Our lead, David Adams, is the heart and soul of our quartet.  Fireside couldn’t have been more proud of David than when he won the 2017 Best Male Soloist award at the Boston Regional Harmony Sweepstakes Festival.

David originally hails from Virginia.  He moved to Lowell, MA, in 2013 to join the Computer Science faculty at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.  David teaches freshman and sophomore computing courses, serves as the Computer Science Undergraduate Coordinator, and lives on campus with his wife and three children as the Faculty in Residence in one of the undergraduate dormitories.  As if that wasn’t enough, David also sings in his church choir and has even served as director of that choir.  He’s a busy guy!

Our bass, Daniel Schwartz, is an engineering manager with a Chicago software company.  Daniel lives with his family in Swampscott, MA.  Daniel and Jesse sang together in a previous quartet.  Daniel also sings in the award-winning mixed quartet Mixed MetaFour with Manoj, Manoj’s daughter Supriya, and Daniel’s stepdaughter Dagny.

Daniel is known not only for his big, resonant low notes, but perhaps more importantly for his love-of-life spirit.  He was a Northeast District Champion in 2002 with Prelude, is a co-founder of the New England Harmony Brigade, and was named “The Guy I Most Enjoyed Singing With” at the 2014 Atlantic Harmony Brigade.  Daniel not only provides the bedrock foundation of our sound, but continually entertains us as well.  You couldn’t ask for a more solid (and fun!) guy to be a member of your quartet.

Our baritone, Manoj Padki, lives with his family in Berlin, MA, in a cohousing community.  He is a long-time barbershopper and also sings in Mixed MetaFour, the 2016 Northeastern District Mixed Harmony Quartet Festival Winner, with his daughter Supriya and our bass Daniel.  He is still unsure about what he wants to do when he grows up.

In addition to “filling in the chords” with his voice, Manoj does a considerable amount of arranging.  The quartet was thrilled to premier the first public performance of Manoj’s beautiful arrangement of “Sabbath Prayer” (from Fiddler on the Roof) at a Sunset Shabbat service at Congregation Shalom in North Chelmsford, MA, in June 2017.  We look forward to introducing more of his original arrangements in future performances.

Our tenor, Jesse Heines, is a Professor Emeritus of Computer Science (retired) who also taught at UMass Lowell.  Jesse also sings with the Gentlemen Songsters, a barbershop chorus based in Lowell, MA.  The guys love to tease Jesse and call him “the quartet mom,” but he’s the guy who makes sure that they all show up for gigs when and where they’re supposed to and all in the right matching outfits! 

Jesse loves being retired and having the time to follow his own interests.  He is passionate about civil rights and helping those less fortunate than himself.  His main activity now is volunteering inside the New Hampshire State Prison, where he teaches HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to incarcerated men “behind the wall.”  Jesse’s wife still calls him “the busiest man in Chelmsford, MA,” and he finds that what other retirees told him is definitely true: once you stop working you get so involved in so many projects that it’s hard to figure out how you ever had time to do a job!