Terry Winter Owens (1936-2007)A personal remembrance
Matthew H. Fields
August, 2007
In writing this memorial, I acknowledge the kind assistance of Terry's daughter, Manhattan-based software developer Maggie Owens.
I met Terry Winter Owens 1996 at the Lipa Festival of Contemporary Music in Ames, Iowa, where both of us had been invited by Craig Weston. On that occasion, the faculty of Iowa State University premiered Terry's "Reflections from the Face of the Eiger", for muted trumpet, violin, glockenspiel, and pianoforte. Contrary to the kind of heroic gesture usually associated with Alpine vistas, the music was a gentle sparkling, a series of insistent but gentle, almost faint ringing sounds. While there was clear, expressionistic voice-leading, melodic development was reduced to a minimum, as if to urge the listener to simply meditate on the ringing of the tones after they had sounded.
I've subsequently found this impression of her music to be remarkably consistent across media and genres. Every sound, including spoken voice (e.g. in "Klage" for speaker and bass clarinet) but most especially the piano, is used as if it were part of a giant hyper-chromatic cimbalom, arpeggiating a dissonance only gradually to be resolved, then ringing out for us to contemplate. Terry herself coined the term "Resonant Continuum" to describe her unusual way of working. With the harmonic and rhythmic palette of post-Webernism, and a hypnotic, almost New-Age approach to phrasing, form, and development, her music remains uniquely subtle and not easily wedged into other trends.
That weekend in Iowa, she struck up a conversation with me. Though I never saw her again, the conversation continued in e-mail, in fits and starts. The last message she sent me was this past 6 May 2007, a recommendation for Lyn Liston's famous composer workshops. She took an interest in my music, and our correspondence focused on music, with each of us buying the other's CDs and commenting on them.
In 1998 I came to Manhattan to work with flautist Michael Laderman on a project, and tried to plan a visit to see her, and it was at this time that she revealed to me that she had leukemia, and was writing me from "the slammer", which was her wry term for the draconian constraints of hospitalization. She required that I maintain secrecy about her illness because she was still winning and earning commissions and feared, perhaps rightly, that were her illness to become known, people would discriminate against her in music business. After her death, I waited for Maggie's permission to speak about it, and Maggie clarified that ca.1994, Terry had been diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a fairly common form of leukemia in adults, in which mutant bone marrow produces large numbers of ineffective white blood cells, leaving the body anemic and infection-prone. Research on CLL is ongoing, but currently there's no cure and primarily symptomatic treatment. I was in Manhattan again in 2003 to work with producer Judith Sherman, and again tried to meet with Terry, but again she was hospitalized and our plans were thwarted.
Over the years of our sporadic correspondence, I gradually came to understand Terry as a true child of The Enlightenment. In her correspondence with me, at least, she identified tentatively with Judaism--but specifically the Judaism of Einstein and Asimov, a culture of scholarship and achievement long since liberated from ancient superstitions. More strongly, she identified with humanistic attitudes, neither complaining about her illness nor mythologizing about her impending death. Maggie points out that Terry disliked talk about her "fight" or "battle" with her illness, because she felt the word choice is a holdover from superstitions attributing disease to demons, personalities with which one might actually struggle. Since the best of modern science currently offers no route to recovery from CLL, she devoted her efforts to productivity, writing music at a fierce pace. Much of this subtly insistent music bears titles associated with astronomy, and she always billed herself as inspired by her brother's studies in astrophysics; titles and texts also prominently feature the humane side of humanism, with special emphasis on Raoul Wallenberg. When her health permitted, she attended her premieres, and her e-mails were peppered with news of widespread performances, in places like Austria, Bulgaria, Belgium, California, Florida, Japan, London, Brazil, Barcelona, Dublin... Despite this pace, she found time to also advance philosophies of humanistic living and critical thinking, flying out to Nevada just this past January to attend speeches by luminaries like Christopher Hitchens, "Bad Astronomer" Phil Plait and James Randi, and firing off an excited e-mail late one night praising a letter I'd written to the editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. Her generosity continued unabated to the end, and she used precious e-mail time from "the slammer" to foster mutually beneficial connections between performers, promoters, and other composers. I personally was several times the beneficiary of these fortuitous introductions.
As recently as a month ago, her web site was updated with new audio. Maggie continues to update the web site and promote the music. Any correspondence related to Terry's music can be sent to her email address, twowens@panix.com. Maggie reads everything sent to that address and has promised to respond to all email. She asked me to encourage you to visit the website at http://www.terrywinterowens.com.
Terry Winter Owens was an invigorating influence, a kind friend, and a fabulous musician, and I miss her terribly.