05/11/2007

Remembering a life of good music

Jeff Haas Quintet pays homage to father Karl

By
Record-Eagle staff writer

Special to the Record-Eagle
Jeff Haas and father Karl backstage before a 1994 duet concert.

TRAVERSE CITY — Karl Haas taught his son a valuable lesson at a young age.

"He taught me the difference between playing the notes right and making music with the notes,” said jazz artist Jeff Haas, who will be performing a tribute to his late father Saturday, May 19, at the City Opera House in Traverse City. He'll be joined by special guest George Benson.

Karl Haas, who passed away in 2005 at age 91, was a popular syndicated radio show host and musicologist who devoted his life to sharing the healing power of arts and music. His show, "Adventures in Good Music,” began at WJR in Detroit in 1959. By 1974, he was syndicated; by the mid-'80s, the show was heard on more than 450 stations including the Armed Services Network and 75 stations in Australia — a worldwide listenership of over 16 million.

Karl Haas' knowledge of music was encyclopedic. He was also an accomplished pianist and conductor, receiving the Charles Frankel Award of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1991 from President George H. W. Bush at the White House.

Karl Haas twice won the George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. In 1997, he became the first and only classical music broadcaster to be named to the Radio Hall of Fame.

"He said 'If I spent the rest of my life studying classical music, I still won't learn everything there is to learn,'” said Jeff. "He was that focused.”

Haas was a German Jewish immigrant who fled the Holocaust in 1937 with a couple bucks in his pocket. He found work teaching piano and as music director at Temple Israel in Detroit.

He and Jeff's mother started the Chamber Music Society of Detroit. In the 1950s, he was the voice of Detroit Symphony Orchestra, announcing its concerts every Saturday on WJR.

The station broke away from network affiliate ABC in 1959 and liked the elder Haas' voice. The management offered him a classical music entertainment show, which "just took off,” Jeff said.

Karl would get fan mail from all over — farmers listening on their transistor radios, soldiers listening in Vietnam, truckers listening while traveling the highways of Australia.

Jeff said most letters had the same basic theme: "Thanks for teaching me so much about classical music” or "Everything I know about classical music I learned from listening to your radio show.”

Karl also worked with the Kennedy Administration to develop legislation for the National Council for the Arts, and with Governor William Milliken in establishing the Michigan Council for the Arts, both which last to this day. He also published a book, "Inside Music.”

"My dad was totally committed to the belief in the healing power of music, so he applied it wherever and whenever possible,” Jeff said.

But that didn't stop Karl — strictly interested in classical music — from plugging his ears at the before-unheard sounds of rock and roll. Jeff said his dad predicted it would "ruin the needle on the stereo back in the LP days.”

Jeff initially butted heads with his father over an affinity for jazz.

"My sister had what we referred to as a clandestine copy of 'Coltrane/Monk: Live At the 5-Spot.' She had it hidden under her mattress,” Jeff said.

But jazz is a genre Jeff has come to master in the years since. He's written hundreds of original compositions and has been involved in numerous projects and grants to bring music into schools. And it was with his father's blessing.

"He came to my concerts and encouraged me — he didn't necessarily understand jazz — but he didn't have anything against it,” said Jeff, who reciprocated by introducing Karl to jazz composers who were revered by classical musicians as well.

The May 19 tribute will include new arrangements of Haas favorites, including the theme from "Adventures in Good Music.” Three new Jeff Haas originals will be debuted, with prose by John Alberts, as well as classics by Irving Berlin, Thelonious Monk and Herbie Hancock.

Along with luminary Benson, Nancy Stagnitta will perform on flute, with Traverse City West High School students Myles Boothroyd on sax and Andrew Maxbauer on percussion.

Tickets to the 8 p.m. performance are $20 in advance and $25 at the door, available at the City Opera House, Grand Traverse Area Community Living Center or from Helen Childs. Special seating and exhibit viewing tickets, which include a Jeff Haas lecture, are $100.

Proceeds benefit the Community Living Management Corporation. For more information, call 941-8082 or visit www.cityoperahouse.org.