One of my greatest, shining moments playing music occurred in the Spring of 1982. I was seventeen years old. We moved to Omaha in the Summer of 1980, and I joined the Omaha Area Youth Orchestra. David Hagy was the Music Director, as well as my violin instructor. Maestro Hagy had a natural ability to communicate with young people...he had the right balance of motivator, disciplinarian and friend. He shaped a diverse group of young musicians into a well oiled machine who played with confidence and attitude. In June of 1982, we embarked on a tour of the East Coast, playing concerts in Des Moines, IA, Indianapolis, IN, Morgantown WV, and Washington, DC. We also attended concerts at Kennedy Center in DC, Lincoln Center in NY, and the Mann Center in Philadelphia. We saw Pinchas Zukerman, Robert Craft, and Eugene Ormandy. (holy shit...I get goosebumps just typing this all these years later!) We returned to Omaha for our final concert on June 18, 1982. As it so happens, my parents had a small cassette recorder, and they recorded the performance of Scheherazade. The tape was in a box for 37 years, until last week when my mom found it and took it to a local shop and had it digitized. The link is below. I couldn't help help getting emotional when I heard it. A lifetime ago....a bunch of teenagers made some great music. Enjoy.
6-18-82 Concert at UNO [not the Orpheum] (Friday)
Fanfare for Brass & Percussion Donald Erb
Academic Festival Overture Brahms
Adagio for Strings Barber
Suite for Chamber Orchestra (from both suites) Stravinsky
Just a few short thoughts for you this evening. One of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas that I like the most, and that often comes into my head while I am running is the Sonata no. 21, also known as the Waldstein. From the opening bar, or the "get go" as old timers might say, this Sonata is off and running.
Two intersecting thoughts this week. One....my ability to move...to walk...to control my body on my own. My mom has a friend who just moved into a nursing home. She can't move on her own. Diabetes and time have taken her mobility away. She lives a life requiring assistance to do anything. She is placed on the toilet with great difficulty and often left there for long periods before someone comes to help place her back in her bed. Her legs don't work. Her room has bed bugs. Cheryl and I went to see the Kansas City Ballet this weekend. The feature production was Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, but the two preceding dances were Tulips and Lobster, and Petal. Petal was my favorite, The music is by Philip Glass and Thomas Montgomery Newman.
Watching the incredible dancers of the KC Ballet, I was reminded of the stark contrast between the unbelievable power, strength and grace of these dancers and the sad state of my mom's friend. God help me if I ever find myself in her position. I give thanks every day for my health...my ability to RUN, to feed myself and move about planet Earth without anyone's help.
The music of the dance called Petal is great. Here is a clip form the Atlanta Ballet's production of Petal. (No offense Atlanta, but KC was better!)
None of us could wrap our heads around the message that Cynthia Gerdes had lung cancer. Last year, this amazingly strong, outgoing and loving soul received this diagnosis. It didn't compute or make any sense to me, or any one else. Cynthia was a picture of health and fitness. An avid tennis player, runner, and triathlete, Cynthia was regarded by me and all of us in our local runner's group as a larger-than-life person. She had a strong voice... powerful laugh...and passion for life that set her apart from others.
I remember the first time I met her. She and I were on a school bus. Her son Kyle and my son Ethan are the same age, and about ten years ago, their class went on a field trip. We went as parent volunteers. We chatted on the bus and realized we both had a passion for running and riding bikes. We became friends.
Another memory that stands out is New Year's Day 2013. Eric, Cortney, Cynthia and I shook off a late night welcoming in the New Year with a run in the snow. (Cynthia is wearing the green vest.)
In addition to her athletic prowess, Cynthia was also very creative and intellectually curious. Every run was accompanied by some sort of wonderful conversation on any one of a hundred topics. She loved to learn and to share her knowledge and loving heart with others. Her work as a counselor in the Raytown School District demonstrated her caring nature and passion for helping others.
And if all of this was not enough to completely blow me away, Cynthia also loved music. Once, when my Mom and I were unable to attend one of our KC Symphony concerts, Cynthia and her forever man, Jan, were the first to respond to our call for free tickets. She and Jan also attended other musical events at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and she always loved to tell me about them. (Both of the concert hall pictures here are taken from Cynthia's Facebook page.)
In early June, I spent about an hour with Cynthia at her parent's house. She was in hospice care at this point and no longer receiving any treatment for her cancer, She told me she was at peace, and hoped to be able to hold on at least another week so she could go to Wisconsin for her older son Aaron's wedding. She made it.
Shortly after she was diagnosed, I shared a prayer with Cynthia that I say every day...Every...Day....I hope it brought her some peace and strength during her final days.
"The Light of God surrounds me. The Love of God enfolds me. The Power of God protects me. The Presence of God watches over me. Wherever I am, God is."
I miss you good friend. We all miss you. Thank you for the love and spirit you shared with us while you were here. Though you left us way too soon, your spirit and love remains here in everyone you touched.
Many years ago I saw a movie that I loved called The World of Henry Orient. I think I was 12 or 13 years old. The story follows two young teenagers who themselves are coming of age and have fallen under the spell of an eccentric, womanizing classical pianist named Henry Orient, played brilliantly by Peter Sellers. The real star of this movie, released in 1964, is the music. The soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein (no relation to Leonard) is wonderful. Elmer had a long and distinguished career as a composer, writing music for such films as The Great Escape,To Kill a Mockingbird,Ghost Busters, and The Magnificent Seven. I revisited this movie recently and feared it would feel dated, but it held up wonderfully well, in part due to the music. The film, directed by George Roy Hill, has many layers. The teenage angst of two young girls plays out against a backdrop of a changing time in America. Men and women cheating on each other, the old and new generations struggling to coexist, and the cultural landscape of the nation coming apart at the seams. The film captures a precarious balance of comedy and sadness...hope and despair. It's fun and bittersweet, and I confess that I had a crush on both Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth.
Several years ago, I shared the story about my son Jack's blood clots, and my midnight drive from Kansas City to St. Louis to be with him in the hospital after he was taken to the emergency room. I don't remember many details about that drive, but the one thing I do clearly remember is listening to the song Welcome to the Boomtown by the songwriting duo David and David (David Baerwald and David Ricketts.) This song was released in 1986. I love this song. Lyrically and musically, I attached to it instantly when I first heard it. And on this cold, dark night driving across Missouri, it came back to me for some odd reason. I don't understand why...it has nothing to do with what I was facing at that moment. I think it may have reminded me how I felt when I was 21 and facing an uncertain future. Now, in 2016, my son was also facing a future that at that moment was very much uncertain.
Spacial self-awareness is not an attribute many people seem to have mastered. How many times have you been in a public space...a restaurant, coffee shop, store, etc,etc..and someone is coming into the space that you currently occupy without seeming to have any awareness that you are already there? I see it very often at coffee shops. The coffee prep station is ground zero for this annoyance. Someone gets their coffee out of the urn, then stays there and spends what seems like an eternity pouring in milk, flavoring, then stirring, then adding more of something else....and all I want is to get to the urn to pour some coffee into my cup. Then they turn around and seem shocked that you are standing there. These people have no radar. They only sense themselves. There is plenty of room for them to move down a bit and let others get coffee instead of making them wait behind them. Or, while I am venting, how about people who come though a door that you are holding open for them, yet do not acknowledge your kind gesture, or offer any thanks? Like it was my job to do it. This just happened to me this week. I held the door open for a woman and her two children as they were coming into a restaurant. They all walked through the door and none of them said a word to me....like I was invisible. I said "You're welcome" in a very strong voice after they had passed by. I felt like a jerk for doing that, but it just came out. Where is our sense of thanks? Where is courtesy?
Let's start with Organs. I've shared with you how much I love organ music in many of my previous posts. Charles Barnett, at the First United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas, played a mean organ and it blew me away as a child. He is responsible for my primal love of organ music. Always Widor....some of you know what I mean by that. Hearing Widor's Toccata on a huge pipe organ turned up to 11 (Spinal Tap reference) had a profound effect on me.
Similarly, when I ventured out of the classical music listening realm in 1978, thanks to the Beatles, I eventually landed on Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. All three of these bands used organs in some of their songs. First to hit me was Us and Them from Pink Floyd's landmark album Dark Side of the Moon. Richard Wright was the keyboard player for Pink Floyd and he wrote the music for the song Us and Them. This is such a great song and I never seem to tire of it. You may know I am a runner. I don't listen to music anymore when I run, but I used too. I will never forget an early Fall evening in 1995...going out for a run with this song on my Sony Walkman...that's a cassette tape player. Remember those? I was running along 119th Street in Overland Park, KS, at dusk, working through many feelings when this song came on. The quiet organ intro caused me to stop in my tracks.
Though not a pipe organ...I think this is a Hammond....it still has a tone and timbre that connected with me just as the big pipe organ in church. I was thirty years old. Cheryl and I were beginning to try to have a baby. I had so much on my mind at that moment when this song started and when I heard this beautiful organ, I just had to STOP and listen. Funny how I still remember that moment. David Gilmore's guitar joins in along with bass and drums. This album is recorded so well...perfectly. Tight and sensuous.
A few years earlier, Led Zeppelin recorded their first album called..Led Zeppelin. It was 1968. Lurking behind the sonic vocals of Robert Plant, the power chords of Jimmy Page, and the manic drumming of John Bonham was John Paul Jones on bass, keyboards and many other instruments. Jones had formal music education as a child, singing in the choir and playing the organ at church, He used his organ talent to wonderful effect on the song Your Time is Going to Come.
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On the other side of music, for me at least, is nothing...Quiet. Quietness. I do listen to a a lot of music every day, but I also like to have quiet in my life as well. But it's not always such an easy thing to find these days. I feel like we are inundated with noise. TV is noisy. Movies are loud. And the outdoors in my neighborhood is a freaking zoo. Stepping outside for some peace and quiet is impossible. Leaf blowers, mowers, cars, airplanes, locusts, kids riding crotch rocket motor bikes, cars, dogs barking, sirens in the distance, kids yelling as they jump on trampolines, air conditioners, power washers, power tools....to name a few...make it impossible to have true quiet. It really sucks how noisy my world is. And also, when you go to a ballgame, you are constantly being asked to "make nose" or "get loud.". Bullshit! Stop it already. I will cheer, clap, and yell when I want to. You don't need to tell me to get loud every 2 minutes. And of course, every stadium/arena has 50 gazillion watts of sound system power blasting music between every play. I wear earplugs every time I go to ballgame. And church for that matter. Yes, I have become a grumpy 54 year-old man.
I failed a good friend last week. My acoustic guitar, a 1962 Gibson J-50, has been a trusty companion of mine for 24 years now. She was born three years before me. I was playing her on a recent Saturday evening outside on the patio while I was keeping an eye on our son's cat, Puma. Puma is an indoor cat who likes to go outside, but she can only go out if one of us is outside with her. So I take my guitar out to play while she enjoys her outside time. On this particular occasion, as a storm approached, I set my guitar down so I could go pick Puma up and bring her inside. But I forgot to go back and get my guitar. I closed the doors, turned off the lights and went to bed. The next morning, as I backed the car out of the garage on my way to church, I saw my guitar resting against the side of the house. My heart sank. It had been outside all night and we had a full night of torrential rain and thunderstorms. I approached her slowly, trying to pretend she was OK. But she was completely soaked and weighed a hundred pounds. I took her inside and dried her off with a towel and set her in the living room to dry. A week later, she was warped, buckled and cracked. But the strings didn't break, and to my profound surprise, a week after that, she was still playable. Playable in the sense that she still made a sound like a guitar. I have accepted the fact that it will never be the same. There is too much damage to repair. And I need to buy a new guitar. I am not heartbroken. It is a piece of wood. I am a blessed man. I have my health, as does my wife and my children. Life will go on. But I am sad that I didn't take better care of this piece of wood.
I was in the mood for Bruckner last week, so I pulled this album out of my dad's collection. It's a double album set...the Bruckner 8th Symphony. I opened the album and it was like opening a time capsule. My dad had saved the receipt from Discount Records on 201 North LaSalle Street in Chicago, Illinois. It's dated 12/26/68. We moved to Chicago from Kansas City shortly after I was born in 1965. My dad loved Chicago. I think next to Paris it was his favorite city in the world. Nearest to his heart was the Chicago Symphony. Also saved in this record album was a full page from the December 17, 1968 edition of the Chicago Daily News. Specifically, the article about the selection of Georg Solti as the new Music Director of the Chicago Symphony.
On Wednesday, December 24, 1968, the world watched the broadcast of Apollo 8 circling the moon. The crew read from the Book of Genesis. I don't remember watching the broadcast, and neither does my mom. But she feels like we probably did.
The next day was Christmas Day, One of the gifts I received was a snow shovel, which on two separate occasion, I sliced my head on...both times requiring stitches to close. But that's another story..or two.
I assume my Dad got some money for Christmas because the next day we were on the way into the city (we lived in the South suburb of Park Forest) to buy records! I wish I could remember this particular trip but I don't. But he took me often, and I believe my grandfather, Jim, went with us too. He and my grandmother, Mary Quinn, were in Chicago visiting us for Christmas in 1968.
Regardless, I still have the records he purchased on 12/26/68. The other one was the Bruckner 4th Symphony, Istvan Kertesz conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. And my, look at the prices...both records for $11.31.
Georg Soli did become the new Music Director and started his new post in early in 1969. He held this position until 1991. What a fabulous run.
I went to see KC VITAs this afternoon at St. Peter's Catholic Church here in Kansas City. This was the second of their Summer Series 2019. Jackson Thomas is the Artistic Director of this very gifted choral ensemble whose mission is performing contemporary choral works by composers from all over the world...40 to date. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jackson a few years ago and have been a fan of his and this organization ever since. That Kansas City is home to such a cutting-edge and ground breaking ensemble is no surprise given his dedication to his art, as well as the talent and dedication of the singers who give their time and hearts to this endeavor. Today's program consisted of thirteen works which presented a wide range of polyphonic ideas and styles. I am not a choral music expert, but to my ears, these were innovative, dynamic and interesting works. They were:
The Prow by Matthew Lyon Hazzard of North Carolina (Regional Premiere)
Chasing Eclipses (from the Back of the Black) by L. V. Wood of Kansas (World Premiere)
When the Rain Comes by Bonnie McLarty of Kansas
Joy, Shipmate, Joy (from Voyaging) by Christian Guebert of California (Regional Premiere)
Translucence by Donna McKevitt of Great Britain (United States Premiere)
Sitivit anima mea by David Nunn of England (United States Premiere)
Wessobrunner gebert by Chris Williams of England ((World Premiere)
Hide and Seek (or a Life in Tow Minutes) by Francis Kayali of Illinois (World Premiere)
Telling the Bees by Philip W. Riegle of Illinois (World Premiere)
Lux Aeterna by Carlos Cordero of Venezuela (World Premiere)
Starlight by Austin Theriot of Nebraska
A Present from a Small Distant World by Alex Eddington of Canada (World Premiere)
I carry your heart with me by Jonathan Reid of Texas (World Premiere)
The performance was first rate. The accompanying pianist, Charles Dickinson, positioned right next to the group, gave the music its instrumental base with perfect balance and volume.
The sequencing was clearly thought out because the concert flowed effortlessly from one work to the next. Such pacing is important to both the performer and listener.
This concert...all of KC VITAs' concerts...are FREE to the public. Please consider making a donation so these concerts can continue to be free to all. Here is the KC VITAs website: https://www.kcvitas.org/
July 17, 2019 marked the fifty-second anniversary of the passing of John Coltrane. Hands down, he is my favorite saxophone player of all time. Let me go even further than that....he is one of my favorite musicians of all time. He left us far too soon. But his musical legacy is huge. One composition that has always stood out for me is Dear Lord, which he recorded on May 26, 1965. I like what Michael Cuscuna wrote in his liner notes for the album The Gentle Side of John Coltrane:
"Wise One, Welcome, and Dear Lord come from 1964 and 1965, a period when the passion of John Coltrane's spirituality were most graphically and effectively expressed in his music. His love and respect for his fellow human beings, his inner peace and growing understanding and his constant searching came through his writing and playing and permeated every nerve and fiber of those who were willing to really listen. That was the sound of a man possessed...with sanity."
My country seems to be full of insanity. Mass shootings. I look to music to find comfort and hope,
