Esther Centers

Cape Cod is a haven for all of the Lairds and Christopher spent so many loving days with his Grandfather here. He shared Summers on the Cape with his siblings as children, and played with my Daughter when she was five.  Over the years he brought so many friends, as this was a second home…

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…

I met Chris briefly in 2018 when we were both watching the rehearsals of the Royal Opera House’s Ring Cycle, and I’m still struck by his effortless warmth and the kindness he radiated.  On one day, he and I followed the music using a single score and it makes me smile to remember how clearly…

Christopher entered our lives last year when he came to Norfolk to conduct the Yorke Trust’s summer opera, The Tempest. On our journey from the station when he told me the choristers would be singing the opera choruses from memory, it didn’t seem achievable. I soon discovered that through Chris’ absolute belief in peoples’ abilities,…

Dear Molly and Quentin, Der Tote ist nicht tot. Er lebt in uns fort auf geheimnisvolle Weise. Er fügt gleichsam seine besten, nun von der Last des Leidens erlösten Kräfte den unseren hinzu. So beginnt er, uns selbst zu verwandeln und läutert in unserem Herzen sein zweites, höheres Wesen. Wo echte Liebe lebte, sterben die…

College was a really formative time in my life. I know that this was the case for Zeke. That he embraced the freedom to rediscover himself is signaled most obviously by the fact that all of us who met him in Hanover know him as Zeke, not as Chris or Christopher. In fact, because the…