Son sees father's music come alive again

Charlie Bryan was 8 when he watched his father die.

This weekend, his dad's music will come alive again.

"It's very exciting for all of us in the Bryan family," said Bryan, president emeritus of the Virginia Historical Society.

"He was a brilliant musician. I can't help but think of all he would have done and contributed . . . had he lived."

The ensemble of One Voice Chorus will present "SongCatcher, The Life and Music of Charles Faulkner Bryan," this Saturday at First Unitarian Universalist Church.

Bryan, a composer, educator and folklorist, died in 1955 at age 44, felled by a massive heart attack as he rode in the front seat of a car on the way home from a family vacation. Charlie Bryan — Charles Faulkner Bryan Jr. — was sitting in the back seat.

Bryan Sr. was just hitting his career stride. In addition to being head of the music division at what was then called Tennessee Polytechnic (and is now Tennessee Tech), Bryan got involved in the folk-music movement just as it began to take off in the 1950s. He sang — he had a beautiful tenor voice — and played the mountain dulcimer at recitals all over the country.

Influenced by his folk background, he also composed classical music, including a symphony written around mountain spirituals, an opera on the life of an 18th-century itinerant music teacher and a cantata based on the ghostly legend of the Bell Witch that premiered at Carnegie Hall. The summer after his death, Bryan had been scheduled to live at Robert Frost's farm in Vermont, collaborating with the poet to put some of his works to music.

"He was literally a guy from the backwoods of Tennessee, but he was becoming known," said Glen McCune, founder and artistic director of One Voice Chorus. McCune approached Charlie Bryan about resurrecting and performing his father's music after learning about Bryan Sr. from John Bryan, a cousin of Charlie's and president of CultureWorks, the Richmond area's new clearinghouse for the arts community.

"I've been kind of taken by his music," McCune said. "I think he was on the verge."

One Voice Chorus is an inter-

racial community chorus based in Richmond whose mission is not only to present quality choral music but to create racial harmony through song.

"I believe something happens when people come together and make music in a choir," McCune told me over coffee the other morning. "Masks start to drop down. There's something mystical that happens when you're singing together that connects people at a spirit level. I'm not going to say all of our cultural problems can be solved by joining a choir, but it's an incredible first step."

Which circles back around to Bryan's life. In 1938, he and his wife, Edith, attended a revival at a black church in rural Tennessee. The only whites in the congregation, they were there to hear a gifted young singer named J. Robert Bradley.

Bryan knew right away that Bradley was an incredible talent, but he also could tell Bradley was untrained and might well damage his voice without using proper technique. He met Bradley after the service and invited him to Tennessee Polytechnic in Cookeville.

Weeks later, Bradley showed up in Cookeville. Bryan found him a place to live and gave him voice lessons on campus — a dangerous career move for Bryan in the South in the age of segregation — and Edith Bryan taught the 20-something Bradley how to read and write.

Bradley went on to an internationally renown career, and in an interview with a Tennessee Tech publication before his death in 2007 said the Bryans "taught me something that has lasted me all my life. They loved me . . . and they just wanted to help me."

McCune was talking about Bryan's music, but he could have been referring to his story, too, when he described why he is so thrilled to have hunted down Bryan's out-of-print music and whip it into shape for a public program.

"How many times do you have an opportunity to find something and dust it off, something of value," McCune said, "and bring it forward?"

Glance:

Performance Saturday

SongCatcher: The Life and Music of Charles Faulkner Bryan

Saturday, 7 p.m., First Unitarian Universalist Church, 1000 Blanton Ave., Richmond, presented by One Voice Chorus. Requested donation: $15. Details, visit www.onevoice chorus.org

Bill Lohmann is a columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Follow him at http://twitter.com/wlohmann