Ewan Cunningham plays at a Candlelight Collective Event. Credit: Courtesy of Cam Clarke

In the living room of a Euclid Avenue apartment one late Spring night, 30 people sat so quiet you could almost hear wax drip from the candles arrayed on the mantelpiece.

This was the latest in the Candlelight Collective’s living room concert series.

The collective is a concept first conceived by local musician Anthony “A.J.” Penizotto in 2019, who enlisted his friend Dan Nilsen for help with the project. Nilsen described seeing various talented music factions throughout Syracuse, small clusters of ambitious yet disconnected musicians, jockeying for elbow room in a city with enough room to share. Recognizing the common goals of these disparate talents, Penizotto saw the potential to promote collaboration over competition in the Syracuse music market.

“Me and AJ were both in a spot in life where we both felt very fortunate, where we felt very full, ” Nilsen said. “You know, rich, not financially, but sort of in a spiritual way.”

Together, the pair created the Candlelight Collective, an ever-growing group of folk artists and enthusiasts in the Syracuse area.

Penizotto envisioned a local scene like that of Greenwich Village in the 1960’s: no money involved, no stage, just musicians hanging out and playing. Penizotto and Nilsen handmade fliers advertising the first living room show in 2021, which attracted a smattering of friends and strangers as both spectators and performers.

“It immediately felt like something that had taken on its own personality or identity,” Nilsen said. “It very quickly stopped being a thing we were trying to do, like oh, a scene exists all of a sudden. It took two shows for this to feel like hey, this is happening, this going to continue to happen.”

In the last five years, the collective has blossomed from its humble beginnings into a fixture of the Syracuse cultural scene. The group hosts a range of live music experiences, including living room shows and open mics at local coffee shops like Salt City Coffee and Peaks Coffee Company.

Penizotto has since left his role with the collective to focus on his band The Salinas, leaving Nilsen at the helm. Outside of his full-time position as a nurse in Crouse Health’s Cardiac Care Unit, Nilsen runs the collective with help from Cam Clarke and Jack Stinziano, who work as co-director and treasurer, respectively. Both Clarke and Stinziano attended initial Candlelight concerts, and quickly joined as performers in ensuing shows.

Clarke has since shifted to filming the shows and managing the collective’s social media. After accepting Penizotto’s invitation to perform at the first shows, Clarke quickly became involved in the logistics of producing the living room shows. He saw it as a chance to make friends in a world in which many people’s primary form of connection is through digital means.

“People are craving in person interactions and being part of a community,” Clarke said.

Stinziano, meanwhile, has been a steady performer since he and his friend Ewan Cunnigham – another consistent Candlelight player – came to the third-ever living room show and took Nilsen up on his offer to play in the next one.

“Ewan and I made a deal, ‘you sign up, I sign up,” Stinziano said.

They’ve been performing ever since. Cunningham remembers feeling unsure about going through with that initial show, but said conversations with Nilsen convinced him to go through with it.

Nilsen, who doesn’t perform music at the living room shows, serves as emcee and features his quick wit with jocular introductions playfully teasing each performer. Cunningham recalled Nilsen introducing him in his first show as a “six-string picker and a window licker” – but said Nilsen, who had to sit behind the performers because of the tight space of the living room – was physically patting him on the back in reassurance when Cunningham made a few mistakes.

“There’s not many places that you can go out and play for the first time and have the immediate support that you get with Candlelight,” Cunningham said. “Because even if they’re lying to you, they’re going to lie really well.”

Gratitude for Penizotto and Nilsen’s encouraging pushes to perform is a penchant of Candlelight performers new and old; many, including Stinziano and Cunningham, had never before played live. Nilsen and the collective have provided a supportive setting for several burgeoning talents to tip their toes in the waters of performance – and most dove straight into those waters after making their debuts in Candlelight living room shows.

When Nilsen asked for organizational help, Stinziano stepped into his role as treasurer. The trio are the only Candlelight members to hold formal roles at the nonprofit level, but emphasized that their “background work” is only one aspect of the communal efforts that make the collective’s projects possible.

“It’s mostly the three of us sort of organizing everything, but to be a member, all you have to do is show up – once you’re at a show then you’re a member of Candlelight Collective,” Nilsen said. “It’s membership without a membership requirement.”

Beyond the music, the collective puts other talents to use. Clarke edits footage of the show to compile video recaps for social media, the videos serving as time capsules of a sort for each individual performance (as no two Candlelight concerts are the same).

To that end, local artist and muralist Jillian Hagadorn creates distinct physical fliers for each Candlelight performance ever since volunteering after the first living room show.

“I had such a good time that I asked to do the posters, as an excuse to always have the information about where I’m at!”

Hagadorn’s fliers seek to emulate the folksy, inclusive vibe of the collective, while also giving a unique spin to each event. She favors using a hand-drawn, more human approach over a highly edited digitally designed poster. Like the music featured in the living room shows, Hagadorn’s illustrations are simple and stripped back, yet inviting and illuminative.

Maintaining that inviting culture is essential to the collective; as Cunningham pointed out, each new show features a new performer. This past living room show featured Jack Parrish and Reagan Guthrie, a duo making their Candlelight debut. He finger-picks like Townes Van Zandt and she sings like Joni Mitchell (two artists they love to cover), but their fresh sound is entirely their own.

The endless growth of the collective has presented challenges; living rooms, after all, can only fit some many folk fans. The collective’s leadership, though, has plans to expand to larger venues. Earlier this year, they put on their first ticketed event, a sellout show in a secret location: the old Masonic temple, an experience Stinziano likened to the Order of the Phoenix’s secret headquarters in the fifth installment of the Harry Potter series.

Candlelight has also partnered with Salt City Coffee for an upcoming collaboration outside the Salt City Market downtown, providing music to mix with pop-up vendors’ food and crafts. The collective wants to organize their own Porch Fest, Ithaca’s annual event in which various musicians perform from the porches of their homes to spectating pedestrians.

Nilsen also expressed interest in organizing an outdoor performance in Thornden Park sometime this summer, but he dreams of something much larger than that.

“Austin has Austin City Limits, and it’s a music festival that happens within the city. I’d love for something like that to exist in Syracuse,” Nilsen said. “Thornden is a great cross section of university and city. Both people can go there freely, you know, it’s near campus, so students can walk there without needing a car. There’s plenty of parking around, and people know that area. So it’d just be a great spot to do more for Syracuse.”

In the meantime, though, the collective is planning the next living room show for July 13, continuing on its mission to provide a place for Syracuse’s musicians and artists to develop and showcase their talent.

Nilsen’s girlfriend Molly Lenehan, who emceed the April living room show in Nilsen’s place, recalled a friend once saying something that frustrated her and still sticks in her memory. The friend said, “Syracuse’s biggest export is talented young people.”

The folks at the Candlelight Collective respectfully disagree.

The next Candlelight Collective event is July 13. For more information, visit the group’s Instagram account.

Update: Candlelight Collective canceled its August 30 event. This story previously said it would be holding the event.

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...