolzani’s work is repeated for the benefit of the listener:
I wouldn't trade my sorrow for anything
It's through my pain that I've learned to sing
Growth, change and pain all travel hand in hand. Dolzani’s music is built around that them. His songs offer both reassurance for those of us who have experienced this truth, and a guide for those who are still to learn it. These are all lessons I tried to convey to my son when we talked. Next time, I’m just gonna hand him a Brian Dolzani CD.
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