Actually, the above-mentioned reflection may be the realization that I seem to be spending more time reading obituaries as I get older. I suspect that my awareness of those reflections was the key reason for my using an obituary for Lalo Schifrin, who died late last June, to trigger my fond memories of two of his albums from the last century The Dissection and Reconstruction of Music From the Past as Performed by the Inmates of Lalo Schifrin’s Demented Ensemble as a Tribute to the Memory of the Marquis de Sade and Return of the Marquis de Sade, which I classified as “serious fun” when I wrote about them after reading the Schifrin obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle. This afternoon, those reflections spread out from a composer to a virtuoso soloist.
Bassist Gary Karr showing how he would travel with his instrument (photograph by Grumman and Murtha Associates, from his New York Times obituary)
That soloist was Gary Karr, and he died of a brain aneurysm a little less than two weeks ago (July 16) at the age of 83. Karr was a virtuoso on the double bass. Some readers may recall that I evoked his name at the end of this past April after a San Francisco Symphony (SFS) chamber music program included a composition by Giovanni Bottesini. At that time I identified Bottesini as “one of the leading double bass players of the nineteenth century;” but, given that his skills extended from performing to composing, it would probably be fair to say that he was the leading bass player of the century. (As might be guessed, he was enough of a show-off to compose works so demanding that he knew that none of his contemporaries would be skilled enough to play them!)
In all the recitals I attended, Karr was never shy about providing each of his selections with verbal introduction. As I wrote in my account of that April performance, those introductions would include reflections on his instrument such as “You just want to hug it!” and “Think of it as chocolate!” Those reflections emerged from memory while listening to the April performance Bottesini’s “Passione amorosa,” originally composed for two basses and piano and transcribed for a quartet of bassists: Charles Chandler, Bowen Ha, Orion Miller, and Daniel G. Smith (SFS Associate Principal). (It would not surprise me to learn that the transcription was a group effort.)
Fortunately, Karr left a generous number of albums for posterity, available through a Web page on his Web site. I was a bit taken aback from his photograph at the “header” of his Web site. However, my encounters with his performances all date back to the Eighties. He was less than five years older than I am; but one of the things I liked about sitting in the audience for one of his recitals was a feeling that our spirits were “on the same page.” Sadly, once I left the greater New York area in 1985, I pretty much lost touch with his concert schedule.
Under his influence, I added two CDs to my collection. Sadly, he was not the soloist on either of them. Nevertheless, had it not been for my recital encounters, I probably would have allowed my interest in Bottesini to wane. Thus, while I have no “audio record” of his performances, they led me to recordings of three other equally imaginative bassists: Wolfgang Güttier and Klaus Stoll in Germany and Robert Oppelt in the United States.
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