by Steve Starger - Hartford Advocate - February 12, 1998
Cheney Hall has seen sellout crowds before, but never one quite like this before. Friends, colleagues and family of Thomas Chapin packed the Manchester Hall to pay tribute to this locally raised alto saxophonist, flautist and composer. It goes beyond cliché to say there was a lot of love in that room.
Musicians with whom Chapin has performed over the years took the stage in various combinations, playing his compositions with an extra level of urgency and passion. Midway through the concert, Chapin himself appeared to a thunderous standing ovation.
Wearing a saffron scarf and white tunic, Chapin took his accolades modestly, then unlimbered his flute. Accompanied by his longtime bandmates, bassist Mario Pavone and drummer Mike Sarin, Chapin played one of his own compositions, an angular ballad suffused with dark poetry. The crowd roared for more.
Such approbation is not unusual for a musician on Chapin's level of excellence. At age 40, he can look back on a musically uncompromising and critically acclaimed career that began in the mid-'70s at Hartt School of Music under the tutelage of Jackie McLean and Paul Jeffreys, and has taken him to the far reaches of the planet. Today Chapin is considered by peers and critics to be one of the most innovative players of his generation.
But the sense of urgency at Cheney Hall that night was all too real for Chapin. Just a couple of months shy of his 41st birthday, at a time when his career seems poised to make a long-overdue jump to higher visibility, Chapin personally faces a scary and uncertain future.
He was diagnosed last year with leukemia. His brief appearance at Cheney Hall marked the first time Chapin has played, in public or private, since last August. He has been physically unable to perform, partly because of the disease itself and partly because of the debilitating effects of chemotherapy treatments.
"I go day to day," Chapin says over the phone from his home in Queens, NY. "One day, I just put my hands on my sax case and cried."
Chapin first suspected something was wrong on a visit to Zanzibar early last year. He had no particular agenda for the trip except to shake up his world a bit. "I just wanted to go, so I upped and went," he says.
Chapin hooked up with a musicologist friend in Zanzibar and also connected with musicians in Uganda. One day at his hotel in Zanzibar, Chapin began to feel weak. ""I had trouble climbing stairs,"" he says. ""I went to swim with some dolphins, and I thought I was going to drown.""
The feeling persisted, so Chapin went for a blood test at a local hospital. The results showed an abnormally high blood count. Chapin thought he had chronic fatigue syndrome or mononucleosis. He cut his trip short by a week.
Back in New York, Chapin went to his own doctor. That's when he learned he had leukemia. With that diagnosis, Chapin's life changed dramatically.
Initially, Chapin says, ""I didn't know what it was."" He soon found out. He was admitted to a hospital for a month of chemotherapy, after which his symptoms went into remission. Last summer, Chapin felt well enough to perform at the JVC Jazz Festival in New York City and at the Litchfield Jazz Festival in western Connecticut.
Chapin's doctor opted to perform a relatively new treatment involving stem cell and bone marrow transplants using Chapin's own marrow. But when doctors harvested stem cells and bone marrow from Chapin's hips, they found the leukemia had returned.
By the end of last summer, Chapin was back in the hospital undergoing aggressive chemo treatments. ""They thought they would lick it, but they didn't,"" he says. ""I went through hell.""
Chapin admits he's ""scared shitless,"" but adds ""partly, that's ego. You can only be so scared for so long. I'm very optimistic about living."" Indeed, through it all, Chapin has managed to hold on to the infectious optimism that has permeated his music from the beginning. He and his wife, Terri, were married in Chapin's hospital room last October, at the start of his second chemotherapy treatment.
""You become very close through adversity,"" Chapin says. ""Your life changes, and the things you might have put off become more urgent. It was a good thing for us to do.""
Chapin decided to stop the chemotherapy and at this point is ""aggressively pursuing"" alternative treatments, he says. He has been seen by the Dalai Lama's doctor, has changed his diet and is taking Tibetan herbs four times a day. He is also in psychotherapy and is practicing Ki, a Japanese healing regimen involving breathing techniques.
Has all of that made a difference? ""At this moment, it's better,"" Chapin says. ""It's moment to moment.""
As news of Chapin's condition became known, friends and colleagues responded by staging a benefit concert for him last November at New York's Knitting Factory, where Chapin has been a regular performer. The all-star show, which raised about $5,000 to help cover Chapin's expenses, featured such luminaries as Kenny Barron, Anthony Braxton and John Zorn.
Buoyed by the New York concert's success, Chapin's musician friends in Connecticut felt they needed to mount a similar benefit closer to home. Chapin did, after all, hone his chops in Hartford area clubs in the late 1970s and 1980s. And what better venue than a hall in Chapin's home town?
""After the New York concert, there was this demand from a lot of quarters to do something in Hartford,"" Pavone says. ""It's the first time I've seen virtually all of the organizations cooperating. I hope it'll be something that will carry on in the Hartford area.""
Performers who donated their time included the Thomas Chapin Trio Plus Brass (which Chapin formed in 1989); pianist Peter Madsen's trio; Paradigm Shift, featuring drummer Pheeroan Ak Laff; pianist Don DePalma's group; poet Vernon Frazer and mandolinist Bill Walach. All of them have performed or recorded with Chapin in the past.
The band Motation reunited for the occasion, front-loading its repertoire with Chapin originals in honor of its former member. And the Trio Plus Brass ensemble closed its set with a furious and funny extravaganza that was equal parts Mingus and Zappa but, finally, all Chapin. It ably demonstrated the breadth of Chapin's musical references and his infectious, Dadaist humor.
Pavone calls Chapin ""a hell of a swinging player. His spirit is just phenomenal. He has been a gigantic influence on me and now he's teaching me still, with his courage in fighting his latest battle.""
Chuck Obuchowski, a jazz radio announcer and spokesman for the Connecticut Jazz Confederation (one of the event's many sponsors) observes that ""technique aside, [Chapin] has an extra special quality that few musicians have. He's of the generation that went the academic route, but unlike some of his peers, he has something that gives his music a unique stamp. I think he's in the forefront of the new music.""
After graduating from Rutgers University (in the late '70s, Hartt had no degree program in jazz), Chapin landed a gig as music director for Lionel Hampton's orchestra and toured internationally for about six years. In the mid-'80s he joined drummer Chico Hamilton.
Pavone met Chapin in 1980, performing in a tribute concert to Charles Mingus in Bushnell Park. ""Every time Tom soloed, it knocked everybody out,"" Pavone says. Chapin's first CD, The Bell of the Heart was released on Pavone's Alacra label. Six CDs later--the latest, Sky Piece, is scheduled to be released Feb. 15--the Thomas Chapin Trio has proven itself to be one of the most fiercely individual groups on the scene, experimental without losing that all-important ability to swing.
The Cheney Hall concert outdid the Knitting Factory event, raising more than $7,000 for Chapin. That's good news for Chapin, but, at this point, he says, ""I don't know what God has planned for me.""
If God's plan remains a mystery to him, those who know Chapin and admire him and his music are making it very clear how they feel.
Reprinted with permission from the Hartford Advocate
%(small)Photo by Stuart Feldman%