A Family Portrait — Notes on Lyricism

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines lyricism as “a personal direct intense style or quality in an art” and “exuberance of style or feeling.” In music, I use it to refer to melodic sense or being mindful of the melody, in relation to improvisation. In pottery, I use it to refer to the relationship of form and function.

Perhaps I inherited my sense of lyricism from the romantic strain in my English-Bohemian background, reflecting the musical tradition of both my mother and father. She, of first generation English parents, spent her childhood in America and England and flourished as a soprano in Opera and entertainment during the postwar era. He, a pianist of great promise as a child, went on to be a well respected member of the Chicago music community, recognized for his lifetime of achievement by the Chicago Federation of Musicians upon a career of more than fifty years.