The Berkshires are widely acknowledged as a mecca of culture, especially for great music. We all know about Tanglewood and South Mountain Concerts. We read about them in The New York Times and The New Yorker.

These venues, and several others, feature some of the world’s best professional talent, and we are grateful for it. But what often flies under the media radar here is a number of homegrown, grass-roots community organizations that produce some first-rate music.

I am privileged to be a singer in one of them, the Berkshire Lyric Chorus, which is part of a larger Berkshire Lyric program of intergenerational teaching and music development that is quite unique. Artistic Director Jack Brown has a vision that brings in singers of all ages, and helps them develop and grow their talent. It is not unusual to have singers in two (and sometimes three) generations singing…