Professional musicians give a pontoon concert on Rogers Lake
Were those the delicate strains of a Mozart composition wafting across Rogers Lake on Friday night? Or a piece by Bach?
Classical music was, in fact, drifting and dancing through the air on the lake located on the border of Lyme and Old Lyme. But it wasn’t someone playing a CD or a radio station. It was all live — three musicians on a pontoon boat meandering around the waterway, providing a pop-up COVID-19-era concert.
These were no ordinary musicians. Rachel Young is a cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra. Her husband, Anthony Manzo, is chamber bassist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, among other groups. Their friend Alexandra Osborne, who also was visiting from Washington, D.C., plays violin with the NSO.
This isn’t the first time that Young and Manzo have done outdoor mini-shows during the pandemic. They have been staging porch concerts every couple of weeks for their neighbors in Chevy Chase, Md., since March.
“We have a little following in the neighborhood,” Young said. “It is sort of mutual therapy. We’ve done a lot of online stuff, but playing for a live audience is so nice. The audience seems to really enjoy having something to get them out of the house and that they’re allowed to attend.”
Manzo echoed those sentiments: “Any opportunity for us to share what we do with people is welcome ... Our neighbors have clearly missed hearing it as much as we’ve missed playing it.”
It only made sense, then, for them to consider doing something similar when they came to Old Lyme to spend time with Young’s mother, Diana Young, at her cottage on Rogers Lake.
Young and Manzo come up to visit for about three weeks every August. Diana Young, who lives the rest of the year in Washington, D.C., has summered on Rogers Lake her whole life.
“We hadn’t seen her since COVID, so we all took the test and jumped into her pod,” Rachel Young said.
They were considering putting on a porch concert here, but their son, Adam, 14, suggested doing it on a pontoon boat instead. Neighbors on Rogers Lake, Tim and Ginny King, offered to drive them around in their pontoon boat.
On Friday night, that boat motored along the shoreline, where residents sat on their porch steps or brought chairs out onto their docks to listen to the music. Boats filled with people followed the pontoon that the musicians were on. At the end of each song, they applauded and offered cheers of “Bravo!” and “Thank you!”
Hungry to play
For professional musicians like Young and Manzo, work has dropped off precipitously since the pandemic began. Young did play with the NSO as part of revised Memorial Day and Fourth of July concerts, both featuring 20 NSO musicians onstage, all socially distanced. The orchestra is planning to do some chambers concerts for health workers in the fall, as well.
“But it’s been very light,” Young said. “ ... We’re all hungry to play.”
In addition to Friday’s gig, they will play at 4 p.m. Sunday, this time in an open lot next to Young’s mother’s garage across the street from 79 Shore Drive. Rachel Young and Manzo's daughter Kari, 12, who plays violin, will join them in concert.
They will ensure listeners adhere to social distancing guidelines. If there are a lot of people who turn up, they will hold a second overflow concert.
Considering the concert sites on Friday and Sunday, they have dubbed the combo of shows “One By Land and One By Sea.”
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