Memorial Gratitude
In 1994 I won a coveted fellowship to Tanglewood and had the honor of working, on many occasions, with then Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor, Seiji Ozawa. That summer was very special, not only for the special recording project we worked on with Wynton Marsalis called “Marsalis on Music” for Sony, but the new Seiji Ozawa Hall had just been built and we were the first to get to perform there for the Gala Opening. That opening had the likes of John Williams, Stephen Spielberg, Kate Capshaw, and the members of Empire Brass all in the audience. We opened the concert with trumpet fanfares by Oliver Knussen, possibly other composers (hopefully my other colleagues have better memory access than I) from the balcony facing the grounds of the new hall, Roger Voisin who coached us by our side.
Seiji’s death came unexpectantly even though he had been fighting cancer since 2010, leading many of us to realize that same hard work and tenacity might just keep him going for a long time.
I talk often about my special experience working with Seiji and Sherill Milnes of the Met singing gloriously from the balcony, playing Bernstein’s Opening Prayer, with all the celebs mentioned right in my view. Needless to say, I was really nervous! The 1st trumpet part opened with solo trumpet, and the piece was tricky, exposed and ended with a little awkward motif on a high concert Bb with a quiet mute and a decrescendo to a whisper. I could not have been put more at ease entirely by Seiji. He walked on stage, never opening the score before him (the most amazing photographic memory I’ve ever witnessed), bowed his head and slowly raised it piercing his gaze at me and me alone. He took an audibly huge deep breath, and with the grace of a gazelle while exhaling handed me the release of my first few notes. I cannot tell you how amazing that felt or that I have even been given that gift from a conductor ever.
https://www.bso.org/works/opening-prayer
Seiji was complicated, but what I have always taken with me from him was his amazing ability to pull the most expressive warmth from an orchestra, a section, a mere trumpet player. He expressed everything with his body, arms, fingers and eyes. Something no one else possessed.
I will tell one more story. While filming Marsalis on Music we had a lot of down time with Seiji which for the most part was quiet and sometimes awkward. One day for some reason he was extremely playful. He marched right up to me, took off his expensive silk jacket and handed it to me to put on. He took my trumpet, handed me his baton, and sat in the trumpet section, pointing to the podium for me to conduct him. Needless to say, he can’t play the trumpet and really didn’t try because we were interrupted to get back to recording. That was another gift, that most didn’t get, from the nose to the grind sometimes very distant Seiji. Someone took a picture of me in his jacket, he with my trumpet, but I have no clue who it was and how to find it. They told me they would give me a copy, but somehow, in the business that was Tanglewood, it never happened. I wish I had that photo.
Cheers Seiji!
