As music director of Christ by the Sea Methodist Church, Marcos Flores knows how to make a joyful noise. But his definition might have changed after a month long sabbatical in Italy.
Now, the first thing his co-workers hear when he arrives for work is the roar of his new red motorcycle, a Honda CTX 700.
“Let’s just call it a mid-life crisis,” says his boss, Senior Pastor Clifford Melvin, laughing last week as Flores, 45, stumbles through the church’s office pulling his helmet off his head. It is the first time he has ridden in 16 years.
In his office, Flores hangs his nylon protective jacket next to the choir robes. He peels off his gloves with particular reverence, laying them on his desk. “The gloves protect the concert pianist’s hands,” he says.
If the motorcycle ensures his joie de vivre, the church is ensuring his musical inspiration. For Flores’ 10th anniversary of service, the church paid his way to stay in Ravenna, Italy, for a month to study with Nazzareno Carusi, a concert pianist and teacher of chamber music at a state conservatory in Udine. Carusi was artist in residence at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago and has performed throughout Europe and the U.S. including at Carnegie Hall and La Scala in Milan. He has also played with the strings ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic.
He takes very few piano students, says Flores, who made contact through Lorenzo Turchi-Floris, the guest conductor of the annual Summerfest concerts held at the church. Flores is hoping to bring Carusi to Vero for a concert. “We’ll remain friends for lifelong time,’’ Carusi wrote to Melvin.
It was Flores’ first time to Europe. He rented an apartment steps from the Adriatic Sea, and rode a bicycle 45 minutes each way to meet with Carusi. The two would play for two hours or more – “as long as it took,” Flores said.
“The whole concept of the sabbatical was for me to get renewal, to get fresh air and go even deeper into piano studies,” he says. “It fit perfectly. I’m in the middle of my life, and in the middle of my career. I’ve already accomplished my academic studies. I’ve got a beautiful family. Now came the time to set new goals.”
Marcos has had another adjustment to make this summer. His brother, Jose Daniel Flores, resigned as music director of Community Church. He has taken a post as director of Albany Pro Musica, a large community chorus in Albany, NY, and in addition has just signed on to direct a second choral group, the Vermont Philharmonic Chorus.
Marcos Flores accompanied the choir at Jose Daniel’s final service at the Community Church at the end of July. He played a Chopin prelude that his brother particularly likes.
When Rev. Bob Baggott asked the Flores family to come up to the front of the congregation, he pointed a finger at Marcos. “You stay down there!” he joked, an allusion to the flood of concern in the community that Marcos Flores may leave Vero, too.
That fear is unfounded, Flores says. “When my brother left, I got a lot of calls from people worried that I was going to leave with him, or I was going to take his job and leave Christ by the Sea. I always told them that I have a principle of never taking my brother’s jobs.”
With his children starting middle school and high school, Flores has no intention of leaving town. “It felt so good to come home not only to Vero but to Christ by the Sea,” he says.
The music program at Christ by the Sea has grown significantly in the decade since Flores arrived, following his brother to Vero; both grew up in Puerto Rico.
Flores has expanded the Sunday choir from 11 to on average 35 voices, with up to 50 performing in the Christmas and Easter cantatas, Flores’ signature productions. Those events include a full orchestra, a first for the relatively small island church. “Before I came, there had never been an orchestra in this church,” he says. “People said, why not use sound tracks?“
Flores recruits musicians from Stetson University as well as from the congregation and top students at Vero Beach High School’s orchestra program. When he moved the cantata from Sunday to Saturday night, “the church was packed for the first time in years.” Now, the cantatas are so popular that there are two performances, and the overflow crowd watches on video screens in the rectory.
There are also overflow crowds for the church’s concert series performances. Because of that added interest and support, the church has invested in stage lights, a state-of-the-art sound system, and a high-definition projection system with four robotic cameras, controlled from a booth built into the back of the church.
The church is now installing computer technology that will add the sounds of a French cathedral pipe organ to the existing organ. “We’re excited,” he says. “We don’t have the room for a pipe organ and getting a new electronic organ was costly also. All these efforts are to bring the highest quality of worship we can provide to our congregation and to visitors. That’s our motto.”
That American churches lend strong support to music piqued the interest of an Italian newspaper while Flores was in Ravenna, which sent a reporter to write a Q and A style interview with Flores.
“Western music was born in the churches of Europe,” he says. “They were mesmerized how a church sends me to Europe to study music and pretty much paid for all expenses.”
“There are hardly any churches in Europe that hire full-time musicians. Many of the organists at cathedrals in Europe are paid by the city. Here we have big concerts even with a small budget. They couldn’t believe it. ”
In addition to his full-time work at the church, Flores gives piano lessons to students from 10 to 88. “I always have a full studio,” says Flores. It includes scholarship students from the Vero Beach Opera Society. “I love teaching.”
Every other month, his students gather at one of their homes to play for each other and have a master class, and to listen to an informal lecture from an artist in the community. They have included a talk on Baroque art from artist and teacher Dawn Miller, and a lecture on Bach from an amateur historian, Leo Henriquez. This fall, author Carl Hiaasen is to lecture on literature – his son is one of Marcos’ students.
Hiaasen has his allure: piano lessons don’t always include getting to meet a celebrity author. Then again, as Flores points out, not every kid can point to a guy in a jacket and boots on a motorcycle and tell his friends, “Oh, here comes my piano teacher.”
The last time Flores had a motorcycle, he was getting his doctoral degree from Arizona State University. For six years, his Honda Nighthawk 750 was his only means of transportation; he even rode in tuxedo and tails on his way to concerts. “I was famous with my piano students. Some kids get bullied for taking piano,” he says. “But my students would say, ‘My piano teacher is cool!’“
