Geoffrey James Lee
(1961-1999)
My dear friend Geoff Lee, 37, died suddenly on June 17, 1999, from a seizure while attending a conductors' symposium in Ottawa. He was a cellist, music teacher, composer and the conductor of the Timmins Symphony Orchestra. Geoff and I were stand partners in the orchestra cello section at Laurier, and the closeness and fun we shared (making a huge leaf pile and jumping in it! concocting crab treats with homemade mayonnaise!) continued over 15 years despite the distance from Toronto to Timmins. Visiting in Toronto, he loved to sit in and play cello or viola with whatever orchestra I was playing in at the time, and in Timmins I would play under his baton and marvel at the wonderful things he was doing. He was generous and gifted, and a rare true friend.
Geoff had a tremendous impact on the City of Timmins, where over 13 years he built a thriving musical community around the Timmins Symphony Orchestra and music school. While many other orchestras fell apart from lack of community support, Geoff took his orchestra great strides in the opposite direction. By committing to stay so many years to develop the orchestra, he was able to see the big picture and do what was needed. He persuaded many former musicians to join the orchestra, and inspired the community to financially support it. Sold out concerts became the norm! The orchestra grew from only one paid musician to seven, while the school grew to an enrolment of 400. The orchestra brought in major guest artists and made CDs, and Timmins was treated to its first opera, The Magic Flute. The string students travelled to Toronto and won first place in a music competition, and the summer music camp Geoff started up was a major yearly highlight in many lives. What Geoff did was a huge accomplishment for any city in Canada, where orchestras routinely struggle and fold, but especially for an isolated location up north.
Geoff had a huge personal impact on many of us who knew and care deeply for him. He was the most successful person I know, in that everything that is truly important, he was doing right. He showed a lot of people how to care for, forgive and respect each other, how to work and play together and create beautiful music, how to build a flourishing and prosperous arts community, and how to have loads of spontaneous fun and joyful experiences together. We miss him.
After Geoff and I graduated from the Wilfrid Laurier music program in Waterloo, we took the photos below when I visited him in Toronto.
Marina Hoover, Geoff and me
Geoff with his cello
Me and Geoff
Geoff, Carol Vreugdenhil and Jamie Manson
 Read the news article |
 Read the news article |
|
 Globe and Mail Lives Lived Aug. 5/99 |
 Read the song lyrics |
Breathing Vivaldi - by Jennifer Bronson
she heard the laugh and held her breath. she imagined speeding, a cemetery, speeding, those throat-clenched seconds until she could exhale and get on with her day. hold your breath and you won't hear, hold your breath and you'll be safe. now she knew she wasn't. the laughter was in her living room, in the slow drip of the kitchen sink, in cushion cracks. his laugh, deep-barrelled, not quite open-lipped, more stomach, following her from bed to carpet to dresser to mirror. she paused when she got there and looked at her face. it looked the same. when she saw him lying there, or the half of him that they chose to show, she felt like laughing. half-man in wooden box, lips pulled together too tightly. she didn't recognize him, anything about him at all, until she saw his hands and then she wanted to cry. his fingers were her favourite thing, like clay only softer, straight from the earth. he molded her fingers with his, let them set in perfect form -- the way he wanted. then he would play and she would listen and then he would listen and she would play and he would laugh and fix them again. now she holds her breath if she hears one note. turns red then white and wonders where he went -- ten bars of Vivaldi. Holst, Sibelius, Mozart. she holds her breath because she can't breathe it hurts so much. she's fine now she says. "i'm fine," her exact words. "i'm doing fine." what if she told them about the laughing, about the face in the mirror that hasn't changed, about how she hears his voice in the vacuum cleaner that she uses to drown out the laughter. about how after that she stops, gets down on her knees and begins to pick things out by hand. "i'm fine. i really am." she will move on and maybe one day she won't hear Bach in the microwave or Holberg under her pillow. maybe one day she won't need to bite her lip so hard when she calls his name as he slips into a crowd or suck in her cheeks so much when she remembers. maybe one day. for now it doesn't really matter. "i'm fine," she says. and she is. just has a need to listen when he laughs and to answer when he speaks, but can't converse with air she can't breathe.
Jennifer Bronson was Geoff's cello student in Timmins, and was then my cello student in Toronto while attending U of T.
The Moonlight Song
Words and music by Geoffrey James Lee
Keefer Lake, 1992 The moonlight shone above, Chorus:
|
