when old friends sing together

Berlin: Shared Night at B-Flat. My friend Alexa and her husband Jens host this night once a month, on the first or second Monday of the month, sharing the stage with another, invited, act. Except last night it was a somewhat unique constellation. It was in fact a congregation of old friends who had met fifteen years prior as music students in New York City. Struggling, searching for their voice, their identity, trying to stay afloat in the ever chugging maelstrom that is spitting out the ignorant and devouring the hopeless. Each one of us was hesitantly trying to assemble a musician's life, not quite knowing or recognizing all the pieces of the puzzle, searching for his or her particular way through an undulating maze.
Now, fifteen years later, in Berlin, things are different. Alexa Rodrian, Beat Kaestli and I arrive here slightly bruised by life's daily challenges, somewhat tired and worse for wear after years of pushing, creating, living, becoming partner, wife, mother. But also with a clear sense of who we are, as artists, as friends, as human beings. Each one of us raises their voice, their own, unique voice, and in the end, we come together in a song or two that bears witness to our deep disparity as beings and personalities that nonetheless blend to a true, ringing harmony.