Eulogy for a Musician

"Music is something produced and received by human beings. The crucial fact is that they are beings with bodies that work in a certain way. Whether the producers or the receivers are consciously aware of it or not, they experience it through their bodies. Music is either singing, dancing or a combination of the two things.

You cannot make music, you cannot write it, and you cannot listen to it, perform it or do any of the things that are involved without doing them according to how the human body works. Singing is governed by how the lungs work in breathing and by how the vocal chords work. Dancing is governed by how the large muscles work (mainly the legs) and by how the body reacts to gravity. Every abstract gesture in music relates in some concrete way to how these things are experienced by the human body."

-John Garvey on music, from Chuck Israel's website

John Garvey played viola in the Walden Quartet; worked with Harry Partch and conducted many of his premieres; and directed ensembles playing modern, classical and world music, such as his Russian Balalaika Orchestra, and Balinese and Catalan music ensembles. He was most known as an acclaimed Jazz conductor and educator who founded one of the first university jazz programs, at the U of Illinois. His bands were chosen by the U.S. State Dept. for multiple tours of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, where he became something of a jazz hero, and he was honored by the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. when he retired.

These are the bones of his eventful life, and you can read them in his obituary. Theyˆïre his real heritage. But I‘m here to give some details that tell in microcosm what it was like to know this man.

His mother was a German woman who brought her passions and biases to Pennsylvania, where she met Frank, an Irish boilermaker whose father was a coal minor. John was born March 17, 1921 in Canonsburg Pennsylvania and his younger brother David issued forth soon thereafter. Tragedy struck early in his life. Frank died when my dad was only 2 years old, leaving the young brothers to an uncertain emotional environment with his widow, whose conservatism, bitterness and controlling nature became legendary in my family. John and David were brilliant and sensitive souls, and they both found solace and consolation from a very difficult upbringing in the sacred arms of music. They were the first musicians in their family- what a debut for the muse! David Garvey never had a romantic relationship in his life, according to my dad. In some inconsolable and mysterious cave, with naught but bats and spiders to hear my echoes, I would say the same for my father.

He met my mother Evelyn during WWII when he was playing in the Jan Savitt Big Band behind such luminaries as Frank Sinatra. Her first husband had been an aviator in a B-17 who was killed over Berlin in Dec. of 1943. They had been married only 6 weeks when he shipped out. Evelyn was a world-class pianist, John a fabulous string player; a duet ensued, then a pas-de-deux. They married in 1948, and then he had another stoke of luck that carried him on quite a long journey. He auditioned successfully for the Viol chair in the Walden Quartet, which soon after became 'ensemble in residenceˆï at the University of Illinois. Despite being a jazz-age drifter with no college degree and hardly a penny to his name, he was suddenly on the faculty of a major music school. They hardly knew what hit them. He and my mother had a good run- 14 years, until 1962. They divorced and mom took the kids to the east coast, where she took a gig on the Piano faculty of the University of Maryland. Neither of them ever remarried or had a single significant love relationship after that. They were married to music, and that says it all. My dad told me that he would cry every day if he had time, and I always believed it had to do with his feeling of isolation and loss, stemming from his difficult childhood which didn‘t prepare him to have a normal emotional life.

He spent 25 years playing in the Walden Quartet. One milestone for them was their award-winning recording of Walter Piston‘s first String Quartet; there were many others. However this format of music making couldnˆït contain John Garvey‘s restless and inquisitive spirit, and he became bored with the constraints of the quartet. To illustrate - his narcolepsy spoke loud during one famous concert when he fell asleep onstage during a long rest. He supplemented this regimen with a steady complement of collaborations with such avant-garde luminaries as John Cage, Ben Johnson, and Harry Partch, for whom he carried on a virtual crusade to get the buncombe-laced School of MusiC (with a capital C for classical) to give forth some substantive support.

When they finally drove Partch away after 3 years of now historic performances and recordings, the jazz ensemble that John and Harry started for the production of ‘Bewitched‘ continued, and John grew it with a mighty effort into an entire Jazz program which continues to this day as one of the finest in the country. The Garvey Band created an adventurous fusion of swing, neo-classical, world and combo-style experimentalism. The New York Times said this in a review of the historic 1968 Newport Jazz Festival (on Sunday July 7 1968):

‘The Garvey Illinois All-Stars gave a performance that made the future of big band jazz seem much more hopeful than did the four more renowned bands- Count Basie's, Duke Ellington's, Woody Herman's and Dizzy Gillespie's- that were heard on Friday night. The Garvey Band not only matched the big names in its ensemble and solo work, but its arrangements, written by band members, were far more varied and imaginative than the generally cut-and-dried orchestrations of the better known bands.‘

He had a genius for shaping and directing music, which made him a legend. Yesterday I received this note from Joel Spencer, now the Head of Jazz Studies at Northwestern University, once the drummer in the Garvey Band, that summarizes the feelings of many who studied with him - ‘John was an incredible educator and person who has served as an artistic mentor throughout my entire career in music. He was a musical genius- just amazing!‘ His band was sponsored by the University but it was an open secret that professional and semi-pro ringers from Chicago and even New York would sign up to the school just to join the band. Cecil and Dee-Dee Bridgewater, Ron Dewar, Ron Elliston, Howie Smith, Chuck Brougham, James Cuomo, Joel Spencer, Morgan Powell, Larry Dwyer, Jim Knapp- the John Garvey Band alumni list is huge and lustrous. I attended many rehearsals during this time, to absorb how he would fine-tune things with metaphor, humor, persuasion and surrealism. It was a trip, I tell you. And the results were magic. I heard the Ellington Band back then, and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band, and Buddy Rich‘s Band, and I‘m not exaggerating at all when I say that my father‘s jazz band completely blew them all away. In my view, the John Garvey Illinois All-Stars was one of the great all-time big bands period.

As a tribute to John Garvey his musicians secretly taped his rehearsals in the few weeks before he retired, and published transcripts of some of what he said during that short time. I‘m going to read a few excerpts, and keep in mind that these were but a tiny slice of his outpouring; just imagine what verbal effusions and treasures are lost to us.

(John Garvey rehearsal quotes)

What will there be if you do not play? If you do not play, there will be silence. If many of you do not play, there will be profound silence.

The important thing as you're learning something is to render the central essence of the music. It's not to get every minute detail right immediately if, by trying to do so, you get everything wrong.

Do not play while we're rehearsing. Do all that secret life of Walter Mitty stuff in your head and in your body, but not externally.

Whoever came in wrong at number seven, fine, I mean, that was good. You played that firmly and confidently. You were just wrong: there's nothing wrong with that except being wrong.

We appreciate that you look studiously at the parts you cannot play yet. Thank you.

It's called lifting your legs, male dogs do it for other reasons. A conductor isn't someone who goes around finding pimples on your face or smelling your armpits or between your legs. What was that an example of? I already forgot.

Iwantyounottoconnecteverythingyoudoallthetimeasthoughtherewerenoinflection ornocommasorsemicolonsinlife.

Play it like super glue and smoolie, not like molten slivers stuck in your flesh.

Play with the right rhythm. The right feel is more important than the right notes. Example: i- am- not- a- crook.

The more you pound on a person's chest, the less expressive the final excruciating pound.

Make an extra Lizzie Borden-type whack on the third beat, like a quick ring of the doorbell by Jehovah's Witnesses on a Saturday morning.

Don't play while I'm attempting to deal with modernity.

That sounds like:

a South Korean world championship typist
unsightly cellulite bumps
an alligator convention
Eskimo snowshoe dancing
Diaphragmatic wunk

You're playing the same measure, not ad eternum, because we can't be sure that eternity has arrived yet. You've got to change to a new chord. That place is where you put railroad tracks, so there's a psychological end to what went before.

(end quotes)

John Garvey was a man, a musician, a traveler, an inspiration and a thinker; not a father nor husband. His three children have forgiven him; his wife, our mother, could not, nor should she. Some things are better wrapped on an old sheepskin and set on fire out back the barn. But his kids by and large gave him a free pass on the dad stuff, we came to see that he just didn‘t have it in him, to be the kind of micromanaging, controlling father that would care day-to-day about how his kids fed, clothed, educated, loved themselves. But he managed to intervene occasionally in very incisive ways in our lives, and in my case it was usually and profoundly for the better.

Glorious was the day he got off the Amtrak train at the Silver Spring station, traveling a thousand miles by rail to surprise me with my first drum set. Not just the snare, I mean the whole damn drum set, bass drum and all! I was a 12-year-old, and he decided that I was serious about my lessons with good old beloved Dave Cole, and here we are today, just look behind me at all these instruments to see where that ended up.

I went to Silver Spring to be with him when he died. When I arrived he was already in a coma, just back of the window, sometimes right up against it, tryin‘ to get a last glimpse of what he was leavin‘ behind.

Both my sisters were there too of course and they were singin‘ him home with chants, song and prayer from their two very different and interesting religions. Deborah is Russian Orthodox and Deirdre is- I‘m not really sure. Native American influenced? A Shaman... They both had sweet times with him and made him a powerful and beautiful exit.

He smiled real big two times in the three days before he died. Once when a nurse put her hand on his heart and rubbed his chest. I know he was dreaming about the love he never had; even when he was busy dying, he‘d make time for a pretty girl.

The second and last time my father smiled was when I leaned over real close to him and said into his tired ear that I was here, that I came to be with him, and that I loved him.

His last words were “who‘s going to direct the show?”

I could hear the rumbling whisper far off in the distance; eerily consonant, roiling and ebbing like the faint memories of a laughing Christmas long ago, when we were all together and a family; like the celestial beauty of an orchestra tuning up, all at one chord, all in one mind and one heart. I saw a young boy exalting and laughing on a sunny day, with his violin and his beloved brother by his side; then dear old John floating towards a great and endless host of musicians and composers from all ages and epochs, making set to greet him with their instruments in hand, harps of ivory and drums of bronze; in the front an ancient Balinese woman, smiling and bringing his baton. He left us on wings of mystic sound, and they received him with a grateful sigh.