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Music Notes: In Memory of Departed Musicians
By
David Amos
SAN
DIEGO— At the beginning of each new calendar
year, I prepare an obituary list of prominent musicians, both from the local
scene, as well as
the world famous ones who passed away the previous year. The list is always
impressive in its size. In it, there are surprises to all of us. For me, the
salient names are the people I knew personally, or ones whose relationship to
me, their guidance, or just their acquaintance made a mark in my musical
life. Sometimes these encounters were a one-time meeting; with others, it
was an ongoing friendship and continuous contacts.
It is curious how we do not expect our icons to have mortality, and at their
passing, we are surprised, puzzled, and may have a difficult time
accepting their deaths.
There are six
people on this years’ list, and I would like to share with you a few
observations about them.
Norman Rost
was the Director of Bands at San Diego State University for 19 years, and during
the early 1960s when I was an undergraduate
student at SDSU. Having graduated from the University of Michigan with honors,
he brought to his position a strong tradition of the great bands of the
Midwest, and a disciplined, structured pattern to his teaching and performing.
He was an excellent clarinetist and saxophonist, but he told me that his
especially beautiful “legato” sound, was learned from his early studies of
the violin.
I best remember
him for his straightforward approach to teaching, and his dedication to his
students who pursued careers in music education. He is on
my short list of teachers who inspired and directed my studies with demands, but
a focused direction and conviction.
As the years
passed and Mr. Rost retired, he continued supporting my musical activities by
attending many of the concerts that I directed.
Frederick
Fennell was one of the prominent voices in the development of wind music in
the United States. He was a household word to all of us
who were involved in music for bands and wind ensemble. Almost single-handedly,
he revolutionized the art form from the early 1950s with the
creation of the renowned Eastman Wind Ensemble, at the Eastman School of Music
at the University of Rochester.
He commissioned
new works from the most famous composers of his time, and created a new
literature for the wind ensemble that can safely be
said, formed the basis for the early training of woodwind, brass, and percussion
players for most of today’s orchestral musicians.
I met with him a
few times, and we corresponded occasionally, and I best remember him for his
unflagging enthusiasm, sense of humor, and eloquence.
Eugene
Bockemuehl was a local middle school music teacher who never
achieved the recognition and fame of Rost or Fennell. But he was one of
the unsung heroes, who consistently worked with young people, teaching them the
principles of good music making, and giving them a love for music.
Many of his students eventually and successfully pursued professional careers.
My relation with
Gene Bockemuehl was that when I was teaching at Patrick Henry High School, he
was at Pershing Junior High, and year after year
was feeding my high school music program with enthusiastic, inspired, and
well-trained youngsters. People such as Gene are the backbone of the
musicians and music lovers of the future, and this, we should never take for
granted.
Many of you knew
Karl Haas from his long running Adventures
in Good Music radio program, which was carried for decades on our local
classical music radio stations, and was syndicated nationwide over hundreds of
other stations. He accomplished so much in educating, and spreading
the word and popularizing the wonders and treasures of classical music. He won
two Peabody awards for excellence in broadcasting, and his program
was the first in classical music to be inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.
Karl Haas was
enthusiastic about the recordings I have made. He was very supportive, and
played my various albums in his broadcasts. I visited with
him a couple of times in his New York home (where he recorded all his programs),
but was most impressed in seeing his devotion to American
composers of accessible music, and to Jewish and Israeli music.
Howard
Cole was an artist of the cello. His early years were devoted to
playing in contemporary ensembles and performing solos in the East Coast.
He was highly praised for his solos with the Philadelphia Orchestra by none
other than Eugene Ormandy. In his later years, he was a section player
with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and was the creator-performer of a chamber
music series in the Los Angeles area.
I had the
pleasure of directing him in concert in two or three performances with TICO, and
a few years ago, we traveled together to the Czech Republic
to record with the Moravian Philharmonic the Concerto
for Cello and Orchestra by David Ward-Steinman. He was one of the greatest
musicians
and one of the finest persons I have ever met.
Hugh
Bean was the dean of concertmasters (or “leaders,” as they
call them there) of the London Orchestras. You may not know this, but if you
have
legendary recording in your record collection, recorded with various London
orchestras from the 1950s to the 1990s, there is a good chance that he was
sitting as concertmaster in those sessions. His famous solo performance of
Elgar’s Violin Concerto is fondly recalled by musicians in the U.K.
Hugh Bean sat at the principal violin chair of the Philharmonia Orchestra during
recording sessions that I conducted in the early 1990s. I confess that I
found it awe-inspiring to work with a legend. From the moment he walked into the
room and took his chair, you could sense in the rest of the violinists
in the studio a sense of reverence for his presence and his work.
My encounters with him were quite brief, but his leadership, work ethic,
insight, and warmth are imbedded in my list of musical highlights.
Here are a few
other departed musicians who were inadvertently left out of my January article:
Composer and guitarist Paul Nash, Tonight
Show
bandleader Jose Melis, soprano Victoria de Los Angeles, composer George
Rochberg, and Broadway composer and lyricist Robert Wright.