Mark Messenger

Dear Quentin, Molly, Lydia, Purple, Samuel, Sindre, and Kin, All I can do is to create this embrace, this vessel, of peace and love where sorrow can reside while you merge into this loss and these crushing adjustments. Grief and love are strange bedfellows, but I hope that the colossal force of the second in…

Christopher – or Zeke, as we called him at Dartmouth – and I became dear friends in college despite never having taken a single class together. We have always shared a love of languages and as undergraduates, we had a common (and very lucrative!) side job as teaching assistants for introductory French and German courses….

Thank you Zeke for the unforgettable moments when you, Sindre and I were rehearsing Lohengrin on my couch in Cologne, before we went to see the opera. Andreas and I had the first chance to see you conduct in Rheinsberg. we stopped at my parents’ for a short visit in Rosbach and they were fascinated…

Medical summer retreat in 2.000\. Christopher 17 years old. Even then he was already a conductor. Somehow he had everything in hand. He was somehow indispensable in this pioneering phase of an anthroposophical clinic. Not only because he started singing together with patients and coworkers in the early morning or performed as an entertainer and…

Chris m’a impressionnée par sa curiosité, il était avide de tout ce qu’il pouvait apprendre, avec tellement d’envie et de lumière… Il aura aussi été celui qui m’aura sensibilisée au “zero waste”, préoccupation qui m’accompagne désormais tous les jours… Thank you Chris, rest in peace…

I have observed this young man’s career and many accomplishments with admiration via FaceBook.  I never met him.  Yet through the pictures, postings, and his music, I felt a great connection.  As a musician, I grieve the loss of his talents in the future.  As a teacher, I grieve for those who taught him and…