Stan Getz-Joao Gilberto: “Girl From Ipanema” (1963)
COURTING Imagine if you can a a 468.6-mile each-way courtship. I spent the next year and a half driving back and forth every third or fourth weekend between Ohio and New York. Whenever there was a break in my teaching schedule, I stayed in New York. Esther came back to Ohio twice the first year, but most of the time if I wanted to see her, I had to drive there.
By January 1964, Esther was living in Manhattan, on W. 77th Street directly across from the Museum of Natural History and a block away from Central Park West.
I would finish teaching around three on Friday and drive for eight hours (longer once the snow hit). I’d reach Esther’s place around midnight. We’d get almost no sleep all weekend because we had more important things to do and I’d leave as late as possible on Sunday to drive back to Ohio. Once or twice, I left so late that I reached Berea and my apartment barely in time to shower, shave and dress before heading off to teach my Monday school day. Needless to say, those were not my best teaching days.
Snippets of memory: I’d picked up the Stan Getz-Charlie Byrd album that kicked off the bossa nova craze and brought it in my car to play for Esther. I parked the car in front of her apartment and ran upstairs to say I was there. I was gone maybe five minutes but when I came down, my car had been broken into and the record, along with my clothes and suitcase, was gone. I bought other bossa nova albums subsequently –Joao Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Regina Elias, Paula Morelenbaum, Luciana Souza, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, up through Tom Ze– but I never replaced that one, I’m not sure why.
Charles Mingus: “Boogey Stop Shuffle,” from Mingus Ah Um (1957)
Another time, my old roommate Frank Pariano came to New York with me. We were both jazz nuts and Charles Mingus was playing at the Five Spot. He was our idol, a formidable bassist, composer and small group leader. We went to see him. He was all he’d been painted out to be –surly and sarcastic toward the audience, on the edge of boiling over even when quiet. He started the set by chewing out the audience and half way through, expressed his displeasure with pianist Jaki Byard by bumping him off the piano bench with his hip and sitting down to play himself. He had a great group, one of his best. Byard was a walking encyclopedia of jazz who played almost every style of piano from stride to Cecil Taylor and mixed them all together in witty, almost comical solos. On tenor was Clifford Jordan, who combined fire with intelligence. The trumpeter, Johnny Coles, was alternately lyrical and fiery. And Danny Richmond was the perfect drummer for someone like Mingus, who delighted in shifting rhythm without warning and needed a drummer who could play as propulsively as he did on bass. I don’t think Eric Dolphy was there that night –I can’t believe I’d forget it if he was– but he’s on record as playing with that group around that time.
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In 1964, I picked up the Columbia recording of Eugene Ormandy and Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, augmented by choir and vocal soloists, performing Karl Orff’s Carmina Burana. For a while, that’s all I listened to. One of my high school students, Vivian Thornhill (now Williams), remembers me playing it for her and then-boyfriend later-husband Chip Kelsey. A year later, Esther and I gave a copy of it (along with a Go board) to friends of hers who were getting married. That’s when I picked up a recording of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky suite as well, with Lili Chookasian soloist.
MARRIAGE We were married the day after Christmas, in 1964. Esther was working at the UN then. She took a week and a half off to fly back to Ohio. I wrapped up my teaching, sold my car –my first new car, my beautiful Karman Ghia which was so small I could barely fit in it!
We wouldn’t own a car again for five years. I said goodbye to my Ohio friends and moved my stuff out of my apartment.
The wedding took place in Elyria, Ohio, in the church that Esther’s family had attended for years. It was a modest affair. Esther’s aunts made pastries and coffee for the reception, which was held in the church hall. The photographer was my roommate Grove.
St-Saens Organ Symphony no 3, finale: Diane Bish, organist (n.d.)
Until we were planning the wedding, I had never heard Saint-Saens’s ‘Organ’ Symphony before then, indeed nothing by Saint-Saens other than “The Swan.”. Esther had listened to more classical music and longer than I had, assisted by a brother-in-law who listened only to classical music and played it for her whenever she visited. She loved the Saint-Saens piece. There was a piano reduction of it that she wanted to use for the wedding processional. For the recessional, we settled on Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary. (Back then, it was still attributed to Purcell.)
Once I heard the Organ Symphony, I understood why Esther loved it. It’s one of the most glorious pieces in the late Romantic repertoire and one of the most infectious to listen to. It pumps me up whenever I listen to it, especially the start of the last movement –the triumphal entry of the organ, all the warning signs beforehand, the swells and back swells of sound, the rich reedy all-encompassing sound of the organ.
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Sir Adrian Boult: Jeremiah Clarke: Trumpet Voluntary (1968)
I’ve listened to a lot of classical music since then, of all periods and styles. Once the gate opened, I couldn’t close it. When Esther and I were dating, it was Orff and Prokofiev. Five years later, it was Horowitz, Rubenstein, Rostropovich. Guiomar Novaes playing Chopin. Jacqueline DuPre: the Elgar cello concerto. Leontyne Price, Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Eileen Farrell, Montserrat Caballe. (Esther saw Price and Caballe perform in separate recitals.) Thirty years on, it would be Steve Reich, Astor Piazzolla, Phillip Glass and Terry Riley. Schnittke, Rihm. Ten years more, Janacek and Penderecki. (Late discoveries.) Lots of Ligeti listened to in one long listening spate. Kanchali, Mompou. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. l’Arpeggiata. Hillary Hahn, Truls Mork, Danny Driver. David Greilssammer. Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Helene Grimaud. Steven Isserlis. C.P.E. Bach. A late appreciation of the Russians. Scott Joplin. (Should I put him on the list?)
The house of music is a spacious one, with room for many sounds. Before I die, I want to experience as many of them as I can.
MUSIC & ME 