Brothers, Fathers, the Dream Academy and Daniel.

Father's Day was yesterday. I took time to slow everything down and think about what that means to me. It means everything. My grandmother used to tell me...constantly...that I could never understand how much she loved me. I was a gift to her. She lost a child after my dad was born, His name was Daniel. He only lived a few weeks after he was born...he had a heart condition that could easily be corrected today, but not so in 1944. When her only son had a child, me, I filled the void left by her loss of Daniel, and my parents gave me his name as my middle name. Timothy Daniel Hazlett. My dad told me he remembered the day they came and put Daniel in a small box after he died and took him away. So heartbreaking. His loss never left her. When my children were born, I totally knew what she meant about love...and now I tell my children the same thing she told me..."you can never know how much I love you." We end every phone conversation with "Love You.". And every in-person conversation ends the same way..."Love You." I pray every day for their safety, health and well being. I pray that they find their way to God...that their faith is strong in Him. Father's Day is not about golfing and barbecue for me...it is about praying to God and giving thanks for my children. It is a gut-wrenching realization of how the love of your children will bring you to your knees and make you weep for joy.

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I remember when Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released in 1986. It may be John Hughes' best movie, and it still holds a special place in my heart. Hughes was the master of modern-day teen angst, and he had a keen ear for great music. One example is this instrumental arrangement of the Smith's song Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want by the band The Dream Academy.

I love how this arrangement uses a church organ, acoustic guitars hitting a major seventh chord hard, a synthesizer with chime sound, and last but not least...a beautiful English horn. (David Gilmour, the awesome guitarist from Pink Floyd, produced the Dream Academy's debut album.)
I was born in the '60's, came of age in the '70's and reached manhood in the '80's. This music means a lot to me.
Another song I will share from the Dream Academy, and used in another great John Hughes film called Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is called Power to Believe. It's used at the end of the film when Steve Martin and John Candy finally reach the end of their epic journey and go their own way. Steve Martin finally figures out that John Candy is all alone. It is a very moving moment.

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I enjoy a dram of scotch or bourbon most evenings, usually with a few ice cubes. I look at my arms and hands extending from my body to the keyboard. I don't understand fully what is happening, but my fingers start hitting the keys and out come these words. I am thankful that I can write. I am thankful for the music that inspires me. They go together perfectly.
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I will end this post with a piece of music that truly touches my heart. Fratres by Arvo Part (1977).
I watched Saving Private Ryan the other day...it was June 6th, 2019 to be precise...the anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944. The Greatest Generation...these Bands of Brothers saved the free world. Fratres means Brothers, When I listen to this, I think about those young men..those boys...those Brothers...charging the beaches of Normandy on that cold morning. Withering machine gun fire. Blood. Death. Sacrifice. I played in a jazz big band for many years after college. I was in my 20's...the rest of the guys were in their in their 60's. A couple of them served in WW2 and took part in the D-Day landings. We played so many gigs, and we had a lot of time to talk on breaks. But they didn't say much about what the did or saw in the War. Our drummer Earl was almost deaf, and he had the shakes. Our piano player told me once that Earl suffered from shell shock. He told me that Earl had seen German soldiers lined up after capture and run over by Allied tanks. Earl was a shell of his former self. But I will always appreciate and honor what he went through so I could play great big band music in a free country.

Roaring of the Full Organ: Louis Vierne in Kansas City

Louis Vierne (1870-1937) was a French organist and composer. I love organ music, and I have long enjoyed Vierne's music. My favorite work by Vierne is his 24 Pieces en style libre, op. 31. No. 15 in this composition is the Arabesque. A stunning, haunting, soft, moving, slightly disturbing, melancholy, and profoundly original work. You know me...I get something in my ear and I listen to it over and over and over. This is just such a piece.

The 24 Fantasy Pieces were composed in 1913-14. Thirteen years later, Vierne came to America for a concert tour, and he performed in Kansas City at the Westport Presbyterian Church on April 1, 1927. I found the review of his performance in the Kansas City Times.

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Louis Vierne , French Organist, Heard at Westport Presbyterian Church.

     Louis Vierne, who played last night the new Reuter organ in the Westport Avenue Presbyterian church, would have commanded the honest respect of his audience even had he been less generously endowed musically.

     For M. Vierne is almost without sight, an affliction that in any musician is sufficient to blast a career, and one that is especially hard for an organist , since no two organs are alike, and all are controlled from scattered stop pulls, inconspicuously placed pistons, and irregularly located foot pedale-to say nothing of the pedal keyboard and such ordinary matters. So that the loss of sight means usually the loss of a career.

     But not with M. Vierne. He solves a good part of his difficulty by carrying with him a young secretary, who not only assists him in the usual secretarial ways, but also pulls his stops and sets up his combinations for him. The remainder he does by pure ability, and so well he need ask quarter from no one. The element of spontaneity was lacking; its inclusion would have been too much to ask. The interpretations had a fixed character, and gave an impression of "predestination" thoroughly in keeping with certain religious faiths.

     But for the remainder, the audience had reason to be thankful. The organist has, for one thing, a delicate sense of color values, and he is not of the type that startles an audience periodically with sudden roaring of the full organ. His climaxes were subtly prepared, and more subtly led away from than usual. His dexterity was sufficient, and his fingers (and feet) were extraordinarily accurate considering the fact that sight did not direct them. 

     A good deal of the music was M. Vierne's. For the most part it is a strange mixture of French sureness of touch and neatness with German sentiment, especially the closing set of six "Fantasie Pieces," each of which was very surely wrought, and definite in character.

     The visiting organist came under the auspices of the Kansas City chapter of the National Association of Organists, of which chapter Hans Fell is president. M. Vierne is titular organist of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

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