Last July, a woman and her two daughters were murdered in Cheshire, CT when armed convicts broke into their house. Ten months later, Dr. William Petit, the only survivor of the attack, commemorates the lives of these three great women whom he loved. Through the recent Three School, Three Lives Concert, held last Saturday, April 19th, at Cheshire Academy, Petit joins with the surrounding community to celebrate the dynamic and energetic personalities of his lost loved ones with the equally dynamic music of singer-guitarist Matt Nathanson.
Readers may have heard of Matt Nathanson from his recent hit “Car Crash,” but this artist’s musical career goes back to the early nineties. He has released ten albums to date, and several of his songs have been featured on well-know televison shows such as Scrubs, and movies like American Pie and Wedding Crashers. Yet despite his fame, Nathanson has obviously not lost his compassion. “The moment Matt heard about my plans for a concert,” said William Petit during his brief speech to the audience before the concert, “He contacted us. He said, “I want to help, I want to be on board with this.” Miss Porter’s School, Chase Collegiate, and Cheshire Academy also offered to sponsor the event, as each of the Petit women had been connected with one or all of these schools in some way.
After a beautiful solo choral piece sung by three Cheshire girls, Nathanson took the stage unaccompanied, carrying only an acoustic guitar. From the moment he started playing, his mastery of the instrument was clear, and his vocals were loud and powerful. In between songs, he would re-tune his guitar and strum a few chords on it while talking and joking with the audience. After one particularly energetic song, he noticed he had started to perspire. “You know its getting good when I start to sweat,” he jokingly remarked. The knot of pre-teen girls surrounding the foot of the stage let out a chorus of giggles, and the concert continued in full swing.
Matt played his better-known songs first, and then started to play tunes from some of his earlier albums, giving a brief explanation of what each song was about before he began. However, he was not beyond accepting requests from the crowd, and he even managed to throw in his own take on “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield and “Starfish and Coffee” by Prince, both of which got the whole audience singing and dancing. The talented musician finally left the stage to a standing ovation after over two straight hours of playing. “I was surprised by how good he was,” said Will Laverack ’11. “I’d never really heard of him before, but I really liked him once he got playing.”
It was hard to remember that the concert had been planned to raise awareness about a tragic and brutal murder, the way everyone was dancing in the aisles to “Jessie’s Girl”. Thanks to Nathanson’s energy and good humor, the gathering was not funereal, but rather a celebration of life – just the way the Mrs. Petit and her two daughters would have wanted it. Nathanson’s most memorable words came at the concert’s opening, as he introduced his award-winning song, “Car Crash”. “This song is…about being alive,” he said. “About how good it is to be alive.”
