An appreciation: Stires’ musical legacy
By: Sally Pollak
Ernest Stires, a composer, jazz pianist and mentor to younger Vermont musicians, died Sunday (May 4) at his home in Cornwall. He was 82. The cause of death was a heart attack, said Judith Stires, his wife of 41 years.
Stires, who grew up in a musical family, moved to Vermont in 1967 to work for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and write music. His grandmother was a singer with the Metropolitan Opera; he was a cousin of the composer Samuel Barber.
“He was kind, loving and highly intelligent, and he mentored his students,” Judith Stires said. “He did love the boys that he taught. I talked to Trey yesterday (Wednesday), and Trey was just in the process of writing Ernie a letter.”
Judith Stires was referring to Trey Anastasio, the Phish guitarist who studied formal composition with Stires. Anastasio would spend hours at a time at Stires’ Cornwall home: listening to music; discussing theory and influence; writing a fugue for homework; eating ham sandwiches for lunch.
A week before Phish’s final show in August 2004, Anastasio said that “Ernie is part of everything to me. He’s my mentor and my buddy… He’s just trying to encourage me. He can hear when I’m challenging myself musically or progressing.” Anastasio spoke of Stires from the stage at the Jammy Awards in New York City on Wednesday night, referring to him as his “musical mentor.”
Stires gave up a career selling radio and TV ads when he was in his 30s to study composition in Boston. For the next half century or so, he devoted himself to music: Writing orchestral and chamber pieces, and piano music.
Stires composed at his Steinway grand piano. In a 2004 interview with The Burlington Free Press, Stires said he was interested in taking “the elegance of real jazz and introducing it into so-called organized orchestral compositions.”
Trey Anastasio on Ernie Stires:
"Ernie Stires was my mentor, my hero and my friend. I met him when I was 18 and looking for a composition teacher but he quickly became like a second father to me. I remember with great joy our long days in his living room, drinking cup after cup of black coffee, and listening to scratchy old Samuel Barber or Benny Goodman records. He would jump around the room like a little kid, so excited. I cherish those memories.
"Mostly we would talk about life, though