Keeping Paul’s music alive

After Paul died on the morning of September 23, 1999 we found a rectangular-shaped  black canvas bag that contained cassette tapes of all his recorded music. We picked out a few and played them during his memorial service four days later.

One of his long time friends, Martin Borsanyi, who used to compose and play jazz music with Paul during their high school days, came over to our house many times in the next year or so. He made an inventory of Paul’s musical instruments (except his piano, which we still have) and other electronic sound and recording equipment that we gave away to the Crossroads High School jazz ensemble where he and Martin played. Martin also transferred the music from cassette onto CDs, working in our home because I was afraid to let the tapes out of my sight for fear of losing them. Once I got into the age of iTunes, I also transferred all of Paul’s music there as well.

I also created a memorial page on my blog here at Choices where people can stop by to listen to his music. I used the Box app to provide the link.

Now I’m working on another project relative to Paul’s music with the help of Patrick von Wiegandt, a musician and recording expert. I met Patrick at a writing conference last year. We talked about Paul’s music while he recorded the conference proceedings. I told him about my idea of producing a professional sounding CD of a small selection of Paul’s music and selling it on the Internet, probably through my book page on Amazon, with all proceeds going to mental health and suicide prevention charities.

As of right now, I’ve selected the tunes and Patrick is working on improving the sound quality. Expect to see the CD live in the next few months.

Paul’s forty-first birthday would have been on December 31. This is another way I’ve found to help keep his memory alive. Next up a book of my Paul poems.