Year: 2024

Classes on offer at the Manchester Craft Market

By Zachary Lewis
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Jessica Moores has created a bazaar of locally sourced and handcrafted goodies at the Mall of New Hampshire.

“This is our eighth year,” Moores said. “We started just as a craft fair with different tables all throughout the mall or we had an empty store for about nine weeks where 20 people sat at their tables to sell what they’d made.”

It was a good start, but Moores was encouraged to grow.

“Someone said to me, ‘This is great, but I don’t want to sit here all day. I want to put my stuff on a shelf, and you sell it for me.’ So I came back a few months later and I told the mall I want to give people a spot to sell their stuff on a shelf and see how that goes.”

After she spruced up an old pet store she had been allocated by the mall, business continued to grow.

“We decided we needed a bigger store,” Moores said. Manchester Craft Market then moved to the space next door. This was the location where Moores started curbside pickup during the Covid years, which allowed her business to thrive, although it was an austere road at first.

“I did it all without any loans or credit cards in the beginning. I didn’t pay myself for a couple years and kept putting my money into the business, like free displays. This one here I got like seven years ago for free,” Moores said as she pointed to a glass display cabinet right next to the cash register. “I still use it. It makes me a ton of money.”

Manchester Craft Market had its first million-dollar year just a couple of years ago.

“A million dollars of New England-made products only. That was 2021,” she said.

“In 2023, in September, we moved into this space…. We grew from about 170 makers to 250. We also have a classroom space for workshops and classes,” Moores said.

The classes are a big draw for crafters and patrons alike.

“We’ve done a couple ceramic classes with fairy houses or polymer clay. People are hand-building their own mugs. Cookie decorating classes. It’s kind of its own separate little thing back there,” Moores said.

A calendar of classes and workshops can be found on their website but one does not need to be a seller here to be allowed to teach.

Another fun edition is the window display.

“I work really hard on my window display, which seems to really attract people. With our winter display people would stand out there and take pictures like it was Macy’s in New York, so that was really fun.” Moores said

How did Moores get started with this whole enterprise?

“I was a stay-at-home mom trying to pay off some student loans and I started making my own stuff,” Moores said. “I said, ‘I really need a place to sell this. Where do I sell it?’ I was walking through the mall one day and there were a bunch of empty stores at that point. I said, ‘I should do a craft fair in the mall.’ So I went to a local, like, Facebook moms group and said, ‘What do you guys think about this? Would you go?’ and they were all like, ‘Yeah, we would totally go.’ And now some of them are our regular customers….”

The support from the community allows Moores to celebrate the handmade wares of local makers, which she describes as “anything altered, designed, or with additional components. Generally, that gives our makers leeway to design an image and have it printed elsewhere to be a sticker or print. It allows them to buy different jewelry findings and assemble them to make something different. I am not asking them to silversmith, although some do.”

Moores reiterated that without the enthusiasm of these craft makers her business would not be possible.

“Every little spot in every corner in here is a different maker. It is 250 individual businesses that we are supporting. Some of them pay for their chemo meds with it, some of them pay their mortgage with it, some of them just make it for fun and make a couple bucks off of it. It is all local New England. We just have fun with it.”

Manchester Craft Market
1500 S. Willow St. in Manchester (inside the Mall of New Hampshire).
Hours: Monday through Saturday from 10am to 9pm, Sundays from 11am to 6pm.
Contact: 606-1351, manchestercraftmarket.com

Featured photo: Workshop space at Manchester Craft Market. Courtesy photo.

Symphony NH performs Game Over(ture)

By Michael Witthaus
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For many years, video game companies operated like old-school movie studios. Everything was done in-house, including the music. That began to change in the late 1990s, a shift that would impact the life of Austin Wintory, a young composer studying at USC. A lifelong gamer, Wintory had always been intrigued by the scores of Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda, but he had no interest in working 9 to 5 at a tech company.

“The whole appeal of being a composer is you make your own hours,” he said in a recent phone interview. “You pursue your own opportunities … perpetually take swings and gambles, and bet on yourself. It’s an entrepreneur-type path, like running a small business.”

One day, a fellow student invited him to work on a game he was developing. Wintory recalls it as “very humble, tiny little project” that itself went nowhere, “but it led to him introducing me to some of his classmates … in particular was this guy named Jenova Chen, who was working on his master’s thesis video game project.”

Flow, the game Chen was developing and recruited Wintory for, became an online hit in 2006. Its success led Sony to hire them to code a version for the PlayStation, which had more music composed by Wintory. It became a hit on that platform, as did a sequel (that he didn’t work on).

In 2009, the team reunited to make Journey, a game that “exploded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination,” Wintory said. “It essentially made me a so-called video game composer, even though I’ve never seen myself that way… I was always passionate about games, and always wanting to be a composer. In hindsight … they were always on a collision course.”

Journey became the first video game to be nominated for a Grammy, shoehorned into the “Score Soundtrack for Visual Media” category. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score for Girl With the Dragon Tattoo took the prize, but Wintory set a precedent that led to the creation of a video game category 10 years later. He’s been nominated both years it’s existed.

He responds with humility at the notion that he’s some kind of trailblazer.

“I honestly find it baffling; I don’t claim to be the one who should have been the first,” he said. “Many iconic scores came before me that simply weren’t nominated.”

Over the years, Wintory has become friendly with Symphony NH Music Director Roger Kalia, and on March 23 and March 24 he’ll guest conduct music from Journey, along with the Final Fantasy Seven’s climactic finale “One Winged Angel,” a piece he sheepishly requested Kalia let him lead at the concert.

“It’s always fun to conduct more than just my own music, but I am the guest, it’s Roger’s show; I’m not trying to pull focus or steal undue podium time,” he said, adding that his selection recalls operatic works like Verdi’s Requiem. “Carlos Orff’s ‘O Fortuna’ from Carmina Burana. It’s a piece in that kind of a vein, an absolute massive grand symphonic statement. It’s a real popular one because that game was just such a landmark.”

Kalia, he continued, has conducted Journey himself several times — on the West Coast where Wintory lives, and with the Evansville Symphony Orchestra. Wintory considers the Game Over(ture) concert, which will also include music from Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers and Prince of Persia,an ideal way to help expand the reach of classical music.

“What I love about these kinds of shows is they’re a real celebration of … cultural touchstones that people are likely to be imminently familiar with,” he said. “I’m a believer in the preservation of the classical repertoire, and the solemn duty orchestras consign themselves to. Making sure that this massive, particularly orchestral canon is well looked after, taken seriously, performed and continuously exposed to new audiences.”

Beyond that, though, is a need for “showcasing the music audience members are likely to have some kind of contact with or familiarity with on a day-to-day basis; not just appeal to so-called classical music lovers. Roger has a very similar mind and is a great advocate of that sort of programming. I’m incredibly lucky and grateful to be a periodic beneficiary of it.”

Game Over(ture)
When: Saturday, March 23rd, 8pm
Location: Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $20.75 and up at symphonynh.org

Also Sunday, March 23rd, 3pm, Keefe Center for the Arts, 117 Elm St., Nashua ($10 and up)

Featured photo: Avatar of Austin Wintory created by Angela Bermúdez. Courtesy photo.