Sweet Ladyslipper | in memoriam John Fleagle by Frank A. Wallace

I met John Fleagle the same night I met my wife and many future friends in early September 1974. I was a fresh graduate from San Francisco Conservatory and had just spent the summer teaching guitar at the Apple Farm in South Jersey. Going to Boston was a complete lark – no contacts, no connections, no leads. I just arrived and went to Harvard Square and looked at bulletin boards for an apartment to share and a chorus to join to meet people. Boy was that a good idea! The Quadrivium was led by Marleen Montgomery, a charismatic though completely anti-establishment rebel of a musician. Brilliant and talented along with deep flaws and addictions. But the group was vibrant, welcoming, loving and exciting.

Over the next few years the community grew and slowly but surely guided me away from my beloved guitar into a career of early music. LiveOak and many other small ensembles were born and life was good. Fast forward two decades and John had become a beloved member of the greater Boston community of early music and Revels. I had returned to my guitar and begun my career as a composer. John got throat cancer and I decided to write Sweet Ladyslipper in his honor.

A prelude sets the mood of a young man at Berklee School of Music studying jazz. Time moves quickly, the blues becomes all too real for that young man who now has cancer before he has even reached his mid-life. Pavane for a dying prince, for prince he was, is my lament for John Fleagle. Four movements follow: Complainte [for his many unrequited loves], Estampie [for the delight he took in dance], Cantiga [for his lyricism] and Zar, an Egyptian dance of great power in which the dancer does not move her feet – performed for him at a tribute concert by Libana. John Fleagle died in the spring of 1999. You can see him, circa 1974, arms raised in song, in the avatar picture here. The morning of his funeral, I walked to the “bunny rocks,” a pile of glacial boulders in our forest where we had buried the ashes of our mutual mentor Marleen Montgomery 11 years before. There in the path was a fresh blooming ladyslipper. Sing on, John!

…the suite you wrote for John [Sweet Ladyslipper] is a magic carpet

Paddy Swanson, Revels Director