by Jarrett Hoffman
To begin this season’s FUZE Series on Thursday, October 10 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical will honor the memory of two local arts icons: jazz pianist and composer Pat Pace, and Ohio Ballet founder and choreographer Heinz Poll, who both passed away in 2006.
“Akron Legends of Jazz and Dance” will feature Verb Ballets and players from the Chamber Music Society of Ohio. Leading the group is flutist George Pope, who became familiar with Pace and Poll as far back as 1978, when he began teaching at the University of Akron and performing as principal flute of the Akron Symphony.
“I knew quite a lot about Pat and his amazing musicianship from the beginning,” Pope said during a telephone interview. “We did performances with him in the Akron Symphony and the University orchestra, and I had friends who studied and performed with him. He was teaching a lot of the young jazz artists of his time — pianists as well as other musicians performing with him. He was inspiring the next generation.”
When the 
Depending on how presenters and performers discuss it in concerts, music history can be a portal to deeper understanding or a padlock. Especially hazardous is the tracing of artistic lineage. If you talk engagingly about teacher-to-student “family trees,” the concert may gain in vitality and direction. If you list them dryly, you risk making textbook fodder of vibrant art.
“This was fun, let’s do it again sometime” — what we all say after any gathering. And sometimes, we really do mean it.
