Posted on 10/12/2026 6:10:35 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
A Broadway show, a star-studded television tribute, a new hotel and museum in Nashville. As odes to Dolly Parton keep coming, a recording of the late country music singer honoring an American Jewish journalist has recently surfaced.
Never before released in America, the song, “A Bridge Across,” sung by Parton and accompanied by the Nashville Symphony, honors slain journalist Daniel Pearl.
The song features spare lyrics set to violin music composed in honor of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was brutally murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.
Originally recorded in 2008 by Parton, renowned fiddler Mark O’Connor, and the Nashville Symphony, the song was intended to be part of a compilation album called This is My America, produced and funded, oddly enough, in Canada but never released in the U.S.
It was O’Connor and his wife Maggie who resurrected the recording this fall, shortly after the deaths of Parton and another musician that connected the four artists: Oregon violinmaker Jonathan Cooper, who died in September.
Deeply troubled by the journalist’s murder in 2002, Cooper learned Pearl was an amateur fiddler and set out to create a quartet of string instruments – two violins, a viola and a cello – in the journalist’s honor. He entrusted the instruments to O’Connor to use during his annual summer music camp in North Carolina. Every year since, four students from the camp have received one of the Daniel Pearl memorial instruments to play for a year.
“These young people carry the message that love fights hatred through music-making and understanding that Daniel Pearl’s family want him remembered for,” O’Connor told The New York Times. Likewise, Cooper’s loving gesture inspired Parton, O’Connor said.
Canadian violinist Samantha Robichaud received one of the violins in 2005 and has gone on to become a successful recording artist with more than a half dozen albums. She has toured North America as an ambassador for the Daniel Pearl Foundation, sharing Pearl’s story, including his passion for music and its power to change lives. Enter songwriters Tom McBryde and Lynn Wilbanks, whose introduction to Robichaud inspired verse.
On the album, the Nashville Symphony played one of Robichaud’s compositions while Parton introduced Pearl to listeners.
“He believed that music was something that could cross all social barriers, political borders and imaginary boundaries,” Parton says, before singing McBride’s and Wilbanks’ lyrics.
“A bridge across a question one journey begins, one step at a time to a place within.
A bridge across a border, a hand reaching out one heart at a time to erase the doubt.
A bridge across a difference can close a divide, one song to be sung on the other side.”
“It was perfect. She knows what he stood for,” Pearl’s father, Dr. Judea Pearl, told the Forward. “She was such a giving person.”
I always Remember Nick Berg
with Daniel Pearl.
.
RIP Gentlemen
Tangentially dr. Judea pearl is probably one of the most important mathematicians alive. I was watching an math oriented interview of him and the topic shifted to talking about his son. Till that point I didn’t know he was Daniel’s father. What he said about his son was so touching it left me in tears. God bless him and his family. God bless Dolly Parton. By the by his major work is titled Causality
Thank you for posting,I never heard it ...
Beautiful song.
Thanks for sharing the link.
Nice.
Beautiful song, lovely string work. For all her glitzy exterior, Dolly had depths. RIP
The memorial string instruments is such a touching tribute. God bless and comfort Daniel’s surviving family.
I always remember Obama going golfing immediately after Daniel Pearl's beheading was announced.
RIP gentlemen.
Good!
India has killed Abdul Rauf Azhar, the Pakistani Al Qaeda terrorist who brutally beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl on video in 2002.
X ^ | May 8, 2025 | Persian Jewess
Posted on 5/10/2025, 10:25:08 AM by george76
India has killed Abdul Rauf Azhar, the Pakistani Al Qaeda terrorist who brutally beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl on video in 2002..
Daniel’s last words were: “My name is Daniel Pearl. My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am a Jew.”
Thank you India.
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