Everything is cool when you're part of a team

Tickets are on sale for Winter Baroque!
Sunday, December 17 at 3:00 at St. Paul’s

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***I love playing in St. Paul's in August***

Unlike August, when St. Paul’s approaches schvitz-like levels of heat and I need to consume an electrolyte recovery drink after every concert, December brings the aroma of wood smoke, trees wrapped in lights, and the promise of that crunching sound of boots on newly-packed snow. I love Newburyport in winter.

***Teamwork and collaboration:***
***“The Seven Samurai,” Kurosawa’s masterpiece and***
***Toshiro Mifune’s scene-stealing star turn.***

Recently I’ve been chewing over the joy I take in this profession due to my love of music vs. the satisfaction I take in the process of making music with musicians. Is it fun because of the music itself, or because I enjoy working as part of a small group of passionate expert craftsmen? How similar is this to working with a team of aerospace engineers, or in a lab, a documentary film crew, or on a marketing-research team? Maybe alpine search and rescue teams feel like this, or high-end restaurant kitchens.

Essential to the ethos of NCMF is throwing the doors of our team of musicians open to the public for two weeks in summer with tons of open rehearsals, hausmusiks, panel discussions, and the commissioned works. In lieu of that for the Winter Baroque concert, I sat down with trumpeter Perry Sutton and harpsichord player John McKean so you can get to know them. (Violinist Cynthia Roberts and cellist Eliana Razzino Yang’s conversations are coming soon.) None of this would exist without NCMF’s amazing and hard-working board and our brigade of volunteers. (If anyone is interested in joining the board or volunteering, please contact me.) Even our audience, so many of them loyal for so many years, is another kind of team, all coming together for a shared aesthetic experience.