Lee Cronbach

                                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKfMfDRokS0                                        The photo above shows a dinner conversation she was having with two close friends, near the end  of her life. I got the idea when she had come home from Arizona after a leg operation that had her walking on 'Canadian Crutches', a type of crutch which swivels to accommodate a severely bent leg.   I thought "the way she is walking now is the way she thinks:" and at the same time I had never improvised a piece in the Ornette Coleman style.  So I thought, let's portray Mom's thinking by playing a solo piano piece with the left hand doing a constant 4/4 walking bass, while my right hand is totally free rhythmically and harmonically, meantime the melody will follow how I imagined my mother's mind working on a theme.  I think this is one of the two really good pieces I composed in my New York stay.            My mother had a mind which never stop

  (Society of Medalist 1987 Robert Cronbach "Sunrise & Moonrise"                  This version of the gospel classic is dedicated to my father, who learned a lot of Ozark songs and music style from growing up in Missouri, and even more from hanging out with Woody Guthrie in New York City in the 1930s, when walking through the empty late night streets from some radical leftwing meeting. In turn, my father taught me this music style when as a kid I accompanied him in our van when he was driving some new piece of landscape bronze sculpture he had completed to its destination.  He would sing a dozen or songs he had learned from Woody or from friends in St Louis where Dad had grown up.  He didn't intent to teach me as such, just keeping us entertained through the long drives to upstate New York, or Missouri, or some other distant locale (Dad hated the radio).   He knew a dozen songs, but the only one I remember is the Ozark version of 'Careless  Love" ("well

                 Once I had finished the course, I needed to get into Cal State LA. I was ready to go to L.A.   I had sent Mickey enough money to rent a piano for the apartment earlier, I had gotten my passing ‘B’grade, my parents had bought me a used but still functioning VW Beetle, so all was set for my move West.          It took three or four days to drive across country.  The only interesting thing about the drive was in the Plains states. when I saw five tornadoes moving parallel to me in a row, but thankfully around 50 miles away from me on my right hand side.   It was a strange sight, as they moved like five tall soldiers, each the same distance from the next, all steadily moving West,          For around ten minutes this parallel motion – me in my VW, the columns in their military formation – continued, and then thankfully the highway veered left while the tornadoes continued moving straight down their own path, so we went our separate ways.          Now the average music or p

               “Why Do You Do What You Do?”                       It was an exciting morning for me.  I was going to be Interviewed by two jazz professors, and one might take Interviewed by two jazz professors, and one might take me on as a grad student. This was the moment I had been working towards ever since I had started lessons with Dr. Norden – to get some college degrees under my belt so I could teach community college, and no longer have to rely on gigs for a (bare) living.           Not only that – each of the professors had played in bands led by famous musicians before moving into the academic field: the morning professor – let’s call him Prof. A – in African-American ‘New Wave’ groups of the 60s the afternoon professor, Prof. B, in mainly white cool groups from the 1950s and early 1960s.             I grabbed all the most interesting compositions I had done for Charley Banacos – or that he liked the best – and a fugue I had written for Dr. Norden; and stuffed them into a br

                              All this time Michael Gullage had been living in Provincetown. Sometimes he would come up to Boston for a few days, and sometimes I would take the bus down to Provincetown to stay with him for the weekend.  Or, if he was spending the weekend with a new friend, he would leave the keys for me, and I would live in his apartment until Sunday.  He had a “really cute” apartment at The Caper Inn in on a hill overlooking the bay.”   This was in the fall of  1974, after Baltimore and when I was living in the huge Fenway apartment building.                He would usually leave me a couple of romantic notes along with the keys, such as the  one the picture above.                This other message was written earlier, when Michael first moved out of our Beacon Hill apartment: “I’ll always know that you are the one who loves me    c o m p l e t e l y. I also know that I’ll always be loving you. After all, you have a larger portion of my heart than I do”, a message of