Looking back on a festive holiday season, I was especially inspired this year by how many ACMP members made music together in their homes as part of their celebrations!

Shortly after ACMP hired me as its Executive Director back in August 2020, I realized that I was already connected with a number of people in the ACMP community. One such person was the violinist, pianist and professional conductor Nell Flanders, who was the Assistant Conductor for the Princeton Symphony Orchestra (where I serve as principal violist) at the time. (She now lives in Idaho, where she teaches at the Idaho State University and conducts the Idaho Civic Symphony. We were doing one of our first socially distanced concerts since the COVID-19 outbreak and I casually mentioned my new job. Nell was very excited, as her father Steven Flanders was a long-time member, and his parents were members before him.

Once we made that discovery, Nell invited me a few times to play chamber music with her, Steven and a few of their friends on Steven’s porch in Westchester, NY. Once it got colder and was also safe enough to play indoors with masks, we moved the sessions to his living room. Nell has a large family, and they all play chamber music for pleasure. She told me about their annual holiday chamber music party, and this year she invited me and my partner, the bassist Hilliard Greene!

On Sunday December 29, Steven and his children and grandchildren all gathered to play Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, and Bach’s Brandenburg 6 (there were a lot of us viola players!) and Brandenburg 3, and then everyone took turns playing chamber works for smaller forces, including Brahms’ B-flat major String Sextet, Schubert’s Trout Quintet, and Schumann’s Piano Quintet. At one point, Nell’s brother Ben Flanders, who is a fabulous professional singer, regaled us with a set of Russian art songs. And in the Russian spirit, the two young children of Nell’s close friend performed piano 4-hands arrangements of selections from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet. It turns out, they were a pretty good team of page turners too!

It was a fabulous party with people making music from 3pm until past 10pm – and much festive food and libations. Thank you, Steven, for inviting me this year!

Two days later I rang in the new year with a group of ACMP members and their friends in Queens, New York. Hilliard was with me, so of course we also played Schubert’s Trout Quintet, alongside Dvorak’s Piano Quintet, many pieces for piano four-hands and a few sets of art songs for soprano and piano. A great time was had by all, and I cannot think of a better way to start the new year!

And it turns out classical musicians are not the only ones who celebrate festive occasions by playing music in their homes. On New Year’s Day, I joined Hilliard at the annual party with his jazz musician friends Roberta Piket and Billy Mintz. A large group of musicians gathered at their home, and played music from the early afternoon well into the night.