Moses tries new note
When operatic trio Sol3 Mio announced a two-year hiatus, they hadn’t fallen out - they wanted to get better. Moses Mackay talks to Jack van Beynen about a year of going it alone.
Moses Mackay was alone in November when he accepted the Tui for Highest Selling Album.
He was a little embarrassed. This was the third year his group, opera trio Sol3 Mio, had won the award.
Mackay is used to appearing at these events flanked by cousins and colleagues Pene and Amitai Pati, but this year the Pati brothers were in the US performing with the San Francisco Opera. It was left to Mackay to grin, shrug sheepishly and hold aloft the trophy.
In December 2015, Sol3 Mio announced they were taking a break of at least two years from their work as a group to focus on their individual careers.
It was an announcement that shocked a lot of people. Mackay was asked if there was something wrong with the group, if there had been some kind of bust-up. They had produced two best-selling albums, and tickets to their concerts were in hot demand. People couldn’t understand why they would risk losing the momentum they’d gained.
The truth was that the three of them had sat down and asked each other what they really wanted to do. Another year touring the same set of songs? Or something new?
‘‘We just feel that in order for us to grow, we need to go our separate ways, settle ourselves as individual artists, and then come back and create some more,’’ Mackay says.
Although Mackay was offered the chance to join the Pati brothers in San Francisco, as well as opportunities to sing in Italy, he instead elected to remain in New Zealand.
Mackay regularly goes to Takapuna Beach on Auckland’s North Shore to walk his puppy, Merch. He grew up not far from here, and as a kid he thought of it as his family’s beach.
Merch, he’s keen to tell me, comes from Murchison, a little town near the top of the South Island. Mackay was driving through there earlier this year when he spotted a cardboard sign by the road that read, ‘‘Free puppies’’.
On a whim he pulled over and was greeted by a little girl, who told him her dog had birthed a litter and she wasn’t allowed to keep them; he could help himself. Mackay did.
It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. He saw the puppies wriggling around together, he wanted one, and so he took one. His decision to stay in New Zealand instead of pursuing opportunities overseas was similarly emotional. He is, he says, an intuitive person. If something feels right, he does it.
Mackay hasn’t always been an opera singer. He was in the Rosmini College first XV, and played for North Harbour. As a teenager he played in jazz bands and wrote his own songs. He didn’t really know what classical music was until until the first class for his Bachelor of Music at the University of Auckland.
Tradition dictates that on the first day, first-year students have to sing a song to their classmates, and it’s expected that the song will be classical - that’s the focus of the course. On Mackay’s first day, the first student called up launched into a fluent Italian aria. Mackay sang Nat King Cole’s When I Fall in Love - a classic, although not exactly classical.
It was in that first class Mackay met Pene Pati. Although the two are cousins, it wasn’t until they’d started sitting together that they realised they were related.
After three years of study in Auckland and at the New Zealand Opera School in Whanganui, Mackay and Amitai Pati flew to Wales to join Pene at the prestigious International Academy of Voice. While in the UK they recorded their first album, Sol3 Mio.
The album, it’s fair to say, was a success. It’s been certified eight times platinum in New Zealand, and outsold even Lorde when it was released in late 2013.
Mackay says nobody picked the album to go so well. ‘‘When we recorded it we didn’t want to make money. We wanted to record a moment that we were living right then. We were young guys eager to learn, we wanted to record this music for people to listen to,’’ he says.
‘‘We always have to remind ourselves it’s never about the money. Just create something that’s amazing that your kids will be proud of. And it you’re doing that, you’re all good.’’
That, really, is why staying in New Zealand felt like the right decision. Mackay wanted to create. He remembered a time before he was an opera star, when he wrote his own songs and played in bands. He wanted to do all that stuff again. And so he’s doing it.
‘‘I love the world of music, I hate being pigeonholed. That’s always when you start feeling a bit trapped and uncreative.’’
The day after I speak to Mackay, he’s due to sing Handel with a full choir at the Bruce Mason Centre. The following night he’s doing Dean Martin and Jimmy Fontana with a three-piece band at an unveiling for Maserati. Next year he’s in Carmen. He’s writing songs for an album which he’s due to record in January, a project he describes as a ‘‘little child that’s growing by the day’’.
At the end of the year he’ll be reunited with the Pati brothers for an annual tradition: Sol3 Mio’s Christmas in the Vines tour. It’ll be the first time he’s seen them all year, and he’s looking forward to it.
Christmas in the Vines is all about family. Mackay says Sol3 Mio organised the first concert because they felt there was a lack of family-friendly Christmas events in the country, and all performing musicians are encouraged to bring their families along.
As the only member of the trio in New Zealand, the brunt of the work for this year’s event has fallen to Mackay. He’s been meeting with the other musicians the group has roped in for the concert, who include Dave Dobbyn, Stan Walker and Hayley Westenra. He’s been enjoying it; meeting people is one of his favourite things about what he does.
People often ask Mackay how it feels to be successful. He usually tells them that he isn’t. Not yet, at least.
‘‘I’m not complete yet. I’m not fully happy, I’m not fully happy with my life. Happiness is what I’ve been chasing, and what I’ll continue chasing.’’
‘‘I think once I’ve had my own family and I’ve set myself up, that’s when the true happiness starts.’’ ● Christmas in the Vines with Sol3 Mio and guests will play Wellington on December 15, Christchurch on December 17, and Auckland on December 18.