“A Layover in Sweet Home Chicago”: Remembering Robert C. Fisher, Violinist, Violist & String Pedagogue"
On Tuesday, 11 August 2015 I traveled to Rochester, New York as a returning participant musician at the Gateways Music Festival. It was to be my third “family reunion, tribal discovery and all-around jam-up time had” with a growing group of musicians, many of whom I went to school with, freelanced with, auditioned in line with, joked around with, sometimes argued with yet still always in the pursuit of musical excellence and artistic truth.
However, my trip would turn out to be less than direct or on-time!! A major storm hit the entire East Coast of the United States knocking out power, delaying and cancelling all planned forms of travel. I was waiting to board my 725pm flight (uh, two seats, not one!!) out of Raleigh-Durham for a quick joint to Charlotte and catch a connecting flight to Rochester, but those storms took that travel offer…’OFF the table!! The torrential rainfall often called a “gullywasher”--hit the Triangle Area and RDU Airport as I was waiting to board the plane!! Take-off was delayed but its arrival was so late that the connecting flight had already departed. Upon my eventual arrival and attempt to find and book another connecting flight to Rochester, I would learn that the next flight wasn’t scheduled to depart until 800am the next morning...NOT direct service but another two-city “hop and skip” connector through Chicago’s O’Hare Field--AND a two and one-half-hour layover upon arrival there!!
While stranded for 45 minutes maximum that evening in Charlotte, my dear cousins Jason and Blanche Laws came to the “ram in the bush rescue”!! They were in town that evening and kept me from spending an uncomfortable night in Douglas International Airport--with no luggage!! Blanche works for USAir at Douglas, and her work shift began at 6am the next day, so after a “short nap” at their home I was right back to Douglas in a few hours to await that flight. Upon arrival at O’Hare Field, I had plenty of time to have breakfast and dawdle on Facebook until my final connecting plane to Rochester boarded for takeoff.
The interesting coincidence is that two of my colleagues, percussionist Dr. Ralph G. Barrett of NCCU and bassoonist Joshua Hood of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra--traveled from the same state (Barrett on the same flight out of RDU Airport) ended up arriving in Rochester in equally diverse ways as me!! Barrett missed the connecting flight, got a hotel room and was able to book a direct flight to Rochester. Josh chose to drive, but if ”hindsight is 20/20” I should’ve rode with him!! He had to drive through that same mammoth storm system but I would've made better time riding with him!! The two of us were scheduled to play a duo for bassoon and cello, “Common Ground” by Wolfgang Gernot, at the first chamber music recital on Thursday evening during that amazing week of crowded rehearsals and performances.
My final flight landed in Rochester on Wednesday afternoon (12 August) at 230pm. I caught a bus from the airport into the downtown area, and made my way to an afternoon reception at the Eastman School of Music. I’d missed a rehearsal and welcome meeting--one of numerous Festival musicians who arrived in “ROC” after delayed travels. Needless to say, it was great to be back at the Festival, that strange “musical Wakanda” and gathering opportunity for African American concert musicians from around the United States and abroad. The Friday evening performance activity was one of the most diverse and interesting of the week--an evening of “scattered” chamber music performances given by the Festival Orchestra musicians in various venues around the city. Due to my chamber music performance the previous evening I had been “liberated” from that activity--even though I had been placed in an ensemble of string players for that evening. In the course of my "early evening dinner hour plans coincidentally vacated”...I would meet one of the Orchestra violists, Robert C. Fisher. Many of us musicians who met for the first time at Gateways had little problem getting comfortable with one another, thanks to the wealth of quality relationships developed by the Festival’s "founding mother", Armenta Adams Hummings Dumisani. Neither Robert nor I had decided on where to have dinner, so we took a leisurely walk a few blocks away from our hotel to the Upper High Falls Historic District, where we found a restaurant overlooking the gorge that served wood-fired pizza. It took little to no time for us to “connect those six degrees of separation” and to punctuate our dinner time with great laughter and banter!! (Somewhere in all of my smartphone photographs of that week is a photo of a mill water wheel preserved in that historic district adjacent to the restaurant.)
At the Gateways and Colour of Music Festivals of 2019, we would perform together orchestrally. Our reunions were always happy--and full of knee-buckling hilarity!! Like all of us during 2020 and the pandemic, Rob and I kept in touch via Facebook; his regular travel adventures of lost or broken eyeglasses, malfunctioning cell phones and general matters of our “shared seniority” kept us both in enduring and endearing laughter!! The “deal-sealer” of our friendship came when we were all about to depart from the Hilton Nashville Airport hotel for the musicians of the Colour of Music Festival at Nashville in November 2019, five months before the shutdown. I had just finished packing my car, and my wife Leslie Conley Holley had just gotten into the car. A few musicians including Robert had gathered nearby to chat and pass the time before their respective airport shuttles arrived to pick them up for the short ride to the airport. Leslie and Robert met at the 2019 Gateways Festival three months earlier...and hit it off wonderfully!! They are both natives of Chicago, so they had no trouble getting along (we also met the conductor and Chicagoan Jaman E. Dunn in Rochester as well--’barely five minutes into our initial conversation they were singing a familiar jingle for a well-known Chicago fur coat store!! Those kinds of meetings are priceless!!) Anyway, just before we are fixing to depart Nashville, I notice Rob and tell her that Leslie is here with me--and we’re ready to leave!! He SEIZES THE MOMENT, runs around to the passenger side of the car to greet “his Chicago sister” and gives her a great big hug!! Aside from having lunch at Monell’s Restaurant downtown before hitting the road back to Durham--that hug moment crowned my whirlwind weekend!! It isn’t every day that such bonding happens but I’ll always cherish it!!
The news of his passing has come so suddenly that I have not really processed its gravity. Yet. My heart rushes out to the musicians and administration of The Chicago Sinfonietta, with whom Robert had returned to “Sweet Home Chicago” to perform with guest bassist Victor Wooten after the hiatus from which we are all moving onward carefully. That photo of him and Victor onstage speaks untold volumes of pride and gratitude that came from the noble and passionate heart of a fine musician--’gruff, eyewear-challenged, phone-losing...but just fine!! “Fish” is one of those folks who I may not “traditionally grieve for” because the spoken expression “au revoir, arrivederci, see you later alligator”, whether spoken or unspoken--always lingered between us. Since the “au revoir” has now become “adieu”, the “merci” and “grazie” can’t be given sufficient expression. I believe that we shall meet again.
In the meantime, I’ll try not to lose my glasses!!
