It feels strange to call my thoughts of Gene "memories"; he is still a very lively, neighborly presence in my mind--the friend who lives down the block on Maple Street, who (like me) isn't necessarily long on social niceties, but who wows me with his generosity when it comes to community involvement, exchange of political ideas, and eagerness to share not only his love of music but his craft and expertise as a teacher, chorus leader, and creative spirit. It means so much to me, as someone who also tries to combine art and activism, that Gene kept going over the long haul, constantly reinventing ways to make music in community and to make community through music--showing by his actions his belief in power, and art, to the people. Along with Winston, my future husband, I first got acquainted with Gene in 1987, when he came to teach the anthem of revolutionary Nicaragua (the "Sandinista hymn") to our small group of activists who were about to travel to that country. (We were part of a delegation from the Brooklyn-Nicaragua Sister City Project, a people-to-people solidarity campaign that fundraised for a clean water system for a tiny community on the Honduran border.) It was after seeing Gene and Nancy's Maple Street house that Winston and I decided to look for a place in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, moving here in 1993. Last year around this time, we had the pleasure of accompanying Gene and Nancy to a holiday concert by the Brooklyn Brandenburgers chamber ensemble. Held in the Old Stone House on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope, it featured, in addition to Bach, Gene's stirring arrangement of several folk melodies and labor songs. It was wonderful to see Gene's joy in the event, as he seemed to "rediscover" both the baroque master and the popular tunes he himself had arranged via this live performance. I've sat in so many community meetings with Gene, some of them quite long and tedious as tends to be the case when people are trying to figure out the mechanics of homemade progressive change. Gene, "unbossed and unbought," knew that freedom often requires taking the long way around. I will never forget his commitment to going the distance.

I am so very sorry to hear of Gene's death, and I'm thinking about Nancy and Hallie right now, sending love, knowing how difficult this must be. Making music with Gene and with all of the members of choruses past certainly is one of the great pleasures of my life. He was a phenomenal force of nature both politically and musically, and he not only touched but deeply enriched so very many lives. My life is one of those. I'm thinking of him with so much gratitude today.

Gene...I too knew him because of Nancy (we went to grad school together...almost 40 years ago!), and cared for him for her. He was a wonderful partner and father. But it wasn't all through her. There were dinners at the house, sometimes parties...and that wonderful celebration of his work at LIU. Also, sitting around the living room, talking politics and personal stuff, he insisted on honestly probing. Music was where he seemed to put his joy. Watching him conduct was a thrill! Very glad to have this recording of him enjoying a wonderful performance of his composition....

My memories of Gene are a series of snapshots looking through the lens of a 40 year time frame as a close friend of Nancy’s. Nancy had moved from DC, where we worked together in the newsroom at WPFW, a Pacifica radio station, to NYC to take a job as a writer at the Guardian. I remember her joining Gene’s choir a handful of years later and, well, the rest is history.

Gene and Nancy couldn’t have been happier at their wedding. They thrived on being Hallie’s parents together. When I got married, Nancy read a poem at my wedding that she’d written about her own marriage as a blueprint to help guide me. I cherish still having a copy of it.

When I think about Gene, words come to mind such as a man of courage, of modesty, someone who devoured knowledge with an insatiable appetite. He was a perpetual teacher. Passing through the dining room of their home, where Gene was often implanted at his computer, he would show me glimpses of his life of arranging choral pieces. Although I knew absolutely nothing about what Gene was doing, he was always willing to share just enough for me to grasp a little insight. Years later, when Hallie was at university and starting to make her own choices about teaching, Gene supported her unconditionally, knowing that whatever decisions she made for herself would be the right ones.

I remember, when I came to New York to attend Nancy’s PhD graduation at Carnegie Hall, that there was something going on in the neighborhood when we walked down the street afterward because there were police with assault rifles at various corners. Although it wasn’t immediately clear what was going on, I could tell Gene was angry. He walked right up to one of the officers and silently stood his ground in front of him.

Years later I heard the term stone catcher. That’s what Gene was. A stone catcher. Someone who was always willing to have the courage to step in, defend the underdog and take a stand for justice.

I just plain liked Gene, so so much.

Gene contributed to the repertoire of my group Brooklyn Brandenburgers for the last 4 years. He and Nancy attended one of our annual Family Holiday Concerts at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Our repertoire had been mostly Baroque music up to that time, with an occasional classical or even modern work sprinkled in. After the concert at which we had performed a contemporary work (very tonal), Gene came up to me and said "I thought you only played Baroque music", to which I replied, "Well, we're branching out". He asked if we would be interested in playing an arrangement of a piece called "On and Off the Wall" which he had written for his daughters to play on piano. He would arrange it for String Orchestra. I said "Absolutely!", and that began his "residency" with Brooklyn Brandenburgers. We performed it in 2016, and loved its quirkiness. Funny titles and fun music. Then he proposed arranging a Mozart Piano-4-Hands sonata, and again, we agreed and enjoyed performing it, followed by a Schubert Fantasy, also for Piano 4-Hands. Finally, for our 2019 concert, he composed a 6 movement, very ambitious (for him and for us) piece based on American traditional and protest/union songs) entitled "The Folky Thirties Suite" including flute and clarinet. We had to work very hard on this one. I think he was happy with the results.
Who knows what would have come out of his creative heart after that? Sadly, we'll never know.
So, on behalf of Brooklyn Brandenburgers, I, cellist Martha Siegel, would like to thank Gene for all he contributed to us! We miss you!

I have known Gene and Nancy since the 1980s when we were all involved in the Central America solidarity movement. Nancy and I tried to start a writing group after she and Gene and moved to PLG. I was still living in the East Village and Brooklyn was still another country. I remember getting off the subway and walking to their house on Maple Street, marveling at the architecture, wondering where I was. Then, another half dozen or so years later, when my husband and I were looking for a house and "discovered" PLG, I realized that it was one and the same neighborhood as the one I had visited that one time. Fast forward, we all worked together after 9/11 to form Prospect Lefferts Voices for Peace and Justice, trying to connect local issues of police brutality and military recruitment in high schools to the War in Iraq and U.S. foreign interventions. We held forums, distributed leaflets, and organized PLG contingents for mass demonstrations. Skip ahead another decade. I had started a project collecting Brooklyn Civil Rights oral histories, mostly about the 1960s. I invited Gene to participate. The attached audio files are two parts of the interview that Long Island University students conducted with him in 2012. Gene also brought Harmonic Insurgence many times to the local celebration of MLK Day at Grace Reformed Church. No better way to honor one of heroes of the CRM. If you listen to the oral history interviews, you can hear Gene tell his story in his own words. It really broke my heart to hear that he is gone. Sometimes you don't know what someone means to you until he's not there. I think Jan Clausen said it best: his passing leaves a big hole in our world.

After my chance meeting with Nancy on the RR going out to Astoria, Queens, we exchanged contact info, and soon thereafter I met Gene. So began nearly 40 years of friendship, over a lovely dinner, intense conversation, and a most unusual tour around their apartment of the countless bottles of sand, of various hues, they had collected on their recent trip out west. As the years rolled by we continued to share intense conversations about life, politics, and soon enough, child raising, education, family dynamics, organizing, gardening, many over home cooked, delicious meals. We would sit for hours at the table in those intense conversations. Gene enriched our hearts and minds with his intellect, music, and fierce commitment to justice. He graced his large community in ways that will never die.

Photos taken at Gene's 80th Birthday.

I first saw Gene and Nancy at a meeting of Queens Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador in the early 1980's. We didn't speak but were in the same room. Within a week or so, my wife met Nancy on the subway, noticed her reading The Guardian, and struck up a conversation. Shortly thereafter Gene wrote a letter to the editor of the paper about Israel and Palestine and I wrote a disagreeing response. Gene, being the wiser, called me and suggested we meet and find our commonalities, and we published it together. What a great lesson in politics and friendship.