It Is As If (2017)

Genre: Contemporary Jazz

Once upon a time before COVID, the University of Colorado offered a senior auditor program that allowed people over the age of 55 to attend (without credit) whatever courses they fancied,as long as they paid a nominal fee and obtained permission from the instructor. Besides international travel, it was my most eagerly anticipated pursuit after retiring from teaching in 2015.

These classes enabled me to continue the jazz education I started with Gift of Jazz, but in a much more rigorous manner. I audited all the courses available to me through the university’s Thompson Jazz Studies program. I had the privilege of attending classes taught by several CU faculty: Brad Goode, Paul McKee, and John Gunther. Within two years time, I exhausted most of the class offerings.

Typically, senior auditors were not required (or expected) to do any of the classwork, but I soon found myself in a graduate class with John Gunther where I was one of three students! Since it would have been awkward in such an intimate setting not to do the assignments, I did all of the work for the class—with Gunther’s encouragement. Our text was Modal Jazz Composition & Harmony by Ron Miller from which I learned an enormous amount about complex music theory.

I wrote “It Is As If” as an assignment for one of Professor Gunther’s classes, employing many of the new harmonic and arranging principles I had acquired, particularly modeled on the work of pianist/composer Ritchie Beirach.

I took another Gift of Jazz class called “Dots on Lines” in 2017 with a fourth CU faculty member, Jeff Jenkins, during which I scored the piece for jazz quartet. It debuted at the La Cour Bistro & Art Bar in Denver on March 19, 2017, performed by the enormously talented musicians: Jeff Jenkins (piano), Ken Walker (bass), Dru Heller (drums), Jeremy Wendelin (tenor sax) and Jason Klobnak (flugelhorn).

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The inspiration for my piece was the recent passing of a dear family friend, Olly Visser, who died in 2016 at the age of 91. Here is an selected passage from Olly’s extraordinary and abundant life, excerpted from her obituary:

“Olly was born Aug. 15, 1924, the only child of bookkeepers Felix and Marie Kohn Pollak. Vienna was her playground, and she knew every inch of her neighborhood and its residents and shopkeepers. When Olly was 10 her mother took her to all-day services on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Late that night, her mother took her own life in the family's tiny apartment, precipitating years of guilt for having been unable to stay awake and prevent it.

“Four years later, as Nazism blazed and the Germans annexed Austria, it became clear to Olly's father that she would not be safe in Vienna. So Olly became one of 1,800 Jewish and half-Jewish German and Austrian children who boarded Kindertransport trains for the promise of security in the Netherlands. In Holland, Olly met a young Mennonite minister, Helene (Leny) Leignes Bakhoven, a leader in the movement to take in child refugees. As the children were parceled out to Dutch foster families, Leny chose Olly to live with her. Leny also sheltered a number of Jews in the manse. Several times, the Gestapo requisitioned rooms in the house, with officers sleeping in bedrooms directly below a Jewish family in the attic. Olly, however, held a German passport, which gave her a small measure of protection. Still, she found out after the war that her name and Jewishness had surfaced in local records and that her freedom had been quickly running out. Olly often said that Leny, her foster mother and lifelong friend, was the first of several angels who appeared at critical moments to save her. Largely because of Olly's advocacy, Leny was eventually recognized by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum as one of the ‘Righteous Among Nations’ for her extraordinary bravery.

“In Holland, Olly received a classical education in the highest-level high school curriculum in the country, completing courses in math, science, Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, English and German. She planned to become a doctor but changed course and became a nurse instead. By then, Olly had been baptized in Leny's church. At a pancake dinner with the youth group there, she met a slim young Dutchman, Jeronimo (Roon) Visser, a star cricket and field hockey player. They married in 1949 after a five-year engagement, and Olly retired from nursing. In 1954, Roon accepted a Fulbright scholarship to study microbiology at the University of Wisconsin…Roon, returning to Holland with a heightened love of research and the United States, accepted a job with the Upjohn Co. in Kalamazoo. The family, with all its belongings, set sail for New York in February 1957 in a crossing that was documented on the front page of The New York Times…

“In the early 1960s, with two additional children, Olly began to practice in this new country what she had learned in the old: that joy comes from connection with others, whether individually or through causes involving inclusiveness, peace and social justice. She was an early public supporter of the civil rights movement; opposed the war in Vietnam; supported women's and gay rights all before those beliefs became commonplace. In the 1970s, Olly returned to college, placing out of prerequisites and enrolling in calculus and interpersonal communications, which she aced.

“Over the years, she volunteered with and sometimes led countless groups and committees, all of them focused in some way on human welfare. She also was an early supporter of what is now Hospice of Southwest Michigan, which includes the inpatient hospice Rose Arbor, where she spent her last five months. Olly was a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Portage, where she was an elder and served on many committees. In later years, she regularly attended services at Skyridge Church of the Brethren in Kalamazoo. She loved camping, reading, Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Kalamazoo Symphony. She adored her children and especially her grandchildren. Her many deep friendships lasted decades and spanned continents.”

In 1989, when Olly was 65 years old, she penned a short essay modeled on Edward R. Murrow’s 1951-1955 CBS Radio Network program called “This I Believe,” (later revived by NPR), reflecting on her own evolving beliefs. She described her attraction to her adopted Christian identity and her difficulty subscribing to all of the tenets of the corporate church. It was from this essay that I derived the title for this piece.

Here are Olly’s inspirational words:

It took me several years before I even wanted to go near a church. I think I remained suspicious of the organized church for a long time and in a way I still am. Whenever the institution speaks loudly and with authority, I have the impulse to run away. Whenever dogmas seem to come on stronger than the message of love, I feel uncomfortable. Whenever I feel boxed in by theological and church language, I squirm. Whenever it seems that the church prefers the status quo over prophetic leadership and action in the world, I get very impatient. In order to remain in the church and not jeopardize my own integrity, I have learned through the years to translate and redefine language and images and metaphors and liturgy, in a way that maintains for me meaning in what we do and say around the church. I have found it helpful to put an "it is as if" in front of a lot of scripture passages the traditional statements that define God, Christ, the Holy Spirit…

So what do I believe today? Well, the old images are still there. Sometimes I surprise myself praying to the father—or even grandfather—in heaven who knows all his children by name. There are times when I still believe that some day I will be punished for all the things I have done—of left undone—in my life and when I feel that forgiveness and acceptance are not for me. But on a deeper level I basically believe what I believed 30 years ago: That love is what it is all about, —the ultimate creative energy in which I feel myself grounded and which seems to push and pull me and direct me. This is what I call God. This I perceive as the source of all wisdom, all healing, all life, all goodness, all truth,—the innermost core of my being.

NOTE ON THE COVER ART:

When Olly was a teenager, prior to her Kinder Transport to the Netherlands, her father sent her off for summer holidays in neighboring Czechoslovakia, one of the few democracies in a sea of rising fascist European states. She spent one summer in the small, but historically significant village of Velehrad, notable as the sacred place where the Greek saints, Cyril and Methodius, developed the Cyrillic alphabet—so named after the first brother.

While there, one of Olly’s young Czech friends gave her a hand-carved and -painted wooden box as a souvenir of their friendship, with the image of the local church carved on the front and a Czech woman in costume with floral designs decorating the top. Knowing my love of Czech culture and our shared experiences in this village (I visited there in 1997), Olly re-gifted this box to me. It remains one of my most cherished possessions. I have reproduced one of the floral patterns from the box as the cover art for this recording.