Greg Short, Dell Wade, Lockrem Johnson 1973 - 1977

Greg Short was the first composer I ever met in the flesh. He came to one of my piano lessons late in
1973 or early in 1974, a very tall young man with close-set eyes, a remarkable nervous intensity, and a large stash of scores. Mr. Smiley (I believe it was Mr. Smiley throughout our lessons, never "Vic" as it was later), probably through a local music teachers association, had met Greg, and somehow I was chosen to learn some of his simpler pieces as part of my program that year. "Knuckle Rag" was a fun and showy number featuring cluster chords hand slaps finger snaps leg slaps faceboard slaps and knocking. "Little Rose", "Rigadoon", and "The Fox", as easily as they fit into the student piece mode, are replete with Greg's deep knowledge of pianistic detail. In the spring of 1974, or perhaps the next year, I played some of them at a music teacher's association recital featuring Greg's and other local composers' music. I remember that one of those other composers was Lockrem Johnson, though I don't remember meeting him then. That meeting occurred through the auspices of Dell Wade.

Dell was composer in residence at the orchestra camp I attended, probably in the summer of 1975. He was, at that time, all of 19, but already hustling performances and collaborators. I shared some of my early pieces and ended up taking composition lessons with him. I learned about pens, inks, pencils, and staff paper, and picked up some nuts and bolts habits that are still with me today. I prefer, for example, sketching music on 12-stave 8.5X11 buff paper using #3 pencils. I don't know how much of his compositional personality rubbed off on me, though I'm sure there was a fair amount of style mimicry in my pieces from those years. At any rate, he taught me enough to make a favorable impression (I had a portfolio of music for various ensembles, orchestra, and some little piano pieces) on the composition faculty at the UW when I applied there in 1977.

In late 1976 or so Dell thought that I should enter one of my piano pieces in a statewide contest, but since he wasn't in the sponsoring teachers' association he brought me along to meet his teacher, Lockrem Johnson, who was. Lockrem listened while I played my piano piece (oh that Grotrian-Steinweg he had! magnificent!) and we looked at an orchestra piece I was working on. We listened to some music by others (it was through Dell and Lockrem that I learned about the astounding Swiss composer Frank Martin, and I remember a drop-the-needle game featuring one of Sullivan's concert overtures (Dell, if I recall, guessed it correctly, much to Lockrem's annoyance) and then he played a recording of his First Symphony while I read along in a copy of the manuscript score.

The fact that I was able to keep up, turning the pages at the right time, made an impression on him. He gave me a score of his 5th Sonata, and had suggestions about where I might want to study. He agreed to sponsor me in the contest (though he graciously called Vic Smiley for permission, since Vic could have done so also), and then called my parents, while I was still on the way home, to assure them that I really did have something going for me as a composer, and that it should be encouraged.

And, although he didn't want to take Dell's student from him, he felt that I would benefit from a more experienced mentor, offering to take me on the next year. Unfortunately, he passed away suddenly, far too young, before that could happen. At his memorial concert, at Cornish, I heard some of his 24 Preludes, and took some pains to acquire a full score from his cousin. I have performed the cycle all through once (8 at a time) and am hoping to finish the cycle again in a few years (4 at a time, in my recital series "Preludes in Seattle") along with those of Greg Short and of my first teacher at the University of Washington, Ken Benshoof.

Playing With Others 1964 - 1977

I started singing in choirs at our church when I was 5. In the 5th Grade I took up drums and

8th Grade Nerd King

percussion so that I could join band and, later, orchestra at school. In my teens I joined the Thalia Youth Orchestra. Due to rehearsal conflicts (both choir and orchestra met on Thursday nights) I stopped singing in choirs until I got to college and discovered it was an easy ensemble credit.

Both Victor Smiley, my piano teacher, and JoAnne Deacon, my Mom's accompanist at The Lake Washington Singers, taught me early on that instrumentalists and singers need pianists, a potentially lucrative discovery. By the time I was in high school I was accompanying fellow students, sometimes going with them to their lessons. I was, thus, privileged to learn from a group of (possibly) unwitting auxiliary teachers and picked up on how string players think (it's all in the bowing) and how wind players think (breath control of course, much like singers). I remember particularly valuable lessons with a Seattle Symphony violinist, Mr. Sotor, and later, at the UW, with the violinist Dénes Zsigmondy and the flautist Felix Skowronek.

Frances Walton

In the Thalia organization, then under the leadership of Mikael Scheremetiew and Frances Walton, I played percussion in both their youth and also, later, their community orchestras, and attended their summer orchestra camp, where I first came into close contact with chamber music in some of its varied guises. It was also there that I was first allowed to wave a baton in front of an orchestra. Maestro Scheremetiew must have seen an aptitude, and his kind support led to my first official paying job: Junior Associate Conductor of the Youth Orchestras. I think I rehearsed and conducted one of the intermediate orchestras in an arrangement of some Couperin piece or other, and got to perform it in concert.

Looking back on it, all of my summer camps but one (a Junior High Church-sponsored hiking camp) were music related. I went to Choir Camp and Orchestra Camp, but never Band Camp. In contradistinction to how

that's me with the legs next to the teen with the midriff
Choir Camp, Penticton B.C.

summer camps are portrayed within Popular Culture, they did not last the entire summer, but were single week affairs. They were generally held at various church-owned camp sites on the Kitsap Peninsula, but I also remember one choir camp on Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho, and another on Lake Okanogan, in Penticton B.C., led by the well-known hymn writing duo (Richard K.) Avery and (Donald S.) Marsh (or perhaps just one of them, memory fails).

Piano Lessons 1965 - 1977

My first piano teacher - Mrs. Swint, if memory serves - was a violinist who taught piano on the side.

When it became clear that my interest in playing wasn't going away Mom  consulted with her accompanist, JoAnne Deacon, to find a more suitable teacher. I started with Victor Smiley when I was 7 and worked with him until I graduated from High School.

At our first lesson, or so I am told, I played some thing I had learned.

His response was "Dig That Crazy Rhythm."

I guess he dug me, though I did not know myself well enough at that time to know what digging myself, as myself, well enough to dig me, was, but no problem. We've all been there.

He told my parents that his greatest fear would be that I would get bored, so he loaded me up with a pile of music. Bach to Bernstein was his motto, and though I think he used Bernstein as a placeholder, the Bach part was no joke. Lots of it from the very beginning. Musicianship: Scales, arpeggios, finger exercises, theory, improvisation, and repertoire from Baroque (always it was Bach), Classical, Romantic, Modern, and Popular composers. Popular meant show tunes at first. Later on he tried mightily to teach me the rudiments of jazz, but I resisted just as mightily.

What I learned:

think vocally. (hidden message: music is thinking)

legato is about shifting weight.

the damper pedal has seven positions (an oversimplification of course, but it sets the feet to listening).

the greater part of all ornaments begin above principal note.

keep your pinkie curved.

(never in so many words, but:) keep it moving, take your time.

and in case you forgot: think vocally.

Where I come from - 1959 through 1964

your blogger in a red hat

I was born in Seattle, and grew up across Lake Washington in the Lake Hills neighborhood of
Bellevue. We had a huge backyard, partly wild, that sloped down behind our house. Our living room window looked out on what was essentially a broad peat-bog, occasionally farmed, that stretched out northward from Phantom Lake.

Holmes Harbor, with Paul

About the time I entered Kindergarten my parents built a cabin near Freeland, on Whidbey Island, at the south end of Holmes Harbor, where summers were spent with my two brothers and cartloads of cousins, mucking around on the gravelly beach and venturing barefoot into the mudflats.

blogger and his mom

My mom was a fine mezzo-soprano, played violin, was the choir director at our church - Bellevue First Methodist, later Bellevue First United Methodist -  and also directed an amateur women's chorus - The Lake Washington Singers, still singing after all these years - throughout my childhood. My earliest musical memories are of Mom singing and practicing violin, of the hymns, choirs, and organ at church, and of the sounds of women singing in chorus.

When I was 5, by then a proud member of the Cherub Choir, my older brother started piano lessons. Mom soon found me sitting up at the old Howard upright in our basement playing through his assignments. I started official piano lessons myself in the 1st Grade, when I turned 6.

Freeland Wall Raising