Hi, I’m Chris McKenna. I play a host of instruments, sing, dance poorly, and love to compose music. My stay at MacDowell allowed me to not only enjoy the splendor of the Steinway at Watson Studio but to also compose more than three hours of music, eat 94 wonderful meals, meet nearly 50 inspiring fellows, ask 2,945 curious questions, offer 266 bilious opinions and blather on for seven hours of mostly capricious nonsense. My MacDowell compositions are particularly dear to me, as I feel them the result of a collaboration with the air, the soil, the smell of the pines of New England, the nosey and hungry fox, the startled groundhog, and the glorious ghosts of all MacDowell artists and staff of the past, present, and future. More than a solitary endeavor of merely personal ambition, my experience here was indeed both career and life-altering, a luminous point on the map of my life, and a beneficent push toward the idea of a tiny contribution to the Art of Music. One of my long form song cycles, composed here, called 1,000 Embers may actually debut somewhere, sometime. I'll keep you posted my dear readers!
Christopher McKenna
Studios
Watson
Christopher McKenna worked in the Watson studio.
Built in 1916 in memory of Regina Watson of Chicago, a musician and teacher, this studio was donated by a group of her friends, along with funds for its maintenance. Originally designed to serve as a composers’ studio with room for performance, Watson was used as a recital hall for chamber music for a…