Jazz Festival

The Pavilion at Denver's City Park last weekend

Last weekend’s concert of City Park Jazz Festival ended the 2016 season of ten free to-the-public Sunday night concerts. I was pleased to have attended all ten performances. The weather has run from hot to chilly, from so dry as to parch one’s lips to dripping rain ( although we never did get an all-out rainfall this year as I recall it.)

The variety of bands met the usual high standard and this music was several times supplemented by short concerts from local high school jazz groups before the scheduled concert began.

Beautiful cloud formations add to the park's atmosphere.

I have again been reminded that music has permeated my family life. Dad was a church musician and played jazz standards with great style. He had played in a band that performed at a local hotel almost every Saturday night. On their off nights they would drive to other towns in Kansas to perform. Of course he would be at church early the next morning to play for Sunday school or a service. I grew up knowing hymns, anthems, service music, and jazz. Although I gave up my own work in music some years ago, I have replaced that with listening to lots of live music—mostly jazz—here in Denver. What a life in retirement! And sometimes I still hear a choral concert or symphony orchestra.

Long live music, and may I never lose my hearing!

Denver, 2016

French Music on the Night Air

I enjoyed a nice Saturday evening of French music a week or so ago. Early on that cloudy evening a friend drove Jim and me to the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception over on Capitol Hill for an Ascension eve organ concert, one dedicated to Frank Graboski’s memory. Frank, a life-long organist, died on Palm Sunday, just a few weeks ago. He had known the concert was coming up and had spoken with the organist who was planning it, Alan Dominicci. Upon hearing of Mr Graboski’s death, Mr. Dominicci altered the concert to memorialize Frank as well as celebrate the Feast of the Ascension of Christ. To do so, he selected a number of compositions from 19th and 20th century French composers, some of Frank’s favorites. 

All but one selection was written by a French musician, the exception a J. S. Bach Prelude that opened the evening. Next was a four-movement piece “L’Ascension” written by Olivier Messiaen. I hadn’t heard that piece for many years and kept worrying that it might be so dissonant as to be off-putting to my partner who chooses pop, rock, and light jazz over classical music. I hoped the long tonal decay of the Bascillica (over 4 seconds) would make the music work and I was not disappointed. Dominicci’s registration and musicianship provided a wonderful musical experience that was made even better right at the end of the final movement the composer titled “Prayer of Christ Ascending toward His Father.” I was caught up in the music’s constant upward movement as if I were one of Jesus’ disciples watching him be lifted by the clouds into heaven, and just as the movement was drawing to a close, the clouds obscuring the sun moved letting the late evening sunlight fill the transepts and choir with light—at least that is my description of what happened. My friends didn’t notice. Was I having a vision? It doesn’t matter. The space around the altar glowed as light poured through the west windows and reflected off the gold-trimmed white walls, ceiling, and floor. 

Following an intermission we heard music by Cesar Franck, Charles-Marie Widor, Gabriel Pierne, and Louis Vierne. This last, Vierne’s “Finale” from Symphonie V was one of Frank Graboski’s great favorites, a piece he had played in concert many times. It ends with great feeling and volume, a feeling of triumph, and seemed so fitting as a memorial to Frank. 

From the Cathedral we drove to The Black Crown, a favorite bar and restaurant near our home. There we ordered drinks and settled in. A trio was setting up to entertain. They got underway with an instrumental composition I didn’t know. Then the singer/percussionist sang a French standard jazz tune, followed by two more, and then a Brazilian samba sung in Portuguese. (I always recall my brother-in-law’s description of Portuguese from when he lived in Brazil. He said it was kind of like speaking Spanish with a French pronunciation through pursed lips.) I loved the pianist's playing, the stand up bass player’s creativity, and the singer’s interpretations. All three provided distinctive improvisations. I also loved the French-inspired place as the location for a fitting nightcap.

Finally we went home; I with French music swirling around in my head and warm feelings related to friends, family, and Frank Graboski. 

Denver, 2014

His Own Vocation: A Short Story by Phillip Hoyle

Judaculla Dream
Mixed media painting by Phillip Hoyle

The grandfather sits alone in his apartment, smoking a cigarette, enjoying a CD of anthems by the Baroque composer Henry Purcell. He is intrigued by the unusual qualities of the English voices: the exceptionally fast vibrato of the soprano, the overwhelming resonance of the bass baritone. He wishes he owned a stereo with larger speakers so he could hear more sonorities of the orchestra and organ. Still, he is contented, drawn into the music and the memories it evokes.

As a boy, he lived for music. He conducted the London Symphony Orchestra standing before the front room mirror. He heard choirs singing in four part harmony when he closed his eyes at night. He listened over and over to his favorite recordings of Harry Belafonte, Barbara Streisand, Mahalia Jackson, and the Wings Over Jordan Choir. He learned art songs from his voice teacher plus jazz and pop standards from his father. When the school choir sang Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and Faurè’s “Requiem,” music seemed the most important thing in his world.

His dad offered him two words of vocational advice. First, “Whatever you do, be sure you really enjoy it.” Second, “Don’t be a musician.”

The grandfather realizes his dad feared the alcohol and drugs that seemed indispensable to so many performers. He wanted to save his child from temptations that might lead to a life of dissipation. Although his advice was meant to help, it missed the reality of his son’s dreams.

When the CD ends, the grandfather loads a collection of songs by Dinah Washington. Although her life spiraled out of control like the experience his father feared, she thrilled her audiences and left a tremendous legacy of recordings. The grandfather loves the sassiness and tonal accuracy of her voice. He chuckles at the words of the old blues numbers, their subtle and blatant allusions to sex.

In his childhood he enjoyed sex with boys his age. Mostly they played kickball, war, and tag. When they were older they camped, hiked, and hunted. Always they played sex games. Eventually even that changed. In junior high school, he studied art, music, and languages while his best buddies followed their interests in sports, wood shop, and girls. Oh, he liked girls, always had a girlfriend with whom he attended school functions. He followed the rules about how many dates were necessary before you hold hands, dance close, or kiss at the end of an evening. But he continued to miss having sex with guys.

When he was fifteen, his family moved to another town. A member of the church youth group, a real jock, came onto him. Their nine months of vigorously satisfying sex seemed an extension of childhood into adolescence. Their affair ended, though, when the friend moved away at the end of the school year.

That summer, his dad talked with him and his sister about another church youth who was so effeminate the dad was afraid he would be taken to be homosexual when he went to college in the fall. He went on to say, “Neither of you will have that problem.”

The grandfather recalls that at the time he had thought his father imperceptive since he had just spent the school year having sex with a guy. Now he realized that, like the vocational advice, the words may have been wisdom arising from the father’s view of what constituted a successful life, or his dad may have been expressing a deeply hidden dread about his own son cloaked in a concern for another. Whatever the truth of the interaction, the son knew he was different and realized that the difference caused his father anxiety.

Dinah Washington sings her blues in a voice that seems almost too full of joy. Her playfulness doesn’t match the grandfather’s mood. He wants a different feeling, so scanning the shelf, selects an album by Sting. He loads the CD, taps another cigarette from the pack on his lamp table, and lighting it, draws in the rich smoke. He relaxes in the chair, cushioned by the music. He likes the singer’s rough yet rich voice, the range of expression, the variety of lyrics. When Sting mentions losing his belief in the holy church, the grandfather’s thoughts again turn to the past.

The dad’s love for the church led him to hope his son would become a preacher. Responding out of a desire to please his father, the son attended a Bible College. He assumed he would become a minister but by the end of his junior year realized he didn’t want to tell other people what to think or how to live their lives. He changed his major to music. Happy to support the work of others who did enjoy preaching, he entered church work as a choir director and religious educator. Eventually the son was ordained, but he continued associate ministry, pursuing his preferred emphases in music and education.

Once the father attended a Bible study the son was leading. Afterwards, he said, “You’re a good teacher even if I agree more with your conservative students than with you.”

Over many years the son pieced together an interpretation of his father’s support. For instance, the father seemed gratified that his son had married and reared children. He was happy that he pursued his music within the church. He seemed pleased his son held responsible positions in large congregations. The son could hear his father saying these things even if without great enthusiasm and realized this pastiche would have to satisfy his need for his dad’s approval.

The grandfather wonders what the dad would have made of his son’s leaving both career and marriage. What words of advice would the father have proffered had he lived long enough to see his son living in a major city far from his family, working as a massage therapist, painting pictures, and writing about his homosexuality from a religious perspective?

The song changes, inviting the grandfather to wonder what he may have said to his own son that hit or missed the truth of his life. The old man lifts the phone and dials as he puffs away on his cigarette. He listens to the ringing.

“Hello, Able?” he greets his son. “How are you doing? ... How’s your wife? ... Your kids? ... Your work? ...” The two men, old and young, talk candidly. Their conversation proceeds with warmth, laughter, and occasionally surprise. The grandfather asks, “And how is your artwork going?” He hears of new paintings, developing ideas, and a proposed art show. Satisfied, the grandfather hangs up. He leans back into his feelings as Sting observes, “How fragile we are.”

Denver, 2006

A Musician Remembered

Tim’s call for advice about speaking at a musician’s memorial service took me back a few years when I was asked to speak for a similar occasion. Thus A. Lawrence Kimbrough is in my mind today, a tiny, and when I knew him, old Black man, University Organist at Missouri’s Lincoln University, an historic school begun by an African American Division of the US Army following the Civil War. The Division organized the school as a normal college to train African American teachers in the effort to educate their newly freed population. By the time I knew Kimbrough, the University was a part of the State system and had been integrated for several decades.

I got to know Kimbrough when our church organist brought him in to substitute during her vacations. With great competence he’d play the rehearsals for the choir I directed, and on Sundays he’d sometimes thrill members of the congregation with improvisations on old gospel hymns. Following one of those services I recall a prominent member coming to the chancel to express to the organist how much he appreciated hearing a hymn he hadn’t heard since his childhood in the small-town Missouri church where he grew up. Kimbrough thanked him and explained that his grandmother had taught him the song.

Kimbrough came to our home for dinner one Sunday afternoon. A friend who had graduated from Lincoln University was also a guest. They talked about the university and other local items. At one point the far-ranging conversation turned to the mind. Kimbrough asked her what music she heard in her head. She replied, “I never hear music.” The organist was surprised, puzzled. He had never imagined a mind that wasn’t filled with music! I thought about my friend’s mind that was crammed with historic, economic and logical reference! Lawrence then related how when he was at an educational conference in Philadelphia, he sought and was granted permission to attend rehearsals of a local opera company as they prepared a harmonically lush late 19th century work. All his free moments were spent listening to the rehearsals. After quite a few hours he found a piano and played from his auditory memory all the music. His mind was full of music.

One Sunday Kimbrough began an improvisation on another old hymn his grandmother may have taught him. After the opening verse and at the beginning of the second, he began playing a chromatic scale way down in the bass. In steady eighth notes the scale crept its way upwards. I thought, “Oh my, now he’s lost.” But my musical imagination wasn’t correct. The scale ended on the key note on the final resolution of the full cadence. His mind surely was full of music and a kind of musical genius to remember. I celebrate his musicianship today as I recall of telling this story years ago at his University-wide Memorial service.

Another short musical story. I fondly remember my dad as a church musician. In the church where I grew up, the sermon moved straight into a plea for persons to make decisions to become disciples of Christ, to commit themselves to a life of following Christ, to start their lives anew with Jesus as one old song put it. The transition was covered by the quiet musical beginning of the invitation hymn which the congregation eventually sang. The minister, W. F. Lown told this story.

One Sunday after service a member who appreciated the seamless and always musical transition asked Lown how Earl, my dad, knew when to begin. He asked the minister what signal he gave the organist.

“Signal?“ Lown asked and then explained. “Well, it’s like this; when Earl gets up to play, I know it’s time to end my sermon.”

Now I wish I had told that story at Dad’s funeral.

Denver, 2014

My dad would be happy to know that music
making is still underway in the family. This
great grand kid of his is composing music
and playing a great variety of music and
musical styles as a fifth generation family
musician. There may have been more,
 many more generations
about which I know nothing.

Kalo Hoyle at the piano.
Photo by Phillip Hoyle

Gay Music: A Playlist Story

Valentine Artist Trading Cards by Phillip Hoyle

I like my music gay! For more than one reason I am planning to spend several months hearing mainly gay music. The first reason for this insistence seems most immediate: my current health crisis that demands from me a sense of upbeat expectation of a recovery from my present difficulties and from the therapies the doctors devise. So I’ll play gay music to speed along the healing process. The second reason for this gay insistence relates to having just retired from fifteen years of giving therapeutic massages, mostly to tempos largo, lento, and adagio. Back then (it’s been over a month and a half) I wanted my massages to promote relaxation and so avoided country and western songs, rap, abstract jazz, metallica, and most rock ‘n roll. I played almost no Nashville, no Broadway. Now seems the time to quicken the pace and lighten the mood. So it’s gay music for me in the coming months.

I’m a habitual shelf reader from my many years of roaming library stacks. I’m a methodical one preferring to read from left to right, following the ascending numbers of the Dewey Decimal System. So I’m going to read the shelves of my small CD collection to select my first round of music playing for the weeks to come. Luckily I no longer have a catheter in place so I can comfortably sit on the floor to view my low-down shelves.

So it begins, shelf one. Mathias organ music. I’ll skip that. Oh Dupré. More organ music but too dour and over serious for this man in recovery. Skip, skip, skip, skip. Hmm. Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto? No, I have always found this particular recording just a bit too screechy. I don’t want to put myself on edge. Skip, skip, skip. “Songs of Atlantic Canada”? Surely this album is out of place among these classical works, but I recall how accessible the arrangements of regional folksongs are. Guess I’ll select this Cape Breton Chorale album and think of my Canadian friend Bill, who gave it to me and has for years been thoughtful and supportive. John Tavener’s “Ikons” presents glorious, creative music but … no, not now. Just not gay enough. “Lend Me Your Ear” by Double ‘O Six. That’s a possible listen with classically trained voices. Very choral though all soloists who do crazy things to Chattanooga Choo Choo, With a Little Help from My Friends, and other pop pieces. Here. “Pieces of Africa” by the Chronos Quartet. I might put that on right now and reread the get-well note from my African son Francis. Oh, an album of Charpentier’s Christmas music. Yes. Even though the composer accidently poisoned himself and his family by serving the wrong kind of mushrooms, his music evokes a delicate gaiety. Well, it’s French Baroque with a light touch. Hum. “Albinoni's Adagios.” More Baroque, although Italian. I really like these but heard the album way too many times over the last twelve and a half years playing it for one of my long-time clients who listened only to classical music. As I mentioned, too many adagios in my recent past. Oh Dianne Bish’s “Great European Organs.” That sounds like a gay album. I clearly recall Bish’s pant suit—all gold sparkles—from when she concertized the Cassavant at East Heights United Methodist Church, Wichita. If she’d had a candelabrum she’d have seemed a twin to Liberace. How gay that would be.

Brahms. Lovely Brahms, but his “German Requiem”? They can play that for my memorial service that I hope is a long ways off. Hovhaness’ “And God Created Great Whales.” That one always picks me up, especially when the humpback whales make their first entrance. “The Choral and Vocal Arrangements of Moses Hogan.” Some of that album is somber but I’ll surely enjoy his stunning arrangement of Elijah Rock. Yes. And here, for a change of pace, Handel’s “Chandos Anthems.” I know at least a few of the anthems that can serve me for a special meditative gay moment, especially the soprano and tenor duet In the beauty of holiness with its long descending melismas spun out and interwoven by singers and orchestra. It thrills me. Brahms again; his ‘Complete Intermezzos” played by the Russian Luba Edlina. Yes. These always lift me with their lush harmonies and inventive melodies. I’ll float along with Brahms. While at it I guess I’ll hear Bach’s “Inventions and Sinfonias” played by Glenn Gould, for me always an exquisitely gay experience.

Okay, shelf two. Pop music. Hmm. Here we go. Imogene Heap’s “Speak for Yourself” will do good things for me with her always musical and creative command of synthesizers, her invention and variety. Yes. Of course Cyndy Lauper’s “The Body Acoustic” will be on my playlist. I probably will indulge in it daily, like She Bop and Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I like so many more of these pop CDs but played most of them too many times in massage. I’ll give them and me a rest! Now this one looks good, Keith Jarrett Trio’s “Up for It.” Yes. Jazz. I’m so pleased I’m doing this. And another jazz album but this one Jacques Loussier’s “Play Bach,” his jazz trio’s renditions of JS Bach pieces, an album from 1960 that I first heard in high school. I especially am ready to hear them improvise the Gigue from Partita No. 1 in B flat major, BWV 825. I’m feeling better already. Then another kind of gay music: “Whirl” from the Fred Hersch Trio. This album will surely move to gaity, both by the music and by the knowledge that all three men are gay! Oh and the three volumes of “Verve Remixed” with their most inventive remixing of jazz standards, many from my favorite singers, with hard-hitting dance beats. Certainly I’ll spin those albums for their tremendous energy. Now this should be fun, “The Original Cast Recording of Forever Plaid,” another CD from my Canadian connection of a musical we saw together, pure nostalgic fun. Sure. And how could I not select Dinah Washington’s “Finest Hour.” Any day she is okay for me. Oh I’ll have to skip these Miles Davis pieces. Too blue for the occasion. Guess I’ll skip the whole blues section for now with probably one exception; here it is, Cyndy Lauper’s “Memphis Blues.” She thrills me with her tremendous range of feelings and styles. Jai Uttal’s “Monkey” gets in, also his “Mondo Rama” with its high school kids. I am lifted by his traditional Indian raga, jazz, and rock fusion.

I’m tired from all these decisions. So … that gives me a good playlist that ought to last for a while. I hope they’ll lift my mood, help make me clever and gay, of course. So … I’ll just skip all the R. Carlos Nakai and other Native American flute players. I heard them too many times with my client who for over ten years wanted to hear only these pieces during her massages. “No strings,” she’d say. “They make me tense up.” Besides, if I were going to play Native American pieces, I’d want war dances. That’s not very gay sounding of me although Stonewall showed that gays in pumps and frocks can go to war. I think right now I’m just angry at disease and failures in my own body. I’ll pass on the flutes and war drums.

I’ve got plenty of music to soothe me with gaity. I’ll even listen to some of these albums with my gay partner. Suppose that will double their effect? I hope so.

Denver, 2014

If you follow this blog (I know there is at least one of you!) you may realize I didn't get this thing posted Monday. Sorry for that. But here it is even if a bit late. 

A few more Valentine ATCs by Phillip Hoyle

Don't forget Friday is Valentines Day.