Revealing Ron Mazurek

On May 29th, ICIA (International Composers & Interactive Artists) celebrated the memory of composer Ron Mazurek, who passed away quite suddenly on April 26th. ICIA sponsored a memorial concert that provided a framework for understanding the scope of Ron's work and the depth of our loss.

Over the years I have followed Ron's ascent as a composer. He was comfortable with traditional musical settings, but as he explored electronic media, new ideas erupted in a virtual cornucopia of new multimedia works, all exploring musical expression on a basic, elemental level as Ron found and developed his personal voice. Little by little, these works, often in collaboration with other artists, accrued as a body of work that was impressive and original. In addition to these striking musical achievements, he is highly regarded as a pioneering artist in collaborating with choreographers to create telematic dance of imaginative beauty.

Ron had a special way of interfacing with his collaborators, bringing out the best in them, urging them beyond the boundaries of their previous achievements and arriving at a new place in their artistic development. The work of those collaborators inspired Ron to establish a deeper awareness of his purpose and his work. My own work was in parallel with Ron's vision, and it was his encouragement that often helped me on to other projects. He had a way of providing a perspective that made obstacles dissolve in the face of creative process as a natural unfolding of ideas that were the inevitable outcome of a practical resolution, always there and always available.

On May 29th, we had an opportunity to hear Ron's work in a new context, with the years gathered together in a single evening and his recent achievements sitting atop the edifice of his other work, making a monument of one miracle after another. Although I had heard some works before, there were also works I never knew that filled in missing links to Ron's steady growth as a composer. Every work was exploration of original terrain. Every work was genuine and honest, nothing pretentious...as down to earth as the roots that grounded Ron both in his native New Jersey and his Polish heritage.

The crowning achievement was his recent string quartet Mai Timise, now premiered by the Lumina String Quartet for the world as a tour de force, original and inventive, inspiring because of its sheer beauty and brilliantly couched in a command of materials demanding virtuosity, insight, and poetic sensitivity.

Having experienced his work incrementally in the past, I appreciate that in those years I was privileged to witness the emergence of Ron Mazurek as an important composer and multimedia artist. It is also a testament to his authenticity that his sudden departure created a vast emptiness quickly filled by the embrace of family, friends, and colleagues who reached out to each other with a fierce devotion to all that he has meant to each of us. This memorial concert revealed Ron in the full luster of his achievements, transcending the past in the unpretentious presence of a mature artist fully secure in his sensibility as an original voice who remains with us even now.

Remembering

Today is Memorial Day, a day for remembering, for celebrating those who have defended freedom and the idea of freedom so that the world might be a place for hope.

Launched in a vast and seemingly hostile universe, Hope is ultimately all we have. Hope blossoms into Faith, and Faith into Charity, and Charity into Love. This is the chain of our past, the foundation of our convictions that makes us look to each day in anticipation of something better, of the promise of tomorrow...of something real. For somewhere in ourselves we sense that if only we could embrace reality, truly perceive it in the clarity of the moment, we would discover the Truth of ourselves.

Remembering digs back into the collapsing edifice of the Past and restores its luster, its shimmering reality of Now, shimmering because it flickers between the Past and Future in an eternal flame of awareness. Remembering requires the presence of consciousness with the understanding of a past always present in the permanence of ourselves. Time is the illusion. The reality is Space and only Space with infinite possibilities persevering in our perpetual presence.

George Did It

It's been many years...decades, in fact, and somehow George Merritt popped into my head with his sometimes sardonic smile...again with me wondering if someone from the remote past is still alive. The distant past flutters with all those wonderful people that have made this journey so eventful...

George was exuberance personified. Everything was beautiful and amazing. Everything was waiting to be discovered. When I first met him I thought he was this brash, impudent young kid who had entered doctoral study, only to find that he was eleven years my senior. And yet, he seemed to personify youth. He manifest an electrifying presence, an energy that made everyone around him better.

He was a performer, and a conductor---a tenor, of course, but one who was rough at the edges. He came from the mountains of Vermont, a country boy who came to the big city...bright eyed and ready to make it big. At least that was his cover. Underneath he was brilliant, a genius of sorts who could achieve anything that he set his mind to.

He was constantly introducing me to new poets, to new writers, to new philosophers, to new performers, to new music... and everything he did was calculated to make me a better poet, a better composer, a better writer ...a better person. The world was full of mystery and discovery, and somehow George's vision of the world unfolding just for you was infectuous.

We shared many adventures and many secrets. In many ways we were each other's alter egos. As we worked on advancing ourselves through the doctoral program, we each contributed to the growth and achievements of each other and long after we had graduated and went on to other things we maintained the conspiracy of our mutual adventures.

George was one of the ultimate do-ers in my life. Much that is in my life is there because George did it. And yet, ultimately his ambitions drove a wedge between us and we lost touch, only briefly meeting in awkward moments where neither knew what to make of whatever remained between us.

So a day or two ago I ran across the briefest of references to Dr. George Merritt, and in a context that made me sense that he may have gone on to other destinies... if there ever was a case for perpetual energy of the universe evolving to ever grander schemes, it would be George forever doing the universe in his own inimitable modus operandi.