Phil Graham
Apologies in advance. There is a LOT of backstory coming before you’ll experience some of Robin’s wondrous wit. Here goes…
On Feb. 7, 2011, the website “A Word A Day” published the word ‘dyspeptic.’ That has nothing to do with anything except that the Thought For Today which followed it was very clever.” Here it is:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. -Jerome K. Jerome, humorist and playwright (1859-1927)
It spurred me to write Mr. Anu Garg, publisher of “AWAD,” and on 2/13/2011 he published a note from me in his weekly compendium of received comments. Here’s what I wrote and his response:
———————————————-
From: Phil Graham (philtul46@cox.net)
The “Thought for the Day” in the Feb 6 AWAD issue was a very good one and fitting for our shut-in status caused by all the snow. It was by a man I’d not heard of — Jerome K. Jerome.
Seeing his name reminded me of Ford Madox Ford and I wondered if there is a word for people whose first and last names are the same. I googled both persons together. Didn’t find a word describing this phenomenon but did find this wonderful poem:
Said Jerome K. Jerome to Ford Madox Ford,
‘There’s something, old boy, that I’ve always abhorred:
When people address me and call me ‘Jerome’,
Are they being standoffish, or too much at home?’
Said Ford, ‘I agree; It’s the same thing with me.’
-Cole, William
‘Mutual Problem’, collected in The Oxford Book of American Light Verse (1979).
Other than Major Major Major from “Catch 22” and the pianist, Lang Lang, who else (famous) can you think of with repeated first/last names? (William Carlos Williams doesn’t quite qualify…)
Phil Graham, Tulsa, Oklahoma
The word tautonym http://wordsmith.org/words/tautonym.html is used for the scientific names in which the genus and the species names are the same, e.g. Gorilla gorilla. Why not use the same word for Jerome K. Jerome and Ford M. Ford too?
-Anu Garg
This small bit of notoriety spawned about 15 received emails from other AWAD readers who provided names that fit the category. The following response began a sequence of emails between myself, brothers Larry & Steve, and Robin Sutherland. Here’s what Robin wrote which began it all (entries after dates are the Subject lines from the emails):
February 13 – Double or Nothing
Dear Mr. Graham —
One possible (but improbable) scenario has the ‘cellist Yo Yo Ma dining with former Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali, savoring shabu-shabu underneath a flowering ylang-ylang tree in Bora Bora. (This would be botanically impossible in Baden Baden, or, for that matter, in Walla Walla.)
ROBIN SUTHERLAND
Principal Pianist
San Francisco Symphony
Feb. 13 – Re:Double or Nothing
Hello, Robin Sutherland —
Yikes! Cue the theme music from The Twilight Zone… Your brain works far too much like mine. What a delight this email reply is going to be!!
First… as a pianist and an obviously cunning linguist, you no doubt are familiar with the chamber music ensemble that should have been formed…. composed of Josef Suk, Yo Yo Ma, and James Dick. That’s right, the Suk-Ma-Dick Trio.
Secondly, my two brothers and I are all musicians and avid wordsmiths. Any time we get together, puns are sure to fly and we sometimes have limerick contests.
And finally, what are the odds that you would have written to someone whose older brother was also a student of Mme. Lhevinne??!! He studied with Rosina and Marty Canin starting in 1962. Got both his bachelor’s and master’s from the J. School. Here is a short vita on him…
Pianist Larry Graham received his training at the Juilliard School in New York as a scholarship student of Rosina Lhevinne and Martin Canin. Early successes in piano competitions such as the Kosciusko, Bloch, and G.B. Dealey resulted in his debut with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1965. In 1969, Mr. Graham won the Concert Artists Guild auditions, which led to his debut at New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall. He scored major successes as the top ranking American in both the Queen Elizabeth Concours in Brussels in 1975, and the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel-Aviv in 1977. The Brussels competition brought him into the public spotlight, where his brilliant performances won for him the coveted “Prize of the Public” by an overwhelming audience vote. A recording contract with Decca records and professional management followed.
His mastery of the piano repertoire encompasses works of Bach through Stravinsky. Since the Queen Elizabeth success, Mr. Graham has performed over 30 different Concerti with orchestras both in the U.S. and abroad, as well as numerous solo engagements. For eleven years he was the pianist for the Pablo Casals Trio, a highly acclaimed ensemble which performed extensively throughout the United States and internationally. He has been the subject of a documentary film for PBS, and in 1986 won first prize in the McMahan International Music Competition, a premiere competition for pianists over the age of 25.
Mr. Graham, formerly on the faculty of the University of Colorado from 1975-2000, currently has a private studio in Boulder, Colorado.
Do the two of you know one another? He was a classmate of Mischa Dichter and Blanca Uribe, among others… When were you there?
Finally, I absolutely loved your scenario, even though it couldn’t happen in Baden Baden or Walla Walla. Incidentally, other AWAD fans have written with true tautonyms (I can’t accept Boutros Boutros Ghali since his surname isn’t a duplicate.) Humbert Humbert was a character in Nabokov’s “Lolita” and Sirhan Sirhan assasinated RFK.
Where do we go from here?….
Phil Graham
Feb. 14 – OMG, as the smaller fry are wont to peck out on their non-musical keyboards..
Yep, you got that Twilight Zone thing right off the bat, and if anything, the voice of
Rod Serling is getting louder by the minute:
My best friend in the world is Toby Tenenbaum, a Boulder boy whose father Dr. Louis
Tenenbaum was for many years Chair of the Department of Romance Languages at
CU. Toby is also a pianist, and in fact, between his experiences at Oberlin and the San
Francisco Conservatory of Music (where he turned more composer-ish, having worked
there with John Adams), he studied briefly with your brother! I’ve always felt that six
degrees of separation (with apologies to the film of the same name) are far more than
are actually necessary in most instances, this being one of them.
Kudos on Suk-Ma-Dick! Toby and I have just had a good laugh over that — he and I did
try to be boyfriends for a brief time, but two pianists, in this case, wasn’t going to cut
it*. Fortunately, everything good was salvaged.
I’m sorry I missed Larry at Juilliard. I entered the day the School turned the key in its
new front door at Lincoln Center (although my audition the previous June took place in
the midst of already packed boxes in Morningside Heights). Among my mates in the last “great” class there were Garrick Ohlsson and Horacio Gutierrez. She never assigned me to one of her assistants, although I was very good friends with Marty (his brother Stuart was the SFS concertmaster when I was appointed to my position by Seiji Ozawa), Olegna Fuschi, Janeane Dowis, and totally chummy with the redoubtable Gladys Stein. Rosina & I were engaged in serious discussions about “career direction” — she wanted me to go & compete, whereas I did not want me to go & compete — & who knows how it would’ve all turned out. But she then fell seriously ill, I came to SF, and have been in a most enviable situation since then, in ways both musical and not.
Music and cunning linguism are handmaidens of long standing. The legendary graffito at old Juilliard, “Earl is Wild.” (“Yes, but Thornton was Wilder!”), was an exchange on the stall partition in the Claremont Avenue men’s room, and it stood intact for many years.
All manner of wordy things fascinate me, but my work as an inventor of names for drag
queens continues to be extremely satisfying. (Unlike Horowitz, I don’t cross-dress, but I
am more than ready to supply someone who does with a nifty moniker. Not for me the
plebeian Helena Handbasket or Amanda Reckonwith!) Two of my most recent favorites
are Estée Lauder Harder Faster and Clare Boothe Luce Change.
Are you perchance in Texas? Toby seems to recall that your mother once was, although here it’s possible that memories have dimmed in the fullness of time…
Cheers!
Robin
* Don’t ask me how the hell Robert and Clara Schumann managed it. Clearly, he married her in a Wieck moment…
Feb. 14 – Re: OMG, as the smaller fry are wont to peck out
Hello again, Robin, and thanks for the long and enjoyable response. I plan to reply in much more detail but for now am only supplying you with a smidgen. My wife is expecting some Valentine’s attention…
I’ll start with a copy of what my younger brother, Steve, emailed me. I had cc’d him and Larry on my response to your initial email. Here he is in green:
Monday, February 14, 2011 2:04 CST
Congratulations, brother Phil!
Being chosen to appear among the weekly AWAD contributors — and with a commentary from Mr. Anu Garg himself — is quite an accomplishment. Well done.
After looking at your exchange with Mr. Robin Sutherland I came up with this lame and lamentable limerick:
A malnourished fellow from Nottingham
Was named Barry Barry — a tautonym.
Since B1 was off in his
Food, an homophonous
Plight (beriberi) was fraught in him.
I was also able to reach Larry by phone in his car. He was enroute to Las Vegas to meet a friend with whom he rock climbs(!) Yes, we know, but he’s had the bug for nearly 50 years and his attitude is “If I break a finger (or worse), so be it. I love the challenge of mountaineering too much to give it up.”
He’s done all fifty-four of Colorado’s 14ers — many of them multiple times. He said he knew who you were and (he thought) you were a native of Breckenridge, appearing often at their festival.
More later, Phil
Feb. 17 – As promised…. more on words and music
Hello again, Robin —
Think I will drop my comments/answers in italics into your last post.
Sfsland@aol.com wrote: Yep, you got that Twilight Zone thing right off the bat, and if anything, the voice of Rod Serling is getting louder by the minute:
My best friend in the world is Toby Tenenbaum, a Boulder boy whose father Dr. Louis Tenenbaum was for many years Chair of the Department of Romance Languages at CU. Toby is also a pianist, and in fact, between his experiences at Oberlin and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (where he turned more composer-ish, having worked there with John Adams), he studied briefly with your brother! Since Larry is being cc’d on this, perhaps he’ll chime in later with a “reply all” … I’ve always felt that six degrees of separation (with apologies to the film of the same name) are far more than are actually necessary heartily concur in most instances, this being one of them.
Kudos on Suk-Ma-Dick! Wish I could take credit for that one, but actually, Larry repeated it to me at least 20 years ago. I don’t think it was original with him, either. Regardless, it is so esoteric that I don’t think there’s much chance of its spreading like wild fire (“Earl fire?”) Toby and I have just had a good laugh over that — he and I did try to be boyfriends for a brief time, but two pianists, in this case, wasn’t going to cut it*. Fortunately, everything good was salvaged.
I’m sorry I missed Larry at Juilliard. I entered the day the School turned the key in its new front door at Lincoln Center (although my audition the previous June took place in the midst of already packed boxes in Morningside Heights). Among my mates in the last “great” class there were Garrick Ohlsson and Horacio Gutierrez. She never assigned me to one of her assistants, although I was very good friends with Marty (his brother Stuart was the SFS concertmaster when I was appointed to my position by Seiji Ozawa), Olegna Fuschi, Janeane Dowis, and totally chummy with the redoubtable Gladys Stein. Those names will no doubt be familiar to Larry. Other than Maestro Ozawa I’m in the dark. Rosie & I were engaged in serious discussions about “career direction” — she wanted me to go & compete, whereas I did not want me to go & compete — & who knows how it would’ve all turned out. But she then fell seriously ill, I came to SF, and have been in a most enviable situation since then, in ways both musical and not.
Music and cunning linguism are handmaidens of long standing. The legendary graffito at old Juilliard, “Earl is Wild.” (“Yes, but Thornton was Wilder!”), was an exchange on the stall partition in the Claremont Avenue men’s room, and it stood intact for many years. Quite nice! I can recall a bar in Norman, OK which had this carved inside a heart in the men’s room — “Phil Atio loves Connie Lingus.” Perhaps that’s been posted elsewhere but it was original to me!
All manner of wordy things fascinate me, but my work as an inventor of names for drag queens continues to be extremely satisfying. (Unlike Horowitz, I don’t cross-dress, did Toscanini know of his son-in-law’s fetish? but I am more than ready to supply someone who does with a nifty moniker. Not for me the plebeian Helena Handbasket or Amanda Reckonwith!) Since the Brothers Graham are all straight, those aren’t TOO plebeian — I know I’ve never heard them (but plan to use both at my earliest chance!) Two of my most recent favorites are Estée Lauder Harder Faster Merci! I note and approve of your inclusion of the accent ague in Estée’s name and since she’s obviously French, your construction can only be a case of Gaîté Parisienne! and Clare Boothe Luce Change. I like that one, too, but can’t improve upon it (if, indeed, I added anything to your Estée “Louder….”
Are you perchance in Texas? Nope, we are all native Okies (from a small college town, Ada.) Each of us boys left for college upon high school graduation, never to return except for visits. Dad died in ’84. Mom moved from Ada to Tulsa (where I live) in 2001. Larry remains in Boulder and Steve is in OKC. Toby seems to recall that your mother once was, although here it’s possible that memories have dimmed in the fullness of time…
Cheers!
Robin
* Don’t ask me how the hell Robert and Clara Schumann managed it. Clearly, he married her in a Wieck moment… I mentioned Mischa Dichter when I first replied to you without noting his marriage to the also-fine player, Cipa, so it can happen, I guess. When my daughter married, I had Larry play Liszt’s “Widmung” before the ceremony began. The original song had been Robert’s wedding present to Clara… but then you knew that!
February 17
I must tell you sometime about my association with the Sooners, up to and including
this Honorary Citizenship in the City of Bartlesville (north of Tulsa on Highway 75)…
But for now, as it is late and I’m not so young as I once was, let me just leave you
with one of my all-time fave palindromes: A slut nixes sex in Tulsa.
Perhaps this has happened to you. Or perhaps not. In either case, I shouldn’t presume
to suppose. All I know from Tulsa is Philbrook, and Waite Phillips, and that ultra-swell
Boston Avenue church courtesy of Bruce Goff. Anything else that may ever have hap-
pened there, or not, is strictly entre eux-mêmes, and none of my affair…
Cheers —
Robin
February 17
Robin —
What will I bet that your familiarity with Bartlesville means you’ve performed at OK Mozart? The few times I’ve attended I’ve been quite impressed with the job they do. Sadly, my discretionary income is such that I cannot even afford symphony, opera, or ballet tix right here in Tulsa.
Thanks for “A Slut nixes….” I was quite familiar with Tulsa spelled backward, but hadn’t heard/seen the palindromic sentence! Here’s one of my favorites:
Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic.
Phil
Feb. 17 – Re:OK Mozart
OK Mozart? Yep, guilty as charged. For at least 20 of its 25 seasons! Although this
year my mid-June will involve Europe, not Washington County.
Interesting, your query re what Toscanini did or did not know. I’m not even sure that
Wanda knew. But none of this alters the fact that he (“La Feema Supreema”) was a
customary sight at certain downtown watering holes. Probably sat in a dark corner
next to Jaye Edgar Hoover, when they weren’t shopping at Cross Dress For Less.
Cheers!
Robin
February 18 – My 15 Minutes of Fame
Actually, one minute, 22 seconds.
Being a fan of Ogden Nash’s poetry, I wrote a poem in “his style” a few years ago. While browsing YouTube, I discovered a fellow Nash devotee who goes by Largo64 and sent it to him. He liked it enough that he asked if he could make a video of his reading it and I agreed.
His bio showed that he liked classical music so I also sent him a limerick with which I once won a contest for rhyming “Afghanistan.” Largo64 liked it, too, and posted both at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvrXjkJZb8Q.
Just showin’ off,
Phil
Feb. 20 – Re:My 15 Minutes of Fame
Mornin’, Phil —
I’ve got an engagement (although actually we’re not even going steady) with the Stanford Woodwind Quintet this afternoon at our elegant museum known as the Legion of Honor… picture Philbrook with a view of the Golden Gate and you will have got the rough idea of things. Anyway, they’re like faemmle to me (with apologies to Nash and Carl Laemmle) but they do have this irksome trait of loving to rehearse on the day of. Me, not so much. In fact, me not at all.
So I have what’s known as the LeHo killer day, but I purposely am keeping your one minute and twenty-two seconds unread and unwatched for the moment. They will thus be like a handful of herring for this trained seal here. Oy.
I just remembered that one of the curators of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts (housed at LeHo) is incredibly hot (not as in Fahrenheit, but rather, chaleur) and he might wander in to the concert this afternoon, which would perk things up considerably. Ah, mon joli espoir éternel dans un matin d’hiver…
Please don’t think me rash
For putting off Nash…
(I just like my Ogdown
Without being bogged down!)
Cheers, dewd —
Robin
April 12
Scansion? We don’t need no steenkeen’ scansion…
You’d not really call her white trash,
But she had hella more than a gash.
“If it pleases you, Ma’am,”
Said this dude named Phil Graham,
“I’ll fuck it. But once in there might I possibly also be encountering Ogden Nash?”
I doff my hat to you, Sir, and shall take extreme pains in the future not to piss you off, else
Oresteian immortality (or immorality?) be my sorry lot. Ego te saluto, et bravissimi!
xoxox
Robin
April 15
Again, bravo! And please, do not gainsay your linguistic prowess. Gaucherie ill becomes
you, O Adroit One…
I occasionally hang out among the smaller fry, and I’ve noticed that a current euphemism
for “taking a shit” is “dropping the kids off at the pool.” Under no circumstances does this
mean that your res ad dexteram totam could ever be called shitty. No way, José…
Nobody seems to go voluntarily into the business of pianism à main gauche seule. Of the
ones who have, there are some real horror stories (i.e., Paul Wittgenstein with a right arm
shot off in the war, etc. etc. But they didn’t shoot off his bank account, and he’s the rea-
son there’s so much tasty literature for that limited crop of non-voluntary executants.)
Most famous by far in that sodality is Leon Fleisher, with whom I breakfasted (using all four
hands between us, more or less!) just last Friday. He was here doing a Schubertiade with
Jaime Laredo, and a fine one it was, to be sure.
Tinkerty-tonk —
xo Robin
April 16
Hey Phil —
If you don’t already play Change-A-Letter, you need to begin instanter.
You’d be completely killer at it: just take any well known word or phrase, change one and
only one letter, and (this the funnest part) write a backstory as descriptor or definition. If
we were dealing with operas, for instance, here’s one that just bubbled up a minute ago:
The recent discovery of a hitherto unknown autograph score by Giacomo Puccini has the
operatic world agog. In the neglected library stacks of an obscure monastery in Brno, a
team of musicologists has unwittingly unearthed and authenticated the manuscript of Puc-
cini’s newest œuvre. After poring over the libretto (author unknown), they offer the fol-
lowing as a plot summary: “By day, she was just a secretary in a governmental office in
Buda; but her nocturnal story was evidently rather more exciting! What exactly did she
do when she left work, donned a sultry evening ensemble, and crossed the Danube? You
can find out when this remarkable opera premières later this year, and the world will be-
come aware of the naughty escapades of La Fanciulla del Pest.”
Then of course there’s that film about a narcoleptic rapist who preyed solely on operatic
divas: Down and Out in Beverly Sills.
You get the idea. Go crazy, dewd — but don’t forget to share! (Aside from the names of
drag queens, examples of Change-A-Letter are the only things I amass in any quantity…)
In London, a square known as Leicester
Is where limericists often go feicester —
While scanning the ground
For loose iambs, Phil found
That the worcester is usually the beicester!
What a dreadful effort! If you feel an apology is in order, then
I beg your hardon — Robin
April 18
— It’s bad news for Alexander, when a vicious gossip columnist lets it slip that nobody in his
band has ever really heard of Scott Joplin… Alexander’s Ragtime Bind
— Irving Berlin writes the songs in this, his one truly inventive picture. Annie Oakley, burnt
out with her cheap role in a travelling western revue, decides to go for the gold in the form
of auditioning to be one of the Doublemint Twins… Annie Get Your Gum
— Santa’s incompetent assistants make a giant wooden soldier which successfully repels
an attack on the Castro by outraged former fiancées of men who’ve since come out. The
ladies had crosses to bear, and to burn. But they didn’t reckon with North Pole ingenuity…
Babes in Boyland
— The shattering true-to-life story of fabled designer Syrie Maugham, with cameo appear-
ances by Elsie de Wolfe (Lady Mendl) and Sister Parish. It’s hellzapoppin’ as the beige par-
lor footage (still regarded as among the most controvesial ever filmed) gets underway…
Behold A Pale House
— A stirring wartime drama. When Bataan is cut off, Private Sebastian goes in armed with
everything from two-part inventions to six-voice canons that have the enemy begging for
mercy in no time. This guy is a one mother-fuguer… Bach To Bataan
— Here’s a delightful juxtaposition of the Green Acres TV series with Geoffrey Chaucer at
his haymakin’ best. What happens when the barn’s loft plays host to a bunch of travellin’
maniacs? A real pageturner… The Canterbury Bales
– A young British surgeon, wrongly condemned by a certain Judge Jeffreys for unlawful hair
coloring experiments, escapes and becomes a Caribbean pirate. He subsequently steals from
the redheads and gives to his tawdry bleached crew, in this unsung forerunner to Roots …
Captain Blond
— The moving life story of Michael Millken, in the heady days before it all turned into junk…
On Golden Bond
— A breast-reduction surgeon races against the clock to perform as many procedures as
possible… The Tit And The Pendulum
— It’s still O.K. to be as zany as you please in this institution, but persons who exhibit even
the tiniest bit of rudeness are expelled immediately… Polite Academy
— Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey takes to the road once again! The star attraction, Jumbo,
finds pachyderm pussy heaven in a small circus on the outskirts of an Italian town… Tusca
(libretto, subsequently banned in Alabama, co-authored by Clare Boothe Loosa)
— Pyotr Tchaikovsky puts his inimitable pen to work as he examines the life of Johnny Mathis…
The Queer Of Spades
As The Schnozzola used to say, “I gotta million of ’em!” And, indeed, I do. But you boys
get the idea, so I shall just sit back and expect a million more! Then I shall demonstrate a
little offshoot we’ve invented called Homonymy, which ought to be pretty self-explanatory:
— A mysterious world traveller suffers grievously from nasal and optical discharges during
his times at home in London, but somehow manages to feel perfectly well in Singapore, New
York, Delhi, Tokyo and Addis Ababa. Virginia Woolf examines this sensitive soul with all of
the compassion we’ve come to expect from Bloomsbury… A Rheum Of One Zone.
Present day, March 9, 2021
Our email correspondences continued for the next nine years with hardly a fortnight passing when some news or silliness wasn’t traded. We first met in person in Breck in 2012 where my two brothers and I heard him play K. 491 — barefoot!! He and Lonchi had only recently become an item and we met him, too.
My wife and I hosted Robin when he played a benefit for the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra in February 2015. Here we are at a statue of Washington Irving near where he camped in 1832 while collecting information for A Tour of the Prairies.
Robin alerted me in late June 2020 of his diagnosis and admitted that he probably wouldn’t be in touch much until his health returned. My last note from him was in mid-September when he said it was just too difficult to type.
My life was indelibly touched by Robin. Once God created him he broke the mold.