SUSANTO o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-06-25 published
FAIR,
Justice
Ross
Harold
(Retired) Proud Veteran Of World War Ii.
Ross FAIR, beloved husband, father and grandfather, passed away
in Kingston on Friday, June 22, 2007, at the age of 81. He is
survived by his wife Jean, daughters Janet and Judy, son-in-law
David, grandchildren Bayley and Zack and by his best friend Doctor Raymond
Neill (Bev). The youngest of five boys born to Willard Harold
FAIR and Helen Frances
FAIR (née
WESTALL,) he is predeceased
by brothers Kenny, Al (Marnie), Jack (Sheila) and Don (Beth).
Ross left St. Catharines High School early to join the Navy at
17, and at war's end, moved to Toronto and obtained his law degree
at Osgoode Hall. He was called to the bar in 1952 and subsequently
practiced in St. Catharines, Kitchener and Galt. Ross excelled
at courtroom work and was a skilled orator. He was appointed
to the bench in the Provincial Courts (Family and Criminal Divisions)
in 1966, becoming the youngest Judge in Ontario at age 39. In
1977, he was named the Senior Judge for Central-Western Ontario
and later became the president of the Ontario Family Judges Association.
In 1985, he was moved to Kingston to oversee family and youth
courts. As a judge, he was recognized as a skilled mediator with
a specialty in pre-trial negotiations. Ross was engaged in many
community organizations, including The Big Brothers Association,
Rotary Club, various youth advisory committees and the Seniors
Association. In 1977, he was chosen as Citizen of the Year in
Kitchener. Judge
FAIR's motto was 'carpe diem'. He loved life
and embraced his passions - law, boating, travelling, pets and
rare single malt whiskey. He was devoted to his family and Friends
and will be remembered as a gregarious, gentle and charming man
with a warm sense of humour. His family is grateful to the staff
at Providence Care, Saint Mary's of the Lake site and
to Doctor A.
SUSANTO for their kind and compassionate care. A celebration
of Ross's life will be held on Friday, June 29, 2007 at 2 p.m.,
in the chapel of the James Reid Funeral Home, Cataraqui Chapel
(1900 John Counter Boulevard, Kingston), with a reception to
follow. As expressions of sympathy, memorial donations made to
the Humane Society or to The Lung Association would be appreciated
by the family. (Donations by cheque only please). James Reid
Cataraqui Chapel Kingston (613) 544-3411 www.jamesreidfuneralhome.com
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SUSKIND o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-11-24 published
'Ambassador of the saxophone' was a champion of his own virtuosity
Musician who fell in love with the sax as a boy probably performed
more music for the instrument than anyone in history, writes
Sandra MARTIN. He was also a tireless and polished self-promoter
who even invented a fictional front man to ensure concert bookings
By Sandra MARTIN,
Page
S11
The man and his instrument. During his 50-year career as a professional
musician, Paul
BRODIE, "the ambassador of the saxophone," probably
played more concerts, recorded more albums, toured more countries
and taught more private students than any classical saxophonist
of his or any other day. He was the champion not only of his
own virtuosity as a player, but of the saxophone as a musical
instrument.
The saxophone, invented by Belgian Adolphe Sax in Paris in the
1840s, is a hybrid that combines the volume and carrying power
of brass with the intricate key work and technical finesse of
woodwinds. Although some modern classical composers have written
for the saxophone, it is still mainly played in military and
blues bands and jazz combos. Mr.
BRODIE tried to change that.
"He was a master promoter and the saxophone needed someone like
Paul, because as an instrument, it was invented late in the history
of music, so it was shut out of orchestral circles," said his
former student, concert saxophonist and composer Daniel Rubinoff
"The great composers had already established the orchestra and
composers in Europe didn't really want to take a chance on this
latecomer.
Mr. BRODIE was the first person to teach saxophone at the Royal
Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He was not himself a composer,
but he persuaded composers such as Srul Irving Glick, John Weinzweig,
Bruce Mather and Violet Archer to write daunting music for the
saxophone. In his quest to promote the saxophone he co-founded
the World Saxophone Congress with Eugene Rousseau in Chicago
in 1969 to bring players, critics, composers and audiences together
in a different city every four years.
"He built a career for himself. He was an incredible worker,
he believed in himself totally and he never looked back," said
Jean-Guy BRAULT, a flutist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra
for more than 30 years. "He was an icon in the saxophone world
- in the classical sense, but he also taught many jazz saxophonists,"
said Mr. BRAULT. "He changed my life. He opened my eyes to so
many things - the realities of the professional music world,"
he said. "I owe a lot to him."
Paul (Zion)
BRODIE was born in Montreal in the bitterest depths
of the Depression, the younger
son of Sam and Florence (née
SCHILLER.)
When Paul was 10 months old, his father, who ran a dry goods
store, moved his family to the north end of Winnipeg, where he
found work selling radios in an appliance store. The family moved
again when Paul was 11, to Regina in neighbouring Saskatchewan.
He went to Strathcona School, sang in the junior choir at synagogue
and played the clarinet in the Regina Lions Junior Band. In high
school, the only subject that interested him was music. Sick
in bed with a cold one day in Grade 10, he heard Freddie Gardner
play I'm in the Mood for Love on the saxophone.
He was besotted with the sound and immediately decided to switch
instruments. Goodbye clarinet. Hello saxophone.
He earned money to buy a saxophone working at a local deli, but
he couldn't find a woodwind teacher and so transferred what he
knew about playing the clarinet to the saxophone.
After graduating from high school in 1952, he packed his sax
and his clarinet and headed to Winnipeg where he entered United
College, but failed miserably in a pre-law program. With support
from his high-school music teacher, he was accepted the following
year at the University of Michigan, where Larry Teal taught the
saxophone.
In one of his first classes in the history of music he heard
a recording of French classical saxophone virtuoso Marcel Mule
playing the alto sax. His ambitions changed; whereas he once
hoped to be good enough to play in a band led by a musician of
the calibre of Tommy Dorsey or Les Brown, he now considered the
possibilities of becoming a classical saxophonist.
He joined the university band under conductor William Revelli
and played the bass saxophone when they performed in Carnegie
Hall in April, 1954. He also formed a dance combo called The
Stardusters, which helped earn tuition money and taught him a
great deal about the business of promoting and organizing a group.
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in music education
and a master's degree in performance in December, 1957, he went
to Paris to study with maestro Marcel Mule. Back in Canada, he
moved to Toronto and looked for a job teaching saxophone.
"The Royal Conservatory of Music is now in its 72nd year and
we have never allowed a saxophone in the building," protested
Ettore MAZZOLINI, director of the Royal Conservatory of Music,
but the ever-persuasive Mr.
BRODIE succeeded in getting an audition
and played so well he broke the embargo. He was a woodwinds instructor
from 1959 to 1960. Soon, he was also playing on an occasional
basis for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and doing regional tours
with Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, first with pianist George
Brough and then with Colombe Pelletier as his accompanist.
Late in November, 1959, a musician friend introduced Mr.
BRODIE
to Rima GOODMAN, a modern dancer (and later a fibre artist) who
worked in New York, but whose parents lived in Toronto. They
were married on March 13, 1960. Their daughter, Claire, was born
in October, 1964.
Mr. BRODIE made his debut as a soloist with the Toronto Symphony
Orchestra at a Sunday afternoon concert on December 27, 1959,
with Walter
SUSKIND conducting and his New York debut at the
Town Hall on November 18, 1960, with George Brough accompanying
him on the piano and Mrs.
BRODIE turning pages.
There were only about 45 people in the audience, but one of them
was Raymond Erickson, the music critic for The New York Times.
"Mr. BRODIE's skill made everything he played sound fluent and
easy although the music was studded with technical difficulties&hellip
producing a lovely soft tone when he wanted to… in his splendidly
vital performance," he wrote. A jubilant Mr.
BRODIE phoned the
Canadian Wire Service and begged them to pick up Mr. Erickson's
review, which they obligingly did, flashing the news about the
Canadian native's success in the Big Apple. Mr.
BRODIE carried
that tattered clipping in his wallet for the rest of his life.
Because two performance careers in one family meant too much
travelling for a couple that wanted to stay together, the
BRODIEs
decided to make their base in Toronto. There, they established
the Brodie School of Music and Modern Dance early in 1961 in
a former furniture store. The dance studio was on the ground
floor, six music studios were in the basement and the second
floor had two apartments. They lived in one and turned the other
into an additional five music studios.
One of his first students was Jean-Guy
BRAULT, who had played
saxophone for fun while studying philosophy at university. He
studied saxophone, clarinet and flute for about two years and
then began teaching in the Brodie school before taking a master's
degree at the University of Michigan with Mr.
BRODIE's old teacher,
Larry
Teal. "He was a fantastic teacher," Mr.
BRAULT said of
his mentor, describing Mr.
BRODIE as "encouraging and never flinching."
When the National Arts Centre was looking for players for its
new orchestra in 1969, Mr.
BRAULT auditioned and got a job as
second flutist. He played with the orchestra for more than 30 years,
retiring in 2002 after a concert with jazz singer Cleo Laine
and her saxophonist husband, John Dankworth
The BRODIEs ran their school for nearly 20 years, employing about
20 music and dance teachers, and training about 650 students
a season - among them Willem Moolenbeek, Lawrence Sereda, Robert
Pusching, John Price and Robert Bauer. Mr.
BRODIE also taught
woodwinds at the University of Toronto from 1968 to 1973 and
formed a quartet in 1972 to showcase his own playing and the
work of a revolving group of three students. The Paul Brodie
Saxophone Quartet played at the World Saxophone Congress in London
in 1976 and in the 1981 film Circle of Two.
Never a slouch when it came to self-promotion, the canny Mr.
BRODIE
invented a fictitious character, Ronald Joy, to serve as his
front man in booking concerts. After printing business cards
and letterhead, the
BRODIEs and some of their students stuffed
envelopes and sent them to more than 5,000 concert sponsors throughout
North America. When potential sponsors called the school asking
for Mr. Joy, the call would be put through to Mr.
BRODIE who
would lower his voice by a couple of octaves and start bargaining
performance fees, hotel rates and dates. Mr. Joy booked nearly
800 concerts for his "client" in the next two decades and also
promoted Mrs.
BRODIE's career as a sculptor and fibre artist.
Mr. BRODIE was playing his saxophone in his music studio one
day in 1978, when the phone rang. The caller was actor Warren
Beatty, casually inquiring if he could use a recording of Mr.
BRODIE
playing the saxophone in Heaven Can Wait, his movie about a football
player who also plays the soprano sax. An amateur saxophonist,
Mr.
Beatty believed that Mr.
BRODIE's recording of the fourth
movement from Handel's Sonata No. 3 would be perfect background
music for the scene in which Mr. Beatty's character plays football
with his servants.
After agreeing on terms, Mr.
BRODIE put his promotional skills
to work. Before long "the Canadian media somehow got the idea
that a Canadian saxophonist was being featured throughout the
film," according to the account that Mr.
BRODIE related in his
autobiography, Ambassador of the Saxophone. When Heaven Can Wait
was nominated for several academy awards, the
BRODIEs and Claire
(then 13) flew to Los Angeles, where Mr.
BRODIE sent 250 postcards
pumping his connection with the film To Canadian media and arranged
to do a live telephone interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
television the day after the ceremonies.
The following year, the
BRODIEs closed down their school and
the quartet. The lease was up, he was in "phone ringing-off-the-hook"
demand after the release of Heaven Can Wait and she was "wildly
busy" with commissions for her work as a fibre artist. He never
stopped teaching, however, either privately in a smaller studio
or at York University, where he taught from 1982 until the late
1990s.
Concert saxophonist and composer Daniel Rubinoff was one of his
last students. "I needed a mentor and I found one," he said in
a telephone interview. After studying in Europe, he worked with
Mr. BRODIE for 18 months beginning in 1995 and won the gold medal
at the Royal Conservatory for the ARCT exams in 1997.
"One of the things about Paul's legacy is that he realized that
you had to practice the saxophone to become as good a performer
as you could possibly be, but you also had to be a tireless promoter,"
Mr. Rubinoff said. "He was a wonderful business person and he
passed that on to people like me." How to have a career as a
concert saxophonist, how to talk to an audience, how to be tough
about criticism, how to cold call a concert promoter and how
to set up a teaching studio, were among the synergistic "life
lessons" that Mr. Rubinoff learned from Mr.
BRODIE.
About seven years ago, Mr.
BRODIE, who was suffering from high
blood pressure and diabetes, developed an aortic dissection -
a tear in the walls of the aorta which is frequently fatal. "Miraculously"
without surgery "his body glued itself back together," according
to Mr. BRODIE's daughter, Claire. "The last seven years were
a gift."
Earlier this fall, a Magnetic Resonance Image revealed an enormous
aneurysm in Mr.
BRODIE's aorta. Mr.
BRODIE asked if he had time
to make a CD of favourite pieces with harpist Erica
GOODMAN before
undergoing surgery. (The CD, which was recorded at Grace Church
on the Hill in Toronto, will be released shortly.) On Monday
morning Mr.
BRODIE was wheeled into surgery, but three-quarters
of the way through the long operation, his heart gave out.
Paul Zion BRODIE, O.C., was born in Montreal on April 10, 1934.
He died during heart surgery at Sunnybrook Hospital on November 19,
2007. He was 73. Predeceased by his parents, he leaves his wife,
Rima, his daughter Claire and an older brother.
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