Music and the beast...

Classical music brought Dear Husband and I together. When we discovered we had a mutual love for classical and especially certain composer’s music, we went on to become great friends. We’re still friends in fact, and music is still very much a part of our lives.

Way back when we first started to go to concerts together we had a subscription to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s season as well as the opera and ballet seasons at the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center (NYC). We also went to Carnegie Hall once in awhile and occasionally made a foray to Philadelphia to the Academy of Music for a concert. Ah, those were the days…

We attended a couple of concerts at Avery Fischer Hall in Lincoln Center but we didn’t like their acoustics. I’m told they’ve improved the acoustics since then but I wouldn’t know for sure. We also went on occasion to the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center for the city ballet and operas. The kids got to see The Nutcracker there several times and I took them to the Peking (Beijing) Opera at the Met, which was lots of fun. There were tons of kids there that day and everyone especially enjoyed the Chinese Acrobats and the ballet part was also super. The sonnies weren’t so keen on the music though. “Too screechy,” complained older sonny.

Anyway… When Dear Husband and I first went to the concerts in Newark we both noticed the percussionist, in particular, who had a great deal of zeal for his job. He was always slightly disheveled looking and when the moment for him to “percuss” approached he had a huge smile and look of expectation. When he hit those big cymbals the look of joy he emitted was a thing to behold.

Neither Dear Husband nor I had said anything to the other about this fellow but apparently we had both been watching him independently and enjoying him immensely. I think it was our 4^th concert of the season when we each offhandedly mentioned our impressions of this wild and crazy guy and how much we looked forward to seeing him again. This was going to be a doozy of a concert for percussion. We were going to hear Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and as admirers of his music, our anticipation level was high. We weren’t disappointed either. The concert was stupendous and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra was at its best that day. The percussion was exciting!

After the concert we were unable to get up. Everyone else cleared the hall almost immediately but we were turned to mush and sat satiated, basking in the afterglow of the music.

And that was how we came to meet Fred Pizzuto, percussionist extraordinaire.

While we sat there trying to get our sea legs back again the stagehands were busily taking down the stands, folding up the musicians seats and removing them. Amid this bustle, out came the ebullient percussionist and proceeded to the edge of the stage, with his hands clasped behind his back and he just stood there looking around at the practically empty hall with a big smile on his face. Overcome by the moment, I yelled “you were terrific!” “Yeah, I know” he yelled back…and then he disappeared…just like that. Dear Husband and I looked at each other in amazement and cracked up. Two minutes later that percussionist was edging down the aisle of seats and sat down next to us and said “you’se two must be music lovers!”

What an experience this was, straight out of a wacky movie… We admitted that yes, we were music lovers and then we all introduced ourselves. It turns out that Fred Pizzuto, “our” percussionist, was “on loan” to the NJ Symphony from the American Symphony Orchestra of New York and often lent his talents out when needed. Wow, was this ever cool! We’ve certainly had a lot of swell experiences together, Dear Husband and I and this was definitely a highlight.

It was just after the aforementioned Peking (Beijing) Opera that I next saw Fred Pizzuto… After the perfomance we all left the Metropolitan Opera building and were going to go across the street to a restaurant before the long trek home. Somehow the kids and I got separated from Dear Husband and while searching for him in the milling crowd I was suddenly embraced by a man in a stunning white tuxedo replete with cummerbund and bowtie. Oh my… It was Fred! The sonnies just stood there with their mouths agape while this spectacular stranger, excitedly talking and gesticulating all the while, started pulling me away with his arm around my waist and left them standing there perplexed in the unfamiliar crowd.

“Fred!” I cried. “My children!” I cried. “Those are my children back there!” “My husband is lost…” It took a few moments for him to actually get what I was saying because he was so excited to see me. We got back to the kids, got them properly introduced and continued to look for Dear Husband, Fred included.

“You’ve just got to stay and hear our performance in a little while” he said. “We’re performing (I totally forget what) and we’re gonna be superb today!” The performance he was talking about was an outside concert alongside the Met in the shell and due to start in about 15 minutes. “Oh Fred, I (we) can’t. We’ve lost Dear Husband and we need to find him or he won’t know where we are. He may have already gone to the restaurant looking for us. We’re all starved since we haven’t eaten since breakfast and the sonnies are threatening mutiny!” I said. “Sorry!”

At that point, Dear Husband was sighted, the orchestra had started warming up and one of the members had come seeking Fred. We didn’t see him again for awhile. I wrote him a note, although I couldn’t remember his last name and I didn’t know where to send it so I just sent it to Fred the percussionist, in care of the N.J. Symphony Orchestra. I wanted to explain a little more about that day since it ended so abruptly and confusedly.

I didn’t hear anything from him for a long time. Periodically Dear Husband would ask “have you heard anything from Fred?” Alas, no… Then, one day many months later, the mailman delivered an envelope with unfamiliar looking handwriting and I ripped it open to find a short letter and two tickets for a performance at Carnegie Hall in the near future, performed by the American Symphony Orchestra in NYC. The note said that Fred had received my note just as he was walking out the door to travel with the orchestra to Europe for the summer and he tossed it in a drawer, thinking to respond when he got back and then forgot about it when he returned until he rummaged in the drawer for something else. My note to him had been forwarded from the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra to the American Symphony Orchestra in NYC and then to Fred’s home address in New Jersey. Wow, I went the circuit and didn’t even know it.

Anyway, Fred hoped that we’d use the tickets he enclosed and would like the concert and look him up behind the scenes after the performance. The program was Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss and another work I can’t remember right now. He could not have known that Ein Heldenleben was Dear Husband’s favorite work but it was and we went and we loved it! We were thrilled with the excellent box seats as well as the performance. Afterwards, we went backstage as directed and after several tries with different orchestra members we hooked up with Fred and if memory serves, we ended up at the Carnegie Café afterwards. That’s the way our life goes and we’re always amazed…

As life happens, we were in touch with Fred for awhile but the correspondence became more “spotty.” We moved to another state and Fred was a busy person and travelled over the world constantly. It has been many years now since the last time we saw or heard from him but I just know that someday, somewhere it might happen again and we look forward to it.

You’ve heard about the 6 degrees of separation, everyone being only 6 people away from one another and we have run into and spent time with someone who knows (or did know) Fred quite well. He came from the same city as Fred but ended up as a student at our college. He is a percussionist. This young man’s grandmother sang at the Met at one time and his father sang in the Met Opera chorus. Jarrett oozes musical talent. In fact, I had heard him once described as a prodigy. He was always involved with orchestras and jazz groups and I expect we’ll run into him again someday too. It is our earnest hope. There are music molecules running through his bloodstream and right now he is teaching music and performing.

Another student from our college who was himself an extremely talented percussionist and with whom I have had an intermittent correspondence is Rich Dart. He’s also an extrovert, supremely creative and a musical joy. Rich once had a program on the college radio station and was an active participant on the local television show After Dark emanating from the college and with a number of other creative students which even included younger sonny.

Funny how we always get to know percussionists. Dear Husband worked with a young man who was a “temporary” in his lab and who was studying with the principal percussionist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and was only about a semester away from his degree in music. In the end, after much thoughtful soul searching, he chose not to go into music but decided instead to open a martial arts studio here in our town and is extremely successful at it. I guess you could say that music may “soothe the wild beast” but it doesn’t take the fight out of him…

Meanwhile, does anyone out there know whatever became of Fred Pizzuto, percussionist extraordinaire? Inquiring minds want to know…