Dec. 3, 2022
Death has really been lurking in my world lately. I mean, it always is, but as I slide further into my 60s it becomes an increasingly tangible presence. A persistent reality. I recently lost three people who mattered to me in varying degrees, and it’s taken me this long to muster any words about them.
Tari Nelson-Zagar and Norm Chambers were both Seattle musicians who left this world on October 30 – the day before All Hallows' Eve/All Saints Day, and just before El Dia de los Muertos. This double loss was really a gut-punch for our little music community.
Tari Nelson-Zagar and bassoonist Leslie Ross at the 2016 Seattle Improvised Music Festival.
Originally from Montana, Tari was a classically-trained violinist and bassist, an excellent and sensitive improviser who also played contemporary/microtonal music. But more than that, she was a lovely person – smart, kind, funny as hell, a joy to be around, and beloved by the musicians who worked with her. She appears on many recordings by other artists, but that doesn’t begin to represent her importance within Seattle’s improvised music community. I spent far less time hanging out with Tari than I would have liked, but the time I did spend with her was always such a pleasure. She was a good friend and I’ll really miss her. You can read a more thorough remembrance of her at Earshot Jazz. Watch for details on an upcoming tribute show at the Chapel, probably in February.
Norm Chambers came to Seattle from Salt Lake City. He was a prolific composer of electronic music, recognized internationally, though perhaps under-acknowledged here in Seattle. I can’t say I knew him very well, beyond my occasional interactions with him as a frequent performer and listener at the Chapel. But in my experience he was always a kind, calm, quiet, and humble person, truly a nice guy. In spite of his reputation in the larger music world he never came off as self-important, and was always very supportive of other artists. I was glad we were able to host a tribute show for him at the Chapel, with a nearly full house of admirers, friends, and family. You can read more eloquent obituaries for Norm at The Stranger and Pitchfork, among others.
Mimi Parker in Boston, 2011, photo by Tim Bugbee / Tinnitus Photography.
Mimi Parker died on November 5. With her husband Alan Sparhawk, she was a founder of the trio Low, based in Duluth, Minnesota. I hardly knew Mimi at all – the band crashed at my house once after a show in Albuquerque, and she seemed like a very nice person – but Low has made music that has been hugely important to me over the years, and her heavenly voice was a vital part of their alchemy. Coming out of punk rock, they dared to make minimal rock music that was hushed, glacially slow, spacious, and unashamedly beautiful. They went surprisingly far in developing that idea, and eventually moved beyond it into a more expansive and, to my ears, conventional sound. I lost interest in them for a few years, but their recent work has been more overtly experimental, challenging, and (for me) engaging, and I’ve been glad to start listening again.
Low’s first two albums were produced by Kramer, who’s known as a bit of a curmudgeon, yet here’s how he remembers Mimi:
"SEE THROUGH"
...through a glass wall at Noise New Jersey, 1994.
I watched in utter amazement as Mimi Parker laid her soul bare on this song. First take. She was a miracle.
Mathematicians often describe rapturous understanding of how the universe works as "knowing the mind of god".
In music, once or twice in a lifetime, if you're lucky enough to have been there to witness it at the very moment of its creation, there are similar raptures of understanding. True euphoria is so very rare in the recording studio, but, on that day...
Mimi Parker, in a moment of Giving like none I had seen before or have seen since, blessed me with one such transformation, when I heard the simultaneous sounds of bliss, sadness, elation, and perhaps even a modest understanding of the mind - if not the very sound - of god.
I don’t know if non-musicians can fully grasp the miracle he’s talking about here – the way these perfect moments just happen when they might have just as easily been fine but maybe unremarkable. But it also speaks to the mysterious way that music, and art in general, can transmit feeling from one soul to another, touches us deeply across vast distances of time and place and culture, fills us with a sense of understanding and being understood. Mimi Parker’s voice did that for me, and I’m grateful that she has graced my life.