Kathleen Strahm - A Tribute
We are now up to the 13th day of August.
When I first began working on establishing a nonprofit that would support remarkable musicians playing in public parks, back in the fall of 2022, my idea was that there might be some amazing musicians I could find who a) could be coaxed into playing in a park if they a) had a guarantee and b) would be unique and interesting enough that their performances would build their own audience and then the nonprofit could move on to establishing another artist in a park or Lithia Park as the case may be.
Of course, this was just a theory - I had no way of knowing if it would work or not.
Once it looked like I was going to have enough money to support one musician, the question became, “who is that musician?”. If I picked wrong, the project could be doomed from the start. And it wasn’t an easy target to hit anyway, because especially classical musicians are just not necessarily all that comfortable with bringing their music directly to people in this kind of unfiltered way.
However, I was fortunate to know Kathleen Strahm, a then 36 year old, highly trained, very unique violinist who had both significant orchestral background but was also quite comfortable playing in public places for tips.
She was game, even though she wasn’t prepared with backup tracks in the way that I had been performing. She just thought she could do it and she was willing to do it.
And from the beginning, she was an unmatched success. She came up with her own unique repertoire. She played beautifully. She made almost her full guarantee, sometimes more, every time she went out.
And she was glorious to work with. I would play at 10 am to 12 pm. She would come a little before noon so she could start playing for the next two hours and we would play together for maybe ten minutes, mostly just because we loved to.
For me, it was the fulfillment of a very particular dream in which I wondered what it would be like to sit up on the meadow and hear beautiful music there. With Kathleen, I had that precise experience. It was just so charming.
She led the quintet I put together as part of the project. At the end of the long programs where I would play and then the quintet would play and we had multiple people carrying gear back and forth from the park, sometimes she would be the one to give me a ride home, not because it was part of the plan, but more because she was part of the plan. She wanted to be part of it and she made it so much better for her presence.
Fast forward to the early summer of 2024. Kathleen had been studying how to speak Korean. Why? Because she enjoyed Korean opera, that’s why. And she had decided she wanted to go and study in South Korea. The plans were all made. It would take her away from the park for 2-3 months but she’d probably be able to finish the season.
It was inconvenient for me, but I could never imagine a Kathleen that wasn’t just striking out on the amazing adventure of her own choosing, just about every day of her life. So that was the plan.
But as she was about to leave, she came down with some troubling symptoms, which at first she thought was Covid. In a heartbreak, she had to cancel the trip to get this checked out.
It turned out to be Large B-Cell Lymphoma. Over the next months, she undertook every treatment, conventional and experimental that she could possibly find. And she did all that with the same spirit she had done everything else - with tremendous faith, grace, determination, good humor, wisdom and curiosity.
By this year in early July, it was clear that more medical intervention was causing more suffering than the illness itself. With her mighty faith intact, she let go of all that and went into hospice. Her beautiful family was with her every step of the way. She passed on August 1st.
I made this video from footage we shot over the course of early 2024. This was to be part of a documentary about music in the park that we thought would be released in the fall of 2024. For various reasons, that project has not yet come to fruition.
But we have this gorgeous footage of her, speaking in an interview, and playing in the park, and I couldn’t think of any way to come close to saying what I feel about her without making this video.
The truth is, I can’t come close to saying everything I feel about her. She is a presence beautiful beyond words.
But what I will say is that her celebration of life was packed and there are very few people I know who have been so well loved, for their authenticity and powerful and wacky joy. She was the very best human you will ever find.