Dear Friends,
I have just returned from a concert tour of Japan and received an email that Henry Brant, my dearest friend, mentor and guiding spirit of imagination and creativity, had passed on Saturday April 24th.
My heart was deeply saddened as I reflected the first time I met Henry when I was in College through our wonderful friend and colleague the great contrabass player Bertrum Turetzky.
I met Henry for the first time at the train station in Hartford, Connecticut, and will never forget him wearing a baseball or engineer's cap when he first got off the train.
This, or simply a visor, was Henry’s signature.
I will miss him so very much as we always spent our time together in very deep conversations about various aspects of music and acoustics, including various discussions of how certain structures of music could be approached in a variety of ways to create new sounds based upon the early masters of Gregorian Chant.
Henry was a pioneer in the development of spatial music, which influenced me greatly in my own search to create music that surrounds and envelopes, that intensely and accurately elicits an enlivening response in the audience, not just as listeners but as participants.
Beginning in 1953 with "Antiphony I," Henry returned again and again to music that used widely spaced performing groups, often with contrasting meters and tonal qualities. At performances of his works, you might find strings and pianos on the stage, woodwinds, brass and percussion throughout the
balconies, the composer himself improvising at the organ.
Among the hundreds of works Mr. Brant composed over a long career was "Ice Field," a work for organ and orchestra commissioned by the Other Minds Festival for the San Francisco Symphony. Michael Tilson Thomas led the world premiere in Davies Symphony Hall in December 2001, and the piece was awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
"It's a sort of musical equivalent of Alexander Calder - the wonderfully exuberant wackiness of it all - and at the same time it's very well thought out," Thomas said when the Pulitzer Prize was announced. "There's very little left to chance."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"Wonderful exuberant wackiness" - Henry must have loved those words. His own response to winning the Pulitzer Prize at the age of 88?
"The main thing is for a composer to stick around as long as possible and keep working. Otherwise you miss things like this."
It is because of Henry that I found the love of composing and being freely expressive in my music thoughts, as well as my awareness of spatial acoustics.
Henry is home now with the music of the spheres, and for us his music will live on for centuries thanks to his great invention, expression, and passions of muli-colored beauty with vast spatial designs.
In loving memory of my dear friend, and mentor of nearly 5 decades, Henry Brant, this month's featured album is "Going Home Again".
Be well my dearest friend, until we visit again in our pathless journeys.
Love and Blessings,
Daniel
