Boris Brott’s legacy: The music will never die
They are wearing his clothes. Boris Brott's children.
David, his son, is wearing his Boris the Spider" socks. Because I forgot to bring my own."
Alex, Boris's beloved daughter, is wearing his turtleneck sweater.
It smells like him," she says
There are tears over the phone. Alex's, David's. Then Alex recounts a memory.
As a little girl, I'd get all dressed up to watch dad perform," Alex tells me.
In my mind's eye, remembering him running toward me, his tails (the tails of his conductor's tuxedo) flapping behind him to give his girl a kiss before his performance."
There are tears over the phone. Now they're mine.
I sat in his dressing room. I loved his dressing room. His aftershave sitting there."
What we remember in grief.
Years fly into each other in the mad grasping of love that loss triggers in our memories.
Vatican City, the year 2000. Boris Brott, in his glory, conducting Leonard Bernstein's Mass" for the Jubilee celebration there that year. For the pope.
By now, Boris's children are in their 20s. Dad, what are we supposed to say?" David asks of his father.
Just take his hand and kiss his ring and say whatever," Boris tells him. It was John Paul II.
The Pope," says Alex. I couldn't believe it. And then I heard my father speaking to him in Latin and Italian."
Boris Brott was killed Tuesday while walking near Durand Park near his home. He was hit by a vehicle that left the scene. When his life stopped, so much else did. The music in him, the love of languages, his sense of humour, his unquenchable energy. Or did it stop? So much lives on.
He was just such a big presence," says Alex. You think? He gets you an audience with the Pope. Smiley face. That was Boris.
From the sacred to the profane, one of Boris's greatest gifts, and there were many, was to throw bridges across wide gaps - and in our divisive/divided world is there a more necessary talent?
In that vein, he was the master of the unexpected. We would get all kinds of visitors at our home," says Alex. Of course, Boris, as much as anything, was a collector of people.
My mom (Ardyth Brott, an accomplished author in her own right) would, at a moment's notice, whip up sandwiches." Or whatever. Our house had more food at any time than any restaurant."
One day, Alex recounts, Ardyth went out to check the temperature of the pool and in it she found 30 naked Norwegian male classical singers, splashing around in the water.
They'd been part of one of Boris's concerts. Everyone was very accepted in our house," says Alex, but they hadn't brought their bathing suits. What was the name of that book ... Naked Came the Stranger" or in this case strangers? Ardyth got food ready for all. No one's a stranger and we're all naked before love and music.
How does this happen? How does a life like Boris's, a family like Boris's, happen? Music. There will be that at Boris's memorial.
David says it's so hard to finalize a playlist." How do you send off such a warrior of music, such a champion of our city?
Yes, he loved Hamilton. Says Alex, It was instantaneous." Every time it was suggested that he and Ardyth move closer to one of their three children - Alex, David, Ben - the answer was unhesitatingly no. They would not, never, ever, leave Hamilton. The children have been astounded by the love and support and sympathy that this city has lavished upon them in their grief.
One way they will send him off is with - again, that magic, transcendent coping mechanism - music
On his way to Hamilton as I write this is Boris's brother, the world famous cellist Denis Brott. And if music be the food of love, there will be food as well. All of Boris's favourites, on the tables of their grief. Filet mignon and roasted vegetables. In love. In gratitude. Hamilton marks the passing of one who gave us much, so very much.
I saw an empty cab draw up to a curb and so-and-so got out."
A paraphrase of that old joke, sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill, it's meant to point up someone's lack of presence and command.
Which is to go backwards through the door of the most obvious truth, that Boris Brott was never that man, never someone you could forget was there.
Boris Brott filled every space he was ever in and somehow spilled out beyond it. If he were alone in a cab, far from thinking it empty, you would think it a crowded tour bus, from a mile away.
He was an orchestra conductor, for crying, symphonically, out loud (how I hate that past tense). Total command, over many. Total presence. Some conductors, though, are not conductors once they leave the podium.
Boris Brott was always a conductor, even offstage. He carried an orchestra with him (moods and colours, projects and ideas, stories and character and associations) wherever he went.
He filled space not only with himself and the force of his personality but with other people. He practically built Hamilton Place and put our laps in its seats.
When he was conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, he took the players to perform in a blast furnace in a steel mill. To thank the steelworkers for helping fund the building of Hamilton Place, which for so many years was Boris's playground, his office, his gymnasium, his laboratory, his home, his temple.
There's a picture that the Brott Music Festival texted me. Boris's three children, from behind, arms clasped around each other, on the stage of Hamilton Place. They are looking out into the empty concert hall, the distinctive orange seats, unoccupied, somehow looking alive and back at them mournfully, the seats their father filled so often.
That was Boris. He had the kind of mind and instinct, the grandness, to put on a concert in a blast furnace. The story got picked up internationally, including the New York Times. He also shed the kind of light that would inspire his children to make this beautiful, touching gesture, the picture at Hamilton Place.
I sat with Boris one day, five years ago, in his spacious circular office in the beautiful headquarters of the Brott Music Festival, with its rounded Queen Anne turrets, which he also called home. There were pictures of him with Leonard Bernstein, the legendary conductor of the New York Philharmonic, under whom Boris served as assistant conductor.
Boris was always precocious. He founded his own orchestra, the Philharmonic Youth Orchestra of Montreal when he was 15. He debuted at five years old on the violin, part of a children's matinee, with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, of which his father, Alexander Brott, was conductor.
There was a large painting of his father looming on the wall, almost at ceiling height.
He told me then of his exploits, his ambitions, and his life lessons.
At one point, in the 1960s, he was conducting the touring company of the Royal Ballet Covent Garden, and during this time he was put up in an old British manor.
I always felt a bit of a lord," he told me, with that characteristic twinkle whose mischievousness seemed amplified by his circular glasses. I was spoiled. I bought myself an old R Type Bentley and I drove it into London for a performance and couldn't find a place to park." So he parked at the admiralty illegally and forgot the keys in the car.
Was he charmed? Not only was the car not stolen, when he returned after several hours, the gas tank had been filled and it had been washed.
When I think of myself in those years, I was bumptious and demanding. It takes time to learn humility."
He did learn it. He had his setbacks. Anyone with a personality and a pedigree like Boris's (and there aren't many, maybe none) is going to make sparks, either through friction with other egos, disagreement over approach or resentment of others at feeling darkened under large shadow. And Boris cast large shadows. That's what big lights do.
Says Valerie Tryon, pre-eminent solo pianist whom Boris conducted many times: He was wonderful as a solo conductor. You could do anything and he'd be right there, sympathetic. I would lead him all over the shop" but he'd always be patient.
He was a servant to the music, and when they got it right, says Valerie, he'd be smiling so bright and cheerful. I loved Boris Brott."
Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator.jmahoney@thespec.com