ALMOST FATAL ATTRACTION

 

Note: this is a re-post from my old blog Lone Star Concerto. It's definitely worth a rerun. And it's the absolute truth.   Jon V.

 
When I was studying music in college, I practically lived in practice rooms. I practiced the piano several hours a day - - while also balancing a frenzy of rehearsals with orchestras, chamber groups, and soloists. As if this wasn't enough, I was also a student piano teacher for several semesters. To say that my musical life was full would be an understatement.

One of my piano teachers was a former Julliard professor named Raymond Jones. His wife also taught at the college. My practice room was adjacent to her classroom and she would often chide me for practicing too loudly. Bursting into the practice room in a breathless fluster, she'd demand me to "play quietly" and admonish me for "seriously disrupting" her class.

On good days Mrs. Jones always acted a bit peculiar. On bad days she was downright bizarre. Eventually it was discovered that she had a brain tumor, which she succumbed to within a year.

Fortunately, my playing didn't annoy everyone. Curious people often stopped by the practice room to hear me play. One of these music aficionados was a young woman whom I'll call Linda, who was the niece of the famous Hollywood actor Tyrone Power (then deceased). She would share stories about her famous uncle and show me family photos. Linda had a small baby who contracted pneumonia and she dropped out of college to care for him. I never saw her again.

Another admirer who frequented my practice room was an attractive dark-haired "girl" named Janice ( her real name). She was studying singing and had a decent voice. I knew that Janice was smitten by my irresistible charm (hey, what can I say?) but I didn't initially realize just how serious she was.

One afternoon I drove her to her tennis lesson. She assumed that this innocuous gesture meant I was interested. Despite the fact that I gave no encouragement, her admiration for me increased.

A short time later, a big Fluke of Fate tossed us together again. Janice was giving a solo singing recital at the college one afternoon. At nearly the very last minute, her pianist accompanist cancelled for some emergency that I can't recall. Major panic ensued and a very flustered professor accosted me, asking (truly begging) me to take over as pianist.

I (very reluctantly) acquiesced and was immediately handed a pile of music manuscripts. The concert was to start in less than an hour. I had never seen any of the music before and had never previously accompanied Janice anywhere except to the damn tennis lesson.

The only preparation that I had came from a bottle of whiskey that I kept stashed under the front seat of my car (in the college parking lot). I took several generous swigs for courage.

I made my way to the stage and sat at the grand piano. Janice began singing. I began sight-reading and faking my way through the likes of Purcell, Brahms, and Ralph Vaughn Williams. Incredibly, the concert went off without a noticeable hitch. I was lauded for involuntarily saving the day (I must have been a damn genius).

In a surge of effusive romanticism, Janice assumed I was her hero. She was enamored. We'd made beautiful music together!

After our haphazard impromptu musical debut she began following me everywhere like a homeless puppy. Constantly calling me (somehow got my phone number),

 sending scented notes, eventually sending daily letters of endearment (this was before the advent of cell phones or email). Her enthrallment escalated into stalking the living hell out of me.

I was admittedly sweet and charming back then (you'd never know it now, would you?). And I was not only congenial, but also easy. To some extent I might have possibly slightly encouraged the girl's rapture. Inadvertently, of course.

Fortunately, I didn't have to worry about being stalked for long. It all came to a surprisingly dramatic abrupt end one afternoon at the college.

It happened in the main auditorium. During a rehearsal with the college chamber orchestra. I was the harpsichordist for a performance of Handel's oratorio Samson. We were in the middle of the overture.

Suddenly one of the auditorium doors burst open. A burly-looking guy in Army fatigues stormed in and strutted right up to the harpsichord. I could hardly believe what was happening but I could definitely smell his wrath.

His shouting reverberated throughout the room with perfect acoustics and his message was like a venomous bite.

"You better stop screwing with my wife!" he shouted at me. He didn't actually say "screwing". He was a little more graphic.

"What?" I was in the advanced stages of shock.

"Janice is my wife, you bastard! If you go near her again I'll KILL you! I mean it!"

I believed him.

I'm actually politely paraphrasing what he said. I can't remember the exact words, but the killing part was permanently etched in my mind.

Holy shit.

As the irate Army dude haughtily huffed out of the room, I could hear a collective gasp from the orchestra. Nobody knew what to do. I tried to gather my shredded wits.

"Next time we rehearse, I'll wear a bullet-proof vest," I announced.

It was all I could think of saying. It didn't generate much laughter.

I had absolutely no idea whatsoever that Janice was married. She sure as hell never bothered to tell me. I later learned that her husband had been stationed in Georgia and was home on leave. I have no clue how he found out about me.

So, you're all asking the Big Question: did Janice and I ever have sex?
Hey, I seldom kiss and tell.....and why  should I spill it all for free in a public blog? Wait until I publish my memoirs. You'll get your money's worth.

Truth to tell, at that time I was having a passionate relationship with......somebody......named.....phillip

I will say that in those glorious days of my California youth I often attracted drama and generated sexual tension. I'm not bragging or being "self-absorbed" I'm merely telling the truth.

I was always an equal-opportunity offender.

Okay, I omitted my final paragraph because I probably said too much.... ...(one of my trademarks).

Sweet youth......sweeter memories.....

Jon ❤️ more fascinating than a Barbara Cartland novel

     

REMEMBERING

 January the 27th was International Holocaust Remembrance Day - - commerating the 80th year of the liberation of Auschwitz - Birkenau. 

I've been wanting to write about some very special holocaust survivors that I knew long ago. Perhaps this is an appropriate time.

I've had the privilege of studying piano and composition with some of the most extraordinary teachers in Southern California. Geza Wolf was one of them.

I began piano lessons with him when I was fifteen and studied for nearly three years. My only regret is that I was older and more mature, but my time with him was extremely rewarding.

At that time, Geza Wolf and his wife Elizabeth were residing in Riverside. They were native Hungarians. Wolf had been a composer, conductor, and concert pianist in Europe. He was also the conductor of the Belgrade Opera Orchestra in Yugoslavia.

This is the Belgrade National Theater where he used to conduct

Both Wolf and his wife, Hungarian Jews, were survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Northern Germany (where Anne Frank died).

Wolf was a suberb pianist and had an astounding knowledge of music. He was also a quiet, soft spoken man, very humble. When I paid my monthly fee for my lessons, he was always reluctant to take the check - almost as he didn't deserve it.

It was very obvious that he and his wife were pround Americans and extremely greatful to be in this country.

He composed some sort of memorial music (I can't remember exactly what) that was presented to (then) President Nixon. He kept an award and handwritten letter from Nixon near his piano.

I knew that Wolf and his wife were survivors of the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and was extremely interested about their tragic plight. Wolf never spoke about it, of course, and I politely never asked.

Bit by bit, I learned a few things from other sources. He was arrested by the Nazis while he was conducting a concert in Belgrade. In Bergen-Belsen he suffered horrifying torture - - including being hung upside down and severely beaten.

At the time that I knew him, I assumed that he and his wife were married when they were in Bergen-Belsen. It is only recently that I found the concentration camp records of Geza Wolf, but there is no listing of Elizabeth. I now think that Elizabeth was listed by her maiden name (which I don't know) and they were probably married after the 1945 liberation.

Curiously, Wolf was arrested again after the liberation, but I don't know why or where. This imprisonment seemed to be of a short duration.

I happened to see some of Wolf's old music manuscripts, signed in his hand. His real name was Geza Wolfenstein.

I also happened to see the tatooed numbers on his arm. Tangible proof of the holocaust.

At the time I was studying with Wolf, I had little confidence in my pianistic abilities and had trouble performing in public. Elizabeth Wolf had lended me some of her self-help books about aquiring confidence. She had needed them to help cope after the traumas of surviving the war.

One thing I distinctly remember is that Geza and his wife spoke a beautiful, refined Hungarian dialect - - not often heard. It was lovely to hear.

Musically speaking, I was already studying and performing advanced pieces at age fifteen. Compositions by Franz Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, and rare things by the Russian composer Anton Rubinstein.

Geza Wolf performed very frequently in Palm Springs and became friends with many celebrities. He kept these friendships very low key and seldom spoke of them.

I knew that he had a very close relationship with the Gabors, particularly ZsaZsa (whose real name was Sari). The Gabors were an affluent family from Budapest, where they owned a jewelry store. They fled to America when they lost all their possessions during the Nazi invasion.

ZsaZsa was a very flamboyant character, but personally she was an astute businesswoman and had more compassion than she ever showed publicly.

I wish I knew more about Geza Wolf and his tragic and turbulent past. He was a great teacher. The time I spent with him was always fascinating and rewarding.

If there is a happy ending, it's so fortunate that he and his wife survived the holocaust and made it safely to America.

I recently discovered where they are now buried - - and was pleased that they both had long lives. Geza lived to be 89. His wife Elizabeth was 90.

They had no children nor any relatives that I know of.

Geza and Elizabeth are interred at Olivewood Cemetery in Riverside. Geza's birth year is 1910. On the Bergen-Belsen records, he's listed as being born in 1913 but this could be an error.

 

The following photos are graphic and disturbing. They were all taken at Bergen Belsen during liberation in 1945.

I want everyone to see the raw,  unspeakable horrors of the holocaust.

Nobody should ever forget.

Thousands of bodies at Bergen-Belsen that had to be burned

Where the prisoners slept

A child walking past corpses

Thank you for reading this.

Jon  ❤️

I'LL BE SEEING YOU

 

I'll be seeing you....until we meet again, somehow........somewhere.......
I only wish I could have told you everything.
But everything is too overwhelming, too dangerous. Everything is all that we never wanted to know.

Am I drunk?
Am I psychotically irrational?

I'm in deep personal contemplation.

I recently found this ancient piano tape in my music files. So old that I'd nearly forgotten I recorded it. It's my own arrangement - - which is damn good.
One of the (many) musical warhorses that I used to play in smokey midnight piano bars, where brutal reality was mercifully submerged in booze, cigarettes, and delicious sexual anonymity. I was alive then.

Alive.
These past few years I am merely a ghost, contemplating my own grave.....

So I took this old piano tape, made a quick, sloppy, haphazard video out of it. Posted it on YouTube.
Nobody will listen, nobody gives a shit.

But I listen. I hear the inner sanctity, the clockwork of musical depth that only musicians hear.

The audio quality isn't perfect. Isn't even reasonable.
But it's an old tape.

That's life. And life, my friends, is a brutally unforgiving bitch.

I'll be seeing you. Sometime. Sometime soon.
With more words, more music. More disturbing displays of personal contemplation gone awry.

Without me, where else would you find such an appallingly addictive enigma?

                               

DISCONNECTED

I'm thinking of how disconnected I am from my musical past. Sometimes it seems so far away that I can hardly believe it was real. Time has a wicked way of diminishing the potency of things that were and eventually eclipses our shining absolutes with shadows of doubt.

I look at my two abandoned pianos gathering dust and  am disheartened at the fact that I've only played them once or twice since I moved here. I'm in a dreary mood lately, battling private ghosts of melancholia.

I think of those golden California years when music and the piano were a major part of my life. I was a soloist, accompanist, ballet rehearsal pianist. I performed with orchestras, chamber groups, choirs. It was a wonderfully full life, overflowing with creativity.


For the past decade or more I've had far too many other pressing concerns to think about music. Lately, the only music that fills my life are the soothing songs of Mother Nature: chattering birds in forest trees......the great breath of the wind singing through towering branches......the lean, hungry midnight howls of coyotes.

It was your choice to abandon music, wasn't it, Jon?

We don't choose the cards that life deals us. Life is a vicious bitch that kicks us in the ass and knocks our dreams into the endless void beyond raw reality.

Bitter, Jon, really bitter....

But I'm not here to lament or philosophize. As usual, I've taken a very long road to get to the point.

I'm thinking of my past music work and the annoyingly infrequent documentation of it. Some of my public performances were filmed but heaven only knows what happened to them (or who is in possession them). Those were the days before the rampant popularity of videos and cell phones. Documentation wasn't as easy or frequent as it is now.

When I moved to Texas I had a small music studio in San Angelo. I also got my first camcorder (better late than never...). I'd prop it up on a bookshelf and film myself rehearsing or practicing the piano. These are some of the piano videos that I have on my YouTube channel. Jayveesonata

Unfortunately my virtuoso days were long gone. I was in my 40's and out of practice. The quality of my playing on these videos is mediocre (according to my critical standards).


There is a bright side to this murky mess of self-degradation. When I lived in California and was an active musician I recorded an enormous amount of my music on audio cassettes. I tossed the tapes into boxes and nearly forgot about them.

While recently going through the chaotic mess of things piled in the garage, I came across a box of my old audio cassette tapes (one of the few things the movers didn't "lose"). 

There are over fifty audio cassettes in the box and they contain many of my serious piano recordings: loads of classical music, a great deal of ragtime and blues, even some of my own compositions (which I thought were lost forever). I even found a unique recording made when I was twenty -  my performance of Gershwin's original rare solo piano version of Rhapsody in Blue.

I plan to transfer these old cassettes to CD and MP3. There are numerous cassette converters available, such as the USB Cassette Capture (but I've heard some negative things about the sound quality). 

I should probably just use the free Audacity software, although - after having looked through the tutorial - it seems rather daunting. Anyway, I want to begin this project ASAP. It will be fun.