Tunes for the Old Crowd

Whenever I find myself mostly in the company of old people, I think of my Dad. Sometime long after I left home, when my parents were in their seventies, the little town of Danvers organized a Senior Citizens day when the community’s old people would gather each week at the fire station, do some kind of pot luck lunch, and play cards. My Mom was all enthused. My Dad, himself then old, wouldn’t go. His standard line was “Who wants to be around all those old people anyway?” He said the same thing about Florida by the way. That line kept him out of going to a lot of places, which was fine by him. He liked staying home on the farm.

I’ve been staying home a lot myself over the past year. But once in a while I do take advantage of my fairly open schedule to do things I wouldn’t have done while I was working. For example, over the past few months my wife and I have gone to the symphony in Chicago a couple of times. Quite the place, Symphony Hall, and going there quite the experience.

We first went to see the LaBeque sisters, Katia and Marielle, on a Sunday afternoon in early April. I’d heard a recording of theirs by pure chance at the home of a friend, a mailman who appreciates all kinds of music. How he found them I don’t know. They play grand pianos face to face, these sisters, and I thought I’d take a chance on them. I was able to get a deal on floor seats not far from the stage. I didn’t really know what to expect.

Maybe it was the section we were in, but the concert goers that afternoon were OLD. Very old and extremely well dressed. How they look so nonchalant, even slouchy, in such elegant threads is beyond me. When I get dressed up, especially these days, I feel kind of stiff. Boxed in and anxious. These old folks strolled in casually like they were going to a ball game in the bleachers, except they were dressed to the nines. I half expected them to break out peanuts salted in the shell.

Strolled might be the wrong word. There were plenty of walkers, none with neon yellow tennis balls on the legs that I could see, and an occasional wheel chair. The ushers removed their appliances to the back and inquired at intermission if they needed them back. They took care of that old crowd really well. But wow, the clothes.

Lots of fur, lots of Italian suits, and plenty of white haired men with soft colored handkerchiefs stuffed casually into the chest pocket of their jacket. Wrinkled women with lots of jewelry wore lavish silk scarves intricately looped and arranged around their necks and shoulders. But still they managed to look bored. I was glad I at least wore khakis. I took my Cubs hat off fairly quickly. It was Chicago after all. I didn’t think you could go wrong with a Cubs hat. I was wrong.

As I might have told you before,here in the shack while I write I’ve been getting into piano players who record without vocalists. Do you think they’d rather be called pianists? I don’t think I would. Ever since another friend gave me a bunch of his jazz CD’s I’ve had a veritable musical buffet of piano players to pick from. Anyway, at the shack I’ve been listening to all these piano players, pianists maybe, but I have to think the jazz guys would rather be known as players. I listen to people I’ve heard before in a new way, Herbie Hancock, Ramsey Lewis, and Dave Brubek, along with others I have just now found; McCoy Tyner, Gil Evans, Oscar Peterson. And one guy that especially stands out named Art Tatum. What is it about Art Tatum that makes him different I wondered? Where did he get that sound?

I’m blessed to be around a lot of accomplished musicians at my church. I asked one of our keyboard players (pipe organ on Sunday, piano at choir practice, sometimes both.)

“What it was about Art Tatum? Why does he sound so good?”

“Art Tatum? He has the best left hand in the business.”

“Left hand?” I’m musically illiterate. She might as well have been talking about the rules of cricket, or quantum physics.

“Left hand. Yeah.” She noticed my blank response, knows from choir practice I’m illiterate, and she is patient. She explained it slowly and simply.

“So on piano the left hand keeps the beat, drives the tempo. It’s the steady hand. The right hand carries the melody, does the riffs. That’s the hard part you know, getting one hand to do one thing while the other does another. It’s the right hand the listener notices more. But Art Tatum. Art Tatum does things with his left hand that no one else does. You can do it, if you practice a lot, but it’s sort of magical, and so difficult, the way Art Tatum plays. And it’s all about his left hand. You can hear it. So much range. So quick but still steady. Yeah. Art Tatum.” Her eyes looked up, her face tilted back, and she shook her head. I could tell she was a fan of Art too.

So I’ve got it figured, in my illiteracy, that if Art Tatum does that well with one hand, the LaBeque sisters do that same thing with one whole piano. While she does her sister takes the right hand part with all of her 88 keys. You get a lot punch with two pianos. They play together wonderfully, these sisters.

When the concert began their pianos, black Steinway grands, were cradled together curve to curve like spoons. One LaBeque woman came from the right side of the stage, the other from the left. I never knew which was which. I asked around but no one knew. What does it matter? They took their places opposite one another with flair. One dressed in red, the other black. the each had long shiny black hair which they tossed while performing.

They started by playing three preludes by George Gershwin; Prelude No. 1, Blue Lullaby, and Spanish Prelude. The only thing I ever heard of his was Rhapsody in Blue. These pieces were more formal, but equally beautiful. I wanted to applaud after each song. I quickly found out that was, like my Cub hat, de rigueur as they might say, out of bounds as I would. For no apparent reason, we had to wait till the whole set was over to clap. Heck I wanted to clap in the middle of the song, to compliment them right after the best parts, the way you clap after the guitar player in a rock band takes the lead and shreds, playing an insane number of notes. But none of that at Symphony Hall. I learned the rules fairly soon. I may be a farm kid but I catch on quick.

The energy they brought to the stage was infectious. They, each of them separately, smiled at the fast jumpy parts, closed their eyes when it got too beautiful. They played the meaty parts hard, popping the keys, rising off the bench sometimes, giving it a mean face. They looked across the keys at each other a lot. On the soft slow parts they swayed ever so slightly, sometimes leaning back and turning their faces up, like the keyboard player at church when she imagined the sound of Art Tatum. They enjoyed what they were doing. I know how that feels. I’m enjoying writing this right now. They brought something special to Gershwin I think. Watching them play, in addition to hearing their music, brought something special to the crowd.

Next they played four untitled pieces, four Movements for Two Pianos, by a guy named Phillip Glass. It was spare. The program called it “minimalist” a term Glass apparently hates. It’s sort of hypnotic music, lots of repetition. I thought it was terrific. I can’t imagine how, with the LaBeque women choosing it and playing it, it would be anything else. When I got home I found one of Glass’ CD’s among the many given me, “Glassworks” recorded in 1981. It’s equally good. The four pieces played by the LaBeques were pastoral, rhythmic, and serene. It put the old people to sleep in droves.

As the LaBeque sisters played, passing the left handed and right handed roles back and forth, carrying out these long slow progressions of Phillip Glass, I began to hear strange noises around me. Whooshes of air, nasal thrumming, out and out snores. I looked around. Old people were conked out left and right. A tiny woman in the row in front of me had her head on her larger husband’s shoulder, slumped forward, her white hair fanned out onto his heavy wool herringbone tweed, her mouth hanging open. It was after all going on four o’clock in the afternoon. Back home she might have been sawing logs in the wing back chair, her feet on a fancy ottoman. Here in Symphony Hall she was getting her rest just the same. God bless the old farts. Occasionally one would wake up, wipe drool daintily from his or her chin, and check the program to see where exactly they were and what was playing. On the whole most of our section slept right through Phillip Glass. My wife and I felt young.

It was then I thought of my Dad. He didn’t talk a lot about his past. But as a young man, after his father died, his mother moved with him and his siblings off their farm in Danvers to the city, rented a house in Oak Park, and they all got good jobs downtown. Good thing. Soon after they arrived the depression hit. Dad worked downtown at U.S. Gypsum, his brother at Sears, his sisters at other good firms. I thought of him as such a farmer, it was hard to imagine him in Chicago. He moved back to Danvers and farm life soon after his first child was born. Just once, he told me about going to the symphony.

“Sometimes I would just go there after work on a whim, walk up to the ticket window, and see if I could get a cheap seat. Didn’t matter what they were playing. I’d go all by myself, sit in that big hall, and marvel at the sound. I’d never heard such music. I didn’t know it could be that beautiful.” And so I felt close to my Dad sitting there these many years later, beauty filling the air for me as it once did for him.

The crowd woke up with the last set played by the LaBeque sisters. They played the best songs from “West Side Story” by Leonard Bernstein. And boy did they play it. It was all I could do to keep from singing along. They played “Jet Song” in boogie woogie that made me want to dance. They were accompanied in the West Side Story set by two percussionists, Gonzalo Grau from Caracas, Venezuela on congas and Raphael Sequinier from France on a more traditional trap set. Both walked away from their instruments and clapped, feet stomping the stage boards, synchronously, infectiously, dual hand clappers, with dual pianos, on “America.” I remember a guy in Spain, all by himself waiting for a train on the platform, clapping softly, rhythmically, and stamping his foot to a tune in his head. But on stage at symphony hall? Woven in with hard playing pianos, you’ve never heard hand clapping anything like it.

The LaBeque sister, Katia and Marielle, with the percussionists (not drum players I don’t think) Gonzalo and Rafael, played all the good stuff from West Side Story that you know. “Maria”, “Mambo”, “Cha Cha”, “I Feel Pretty”, “Tonight”, “Somewhere”. All the music, none of the words. The words played in our heads. The LaBeques playing those beautiful pianos. The hall filled with joy.

And so I continue on day after day, taking retirement slowly, staying home a lot but doing new things now and again, like driving to Chicago and listening to music with well dressed but tired old folks on a Sunday afternoon. There’s a lot to do out there. I’m finding more all the time.