In Loving Memory

The Memorial Service for Philip Blum took place on the stage of Orchestra Hall. Occupying the space of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, attendees faced the darkened hall. So many people wanted to play for Phil, it was impossible to accommodate them. It was decided the members of his section would provide the music. With their backs to the empty house, they played Bach arrangements in groups of four. At first people milled about. Gradually, it was the voice of the cello that caused a uniform stillness. At the conclusion of each piece, players carried their instruments away and four others took their place. Everybody needed to play for Phil. The cellos enveloped us in the most exquisite poetry, while filling our hearts with loss. In the last of these quartets, Phil's life-long colleague, Lenny Chausow, took his seat after years of retirement.

In some ways, a performer's repartee with the audience was absent. The cellists' eyes darted from one another to negotiate phrases and cut-offs, but it felt like the person for whom they played was not in the room, at least not in a physical sense. They were burying one of their own.

At the edge of the stage, under a spotlight, was Phil's cello leaning against his chair with his bow across the seat. A burst of white roses took his place.

I didn't know Phil Blum as an artist. He was my husband's godfather. In more recent years, a friendship that had started in high school between Phil and my father-in-law, had grown more distant perhaps, but Phil was part of the fabric of my life. I attended the weddings of his son and daughter. I remember when one of the young couples was told they couldn't have children. I remember when children came anyway. I know his brother Rich, a wag/violist from the Pro Arte Quartet. I remember the old stories: a road trip to Colorado, life in the Service, the time my husband, as a youngster, got to room with Phil on a CSO tour. Even with little contact, one learns to love someone from afar, just because his ups and downs are a topic at the dinner table.

I'll never forget my first impression of Phil. His daughter's rehearsal dinner was at Bub City, a rollicking Country Western Bar on Weed Street. Phil looked the part, all decked out in cowboy boots, collar unbuttoned, a large gold chain around his wrist. He was a longhair--a completely different sort of guy from my rather formal in-laws. At CSO concerts, Phil's mop of steely hair and that gold chain peaking out at the cuff always made me smile.

And then there was the cancer. We would get frantic phone calls from my in-laws, "time has run out." And then months later, we would look down at the stage to see Phil back in the cello section. One by one his peers retired, but Phil's odyssey with sickness and remission went on for twelve years. At times he lost his mop and his color went ashen, but Phil kept playing. It seemed improbable--impossible--as months turned to years, that Phil kept playing.

Phil Blum was the most unassuming person. He was quiet, but grinned a lot. He seemed completely unaffected by his talent. He loved his home in Michigan. He was a regular around the card table in the musicians' lounge. Yet there are few great performers of the last half-century who have not shared the stage with Phil Blum. He was the last of the Reiner era. He inspired his colleagues, not by bluster or by posturing, but by quietly doing his job at an exceptionally high level?and that he did for fifty-four years.

Somehow the cello playing at the memorial service said more than all the heartfelt words. Every time the music started again, the people, his colleagues--everyone wept openly. They say it was the cello that kept him going. I've known Phil's life had turbulence. There were dark and despairing times in which he walked along the edge. But the sweetness and joy expressed at that memorial service left no doubt: Phil Blum departed this world as he had played in it: with grace, dignity and love all around.