Lee
My earliest memories seem to touch on music in one way or another. Hearing the call of birds in the forest next to our house in Albany; the frogs down by the stream; crickets at night; the howl of a winter storm; or the eerie calls of the wind sneaking in the little spaces between the windows; the many different pitches of various intensities of rain; the harmonic gurgling of the water bounding across the rocks in the bed of the stream; the envelope melody of the voices at a family gathering; crescendo laughter; the rhythm of the mantle clock, sure and steady; the melody of the chimes; music on the record player; the clattering leaves in a spring breeze. These were only some of the music I would hear everywhere.
I was born in DC but was moved to Albany at about 18 months and lived there until I was 5. Our next move was to Levittown on Long Island. This was during the 50’s and it was a great place for a kid to grow up. We were surrounded by potato fields and airports, both military and municipal. The frequency of a single engine or the harmony of a twin engine are sounds that, to this day, spark fond springtime blue- sky-puffy-white-clouds, ‘Oh, look, a dragon’ memories. I can’t remember the first music I ever heard on the record player but I do know that once I had heard it I never stopped loving it. My music passion was a mix of Classical and rock and roll. All my R&R records were 45’s and my only classical record was a 33 rpm. It was a collection of classical pieces including The Minuet of the Will-o’-the-Wisps from The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz. I would listen to that record over and over with utter fascination at the intricacies of the melodies and the accompanying harmonies and the mixture of instruments and the way it was all put together to create one overall entity. I wanted to create sounds like that. Music that would move and inspire and motivate. I had no idea how involved a process that was but I was determined to pursue it.
At about age ten I requested my parents buy me a piano of my own so I didn’t need to keep using the school, church, and friend’s pianos. My mother, having had some piano playing lessons as a child, decided to purchase a Hammond organ which had buttons you pushed for your chords. That was what you did with your left hand and following the lesson books I became rather proficient with reading and playing with my right hand but was not learning to read and execute with the left. I would still seek out a piano whenever possible but it proved more and more difficult to find them as I grew older and moved from one coast to another at age 15. I wrote my first piece of music at age eight. It was a slight elaboration on the ‘Heart and Soul’ accompaniment many of us learned as children. My melodies grew and began to take on a feel of their own. After graduating high school I took a job at a theater in the round called the Valley Music Theater in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. I spent many hours at the piano in the rehearsal room. I then enlisted in the Air Force during the Vietnam debacle. I thought I would experience a needed maturation and inspiration on how to be a man, only to be taught how ‘not’ to do so. I did do a lot of composing at this point as I was quite inspired by the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and began to put the songs in his books to music and those songs comprise two of my albums; “Songs of the Shire and the Lands Beyond” and “Songs from the Halflings’ Journey”.
I know it is a long period of time between the start of that process and the end but I had a long journey before I found myself with the means to create the pieces electronically without having to find the funds for an orchestra to perform my pieces. There was College, where I changed my major from Marine Biology (after being advised that profession would place me in the lab and not under the sea diving as was my desire) so I went back to my passion and pursued an aesthetics study major in music and theater. Through the next decade I would be attached to theater in one way or another. Acting, designing and building sets, designing and hanging lights, designing and building costumes and writing accompanying music. Then I moved to Las Vegas to help my folks build their house. At that time I became a bartender, having been a bar back in the service at the Officer’s Club. After spending a little over a year working gay bars and exploring my sexuality, and some heart breaking relationships in a world not too set on serious relationships, I met the love of my life. That changed everything.
I moved to my teen haunt of Los Angeles where David was attending graduate school and I found myself again working in the movie industry in a scene shop. As the years passed, A huge strike in the industry moved me to the catering industry where we found a very good income to keep us going. David was at my side working until he successfully passed the bar and pursued his career as a brilliant and successful attorney and our position began to improve to where I was lucky enough to purchase electronic devices that helped make my composing and performing of my music more feasible. I started with an ASQ-10 which was a marvelous devise with a small screen that displayed your music as it’s location within the measure and it’s length and position on the staff. My next step was ‘Finale’ on my little Microsoft computer which did beautiful printouts of the scores. All this was unbelievable for me but when Apple came out with Logic pro I was beyond amazed. I was finally able to afford the set-up with Logic Pro 8 and proceeded from there.
I have always wanted to have my music performed by an orchestra and received that opportunity at one point when an orchestra was performing local works and I got to hear my ‘Largo for Strings’ which has been re-orchestrated as “Twilight” on my album “Spellbinder’s Faire”. As for our family, we have two beautiful daughters and four grandsons and two great grandsons and siblings, nephews and nieces, aunts and uncles, and cousins all over the place. Music has been the thread of joy that has connected all other joys in my life and I am thankfully blessed with many of those. It truly is a language all humanity speaks. So much of humanity has benefited from the magic of the arts and the wonder and joy it can bring to our lives. May our culture learn to promote these benefits. I hope my music brings joy, hope, courage, kindness, grace and love to this world.