Let me begin by saying that the most recent census shows that Lewis County has a population of 75,455. That leads me to the conclusion that there were approximately 75,430 citizens who missed what I consider to have been the best and brightest evening ever spent in Centralia College’s Corbet Theatre.
The occasion was a concert last Thursday by members of the college’s music department, and although I believed it was well enough advertised, few other people did. I’m not going to try to describe the glow I felt, walking to my small pickup at the end of the evening. The head of the college’s music department, Beth May, provided piano accompaniment to soloists Lesley O’Donel, flutist, and Kathleen Scarborough, violist. Both of them showed complete mastery of their instruments.
After each had performed, O’Donel returned to play an unaccompanied piece on the flute, which had me marveling at the sounds she was able to achieve by simply blowing across a hole in a piece of pipe. (I’m being facetious here.) It had this listener sitting on a seashore listening to waves and watching a sunset.
The second half of the program belonged to Daven Tillinghast, as both singer and accompanist. His mastery of the jazz guitar chords (which I was never able to achieve) was impeccable from the 1920s hit “Dinah” through a more modern Sinatra classic, “Nancy With the Laughing Face,” to original compositions.
My peculiar hearing impediment, which I’ve described before, (the impossibility of understanding spoken words in a situation where there is either amplification or echoes present) once again prevented me from understanding what was said between songs, but I’ve been reassured that his observations about how music has influenced people throughout the years were apt, appropriate and full of insight.
Then came the clincher, the perfect closing to an outstanding evening; Kathleen Scarborough returned — armed this time with a violin instead of her viola — and, with Tillinghast providing the jazz accompaniment on the guitar, first played the tender love ballad, “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” and then exploded with the single best jazz performance I’ve heard on that stage: an Irving Berlin song, “Cheek to Cheek,” from an old Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers movie, “Top Hat.”
The best way I can describe it was that she played with the energy and intensity that Janis Joplin used to exhibit at her rambunctious best. It was certainly nothing less than that. Her technical jazz skill, her interpretation and the rapport with her accompanist, Tillinghast, made it, in this bystander’s opinion, not just the best jazz performance, but the single best individual performance of any classification by anyone — amateur or professional — that I’ve heard on that stage.
The chances that a moment such as that will ever be recreated are slim, indeed. I’m sorry you missed it. The evening almost made me wish that I were a half century younger, so I could fall in love again. Almost.
Jazz violinists are somewhat of a musical rarity outside of Stephane Grappelli, of France, although Joe Venuti, who spent his last years in Puget Sound country, came in a darned close second. Today, Mark O’Connor is best known as a country music fiddler in Nashville, but he’s a top jazz and swing artist, too. By the way, did you know that he once played on two separate Saturday evening broadcasts from the studio of KELA? I know, I was there.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
