many many many years ago, eons, really, there was a precocious pocius brat that decided he liked the way the cello sounded that he heard father joe kugler play in the roman catholic church he was forced to attend (much to his misery). having already been messing with piano and stealing his sister @Marci Martin s guitar when she wasnt looking for a couple years, i was kinda on my way independently to now.... anyways, the first year i began learning cello, i learned absolutely nothing other than maybe how to do a glissando with a bow. useless... but let me flash back a little further. walk with me, talk with me people. my family was musical, seems like everyone had to play an instrument... to this day, my sister @Jeanne G Pocius Dorismond is one of the finest purveyors of trumpet to have ever lived... or at the very least sing in the school choir. there were two music teachers closely associated with the family, one Tim TQ Quinn, band director extraordinaire and a loving deeply caring soul behind a rather exasperated and tough personna. well leave mr. quinn for another day. this is about Doctor Catherine Wade, an actual DOCTOR of music. one of my earliest memories is her coming to our house for something or other in willimantic. i was really young, maybe 3 or 4 or so the first time i saw this exotic amazon of a beautiful woman with dark skin and deep set eyes, with a hint of baaastin to her voice. she scared the p outta me then, cuz she was such an exotic looking woman... id only seen black white and spanish people at that time, had never met anyone else of arabic descent... at least i dont remember any. but she was so kind, and quietly intense. she believed in what she did. maybe that year, maybe the next, i had seen the bela lugosi classic, dracula for the first time. i am a lifetime horror movie addict, and the mournful music that was used resonated with me in a very curious way, and i endeavored to find out what the hell it was... so i picked out the notes one at a time on my familys upright baby grande piano until i could kinda memorize it, and remember playing if for mrs wade... she wasnt a doctor yet at that point, i dont think ... in school the next day at sweeney school in willimantic. she didnt recognize it of course, as i wasnt playing it very fluidly, or in rhythm... i knew what i was playing, but she didnt... but i guess she saw a bit of a spark. she seemed glad id tried to figure it out on my own, and told me to practice. i was a rotten kid, i didnt wanna practice. i just wanted to do all the dumb stuff kids do. as it turns out, the piece was Swan Lake. beautiful, still one of the saddest motifs in music i can think of. i dropped the idea of being a pianist. nah gah happah. a couple years later, when i was in second grade, i began on cello and recorder. and man, did i SUCK.. no talent, no time, no ear, just a vague interest. i must have driven poor mr. schmidt insane, cuz he retired that year. the next year, he was replaced with a very sweet mrs. wade, still exotic and larger than life, but no longer frightening. she had the patience of a bloody saint, dealing with me.... the cello ultimately fell by the wayside, tho i still dig it to this day. i can play it better now at 52 than i could at 7 or 8, for sure. i kept going to music lessons, but it never really progressed. doctor wade never ever gave up on any of her students tho. even when they exasperated her as i did... i was a rotten kid and kinda enjoyed being so arrogant. ya live, ya learn... flash forward a few more years, mid 70s in willimantic..i was forced into music classes i didnt want by my parents... id been dicking around at this point for a few years with guitars, electric ones that my best friend jeff had. we were gonna be rock stars some day, like our heros, Alice Cooper Group 1966-74, Sparks, Frank Zappa (mainly cuz he was weird), black sabbath, etc... id been into sabbath since the moment i heard the self titled song on their first album. all about the horror movies. anyways, well, i didnt wanna play cello, i really just wanted to play rock and roll... id met blues legend Freddie King maybe a year or so plus or minus of then, whod shown me a blues box pattern when he was playing at The Shaboo Inn , and playing high school music program stuff didnt seem to be too hip. but this was my re-introduction to Dr. Wade. i made the plunge to playing upright bass, and tho the entire first year of high school i was too much of a burnout to learn anything. if it was possible to be TOO stoned, i was it. but somehow, she believed in me... and needed bass players for her orchestra. when i asked if i could bring a bass home for the summer, she said yes. i never touched the thing until about a week before my sophomore year. suddenly something shed explained to me made sense.... that the guitar and bass were tuned the same an octave apart, so the fingering was the same. CLICK. suddenly, all the stuff i could play on guitar made sense, and i could play it on the bass. when school started again, doctor wade, formerly exasperated, was due to be amazed. i could really get around on that doghouse, could bebop like Charles Mingus... tho never anywhere near as good as the MAN was, obviously... and had learned to play solos on it with the bow in hand... shed tried to teach me french bow, i didnt like it... more finesse, but way less dynamics. i went german with her blessing and became a force of nature in my own small right. i could get it howling, and had an innate abilitly to show my friends how to do the same stuff... i remember me and Peter Galipeau, my bassist in several of my earliest attempts at bands, used to jam on our uprights playing all kindsa cool stuff. i had issues with sheet music... i can READ, and tell ya what the notes are and all, but i am rather dyslexic with sheet music... i have a really hard time being able to see all them fly specks, and i can play stuff much faster by ear than reading it. she introduced me to her assistant, mr. ed geary... a brilliant and colorful, loving jazz violinist/multi instrumentalist who would take over the task of teaching me... i was at that point imploding ridiculously on my own, learning technique and developing a truly powerful vibratto... see, i applied my blues/rock vibratto technique to my classical music, and could get that thing stinging, sounding like a voice. anyways, mr. geary figured out i had an ear, but had difficulty reading music... i get lost. and he taught me about intervals, and using my ears, with dr. wades blessings of course. i would see doctor wade weekly for private lessons, which were invaluable.. i still use all the inffo i learned every single day to this day, from time, to tone, to even how to get vibratto from open strings (hint: play an octave above it on and adjacent string, and vibrate that... suddenly you have vibratto on open strings... try it)... and mr geary would continue teaching me to use my ears (and TQs chorus and choir were invaluable, too... music education changed my life) so by my second year playing upright, the first year doesnt count... she entered me in the allstate musician thing. much to my surprise, i got in. i think she was more impressed than i was. lol. but she was always so giving of her strenght and love, and i kept progressing. my junior year, despite haveing my left wrist in a cast almost to my elbow, i nailed the ALL NEW ENGLAND conference audiiton, playing some insane beethoven bass solo full of octave jumps ... i remember it started around 10th position, and was hard... somehow i got thru it, and became the first bassist ever to achieve that acclaim from my school. in a hat trick, i did the same the next year, tho i never played that concert... id quit school to go play the blues. another story. the thing was, over the course of many years, this gentle and wonderful woman saw a spark of something in me i didnt see myself. and she nurtured that spark, and helped it grow, and in the process, completely changed my life forever in a positive way... its going on my 46th year now as a musician, and i owe it all to her... she believed in me, and helped me, and loved me and all her students enough to never give up, to always try and understand, to always strive to be better... in my case, to ultimately be able to do what i love and somehow make a living doing it. after high school, i only got to see dr. wade a few times.. at her retirement, which was pretty much the death blow to the music programs in willimantic public schools... and once at her home on hammond hill road, probably close to 20 years ago. id been planning an unannounced surprise visit the next time id be in the chaplin area, but sadly, that was not to be. dr. wade passed on of a heart attack, and the world lost one of the greatest musicians on the planet, an unsung heroine, a ceaseless champion of music education and children alike and will be deeply missed by the countless thousands of people whom she taught, performed for, and loved so very deeply. she in now reunited with her husband, also a gentle and caring soul.... and she will be deeply missed forever. thank you mrs. wade, for all the gifts your bestowed on me. i will spend my life still paying it forward, and trying to help ignite the passion and gift for music in others wherever i shall meet them. you will be deeply missed and i must admit to tears being shed... but rest in peace, and godspeed to valhalla. the celestial choirs and angels await your guidance, to bring harmony and music to the multiverse. Catherine Wade was a regional, if not a national treasure and she will never be forgotten. namaste. https://fundrazr/campaigns/8sEy6/ab/842Ntf
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 15:34:54 +0000
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