This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
11/07/2018 07:30 AMLike most people who end up with a profession in music, Mark Bailey started when he was young. Between his school’s music program and begging his parents for lessons, Mark quickly picked up a lot of musical skills.
Early on, he learned to play the piano and the viola, even shifting into composition in 7th grade.
“It was a combination of singing, playing viola, and piano all throughout my younger years,” Mark says.
This diversity of talents brought him through college to the career he has today. Now, he teaches at Yale and is the artistic director of the American Baroque Orchestra.
This Veterans’ Day, Mark will perform with Kevin Sherwin, an associate conductor with the American Baroque Orchestra, and several other musicians during the dedication ceremony for the town’s post-Vietnam veterans’ memorial on the North Haven green. The event will take place at 11 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 11
Though he’s always been interested in music, he says the specifics of his career met with a few notable twists and turns.
At one point, he was interested in becoming an opera singer. And then, someone recommended that he take ballet, that doing so would give him a better sense of how to move on stage.
After exploring those options, he then took a conducting class at the Eastman School of Music. He took it because a friend was taking it. Quickly, conducting became his new interest.
“It was the sort of thing I was in love with before I even necessarily knew what was going on and then realized it was really having such impact,” he says.
Still, many of Mark’s old skills have carried over into his conducting life.
“Ballet has been a big part of my success as a conductor,” Mark says. “It taught me how to control my body, my arms, and things like that.”
After the Eastman School of Music, Mark went to Yale for his graduate work and he’s been there “almost ever since” but for a break for an administration internship at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., before returning to Yale where he serves as the director of historical sound recordings.
Even his challenges have worked out well for him. Faced with the loss of a grant following the 2008 crash, Mark was fortunate to have the financial security to take the year to pursue his own interests. He started the American Baroque Orchestra, an organization that plays the music of the 17th- and 18th centuries, focusing on American Colonial music.
“This group is an extension of my love for historical music played on historical instruments,” Mark says.
His graduate work prepared him, providing him with an interest in the particular ways that historical instruments differ from modern instruments, knowledge that propelled him into the creation of this group.
“I didn’t necessarily intend it to be focused on American music—it wasn’t that we were just going to perform Colonial music,” Mark says. “As it turns out, by virtue of various opportunities, I’ve come to discover and appreciate…early American music.”
As the orchestra shifted to American Colonial music, Mark found the genre to be an underperformed and poorly understood one, making it a more interesting target than he had thought.
During its more popular concerts, the orchestra performed American Colonial music alongside its contemporary genre from Europe to outline the influences and similarities. Mark says that the concerts are different from other orchestras.
“One of the things we’re trying to do is bring this kind of music to audiences that don’t often get to experience it firsthand,” Mark says. “Our concerts are interactive. We talk about the music [and] talk a little bit about the instruments.”
Mark says that keeping their audiences close to the orchestra and making their shows more interactive is one of the things that has made their orchestra successful in a time of dwindling audiences.
“As a conductor you get to have influence on the broadest array of music. It’s very demanding because you have to know as much as you possibly can,” he says. “You have to balance the big picture and the little picture.”
Although Mark spends most of his musical time conducting, he enjoys performing and still has the opportunity to do so on occasion.
“Sometimes I’m happy to let someone else actually do the conducting for once and just sit and play,” Mark says.
The American Baroque Orchestra has performed all over the northeast and even the west coast. It played in North Haven a few years ago at Hope Church, performing Händel’s Messiah.
To nominate a Person of the Week, email Nathan Hughart at n.hughart@Zip06.com.
The Town of North Haven together with the American Legion Post 76 will hold a Veteran’s Day Ceremony featuring the dedication of the new Post-Vietnam Memorial Monument on Sunday, Nov. 11 at 11 a.m. on the North Haven Green. All are welcome to attend.