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This was written for a memorial page that my cousin Kathy Gustafson created on Google
In my mind Elga is still here with us. She never grew old. She never gave up. She was small in stature but had a huge voice and a big heart. She had courage and was determined to have a career singing music. Growing up is not a prerequisite to work in the music industry so we gave that no consideration. We made music together, we had fun and accumulated a long list of funny stories resulting from the scores of concerts and musical events in which we participated. It was easy to get her to giggle and laugh.
Elga was engaged to promote the Brevard Music Center’s summer music festival the year after she left New York City to teach at a college in South Carolina. I was still in New York City at the time and she asked me to come and play on some of the concerts with her. By then we had performed most of the repertoire for soprano and trumpet. It’s an unusual combination so there’s not a lot of repertoire and it’s mostly from the Baroque period. She had also commissioned a composer to write a piece for us and we played it quite frequently.
I left New York, met her at Brevard and then someone drove us to Spartanburg, South Carolina. Our initial concert was at Converse College but the first thing we did in Spartanburg was a short program to promote the concert at a Rotary Club luncheon.
Rotary Club meetings are all pretty much the same. They gather and eat, the president makes announcements and deals with the business of the club, then they have a program. So we were the program that day. I have done a lot of programs for Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, Lions Clubs, etc. They expect you to eat with them and visit. Someone always asks me if I can play so soon after I eat and I always say “I guess we’re getting ready to find out!”
Eating and then performing was not a problem for Elga and I. But at this meeting the announcements following lunch created a problem. I am from Tennessee and I am familiar with all of the variations on the southern accent you hear in different regions. South Carolina is very different than Tennessee. East Tennessee is different from Western North Carolina which is the Andy Griffith/Barney Fife accent, Central North Carolina is different than Western North Carolina. For example people from the middle of the state pronounce Raleigh as “Rallah” but people from East Tennessee and Western North Carolina say “Rawlee.” When you get close to the coast that’s a very different accent. So different that I need an interpreter to understand it.
The president of the club was named Jack. Jack couldn’t be there that day so he asked a man to stand in for him. Jack had given him notes so he wouldn’t forget anything. He was prefacing each announcement with “Jack asked me to…” I had been in New York City for several years and was accustomed to the Brooklyn accent, Bronx accent, etc. I wasn’t familiar with the South Carolina accent at that time. So when the man said “Jack asked me” it sounded like “Jack ass me.” After about three “Jack ass me’s” I looked at Elga and gave her the “WTH ?” look. She was already about to laugh and when I looked at her I could tell she was losing it. She covered her mouth and leaned over hoping no one would notice her laughing. When we went up to do the program I am sure the club members were probably wondering what we thought was so funny.
During the program we played a piece by J.S. Bach. I was very tempted to say “J. Ass Bach” when I introduced the piece. But I knew if I did they would probably have had to carry Elga out in a straight jacket!
Our lives were blessed by laughter and music and the bonus was we got to make our living doing it. A fundraiser in New York City for the victims of 9-11 in 2002 was our last concert together. As her health declined logistics to schedule concerts went from being difficult to impossible. For the last years of her life her boyfriend Salvatore Chiarelli kept her busy singing almost until the day she passed away. She never quit singing. The quantity of life she had seems short but she never sacrificed the quality of her life. Sharing the gift of music brought joy to her and to those who were lucky enough to hear her sing.
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