{"id":179,"date":"2014-09-04T20:21:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T20:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=179"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:57:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:57:24","slug":"solar-powered-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2014\/09\/04\/solar-powered-jazz\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar-Powered Jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>When Dick Durham played\u00a0Beethoven\u2019s \u201cPathetique\u201d for his senior recital in the Chapel in 1964, Professor of Chemistry Paul McKinney \u201952 turned the music pages for him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd if not for Paul McKinney, I wouldn\u2019t have passed phys-chem and graduated,\u201d the jazz pianist and thermal engineer recalls from his home in rural Maryland.<\/p>\n<p>The quintessential Wabash Renaissance man, McKinney was a gifted scientist, actor, classical pianist, master of several languages, lover of literature, scholar of Nietzsche. He\u2019d no doubt smile had he lived to walk around Durham\u2019s Blue Note Farm, with its beautiful gardens and solar collectors on the grounds and all sorts of energy-saving devices throughout the house, where a new B\u00a8osendorfer grand piano takes up one quarter of the living room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cProfessor McKinney also said I played \u2018Pathetique\u2019 faster than it had ever been played in the history of music,\u201d Durham laughs as he lists the some of the other Wabash mentors who gave him \u201cthe ability to learn anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a way of looking at things\u2014nothing is insurmountable. I don\u2019t know how I learned how to learn, but I know that the people at Wabash taught me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Men like English professors Bert Stern, Walter Fertig, and Owen Duston.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were not about pumping you full of knowledge; they were about giving you wisdom. The depth of these people was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wabash theater director Charlie Scott let Durham\u2014who had just begun playing piano at Wabash\u2014write the score for the Scarlet Masque production of\u00a0<em>She Stoops\u00a0to Conquer.\u00a0<\/em>But it was Glee Club Director and music Professor Bob Mitchum H\u201959 who affirmed Durham\u2019s desire to veer from the pre-med path his cardiologist father and playwright mother anticipated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCharlie thought the themes I wrote for different characters in the play were pretty cool, and he said, \u2018You should keep doing this,\u2019\u201d Durham recalls. \u201cBut Mitch was the one who told me, \u2018Pre-med is fine, but you\u2019re not really that interested in it. I think you should be<br \/>\na pianist, Durham.\u2019 I said okay.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe worst thing for me would have been to go to medical school like my father, grandfather, uncle, and brother. There was nothing wrong with that for them, but I wanted to be an itinerant musician, and my father said, \u2018That\u2019s fine\u2014just be the best musician you can be.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>(Hear a cut from Dick&#8217;s first album in the video below)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Dick Durham - Oh, That Old Riff!\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wbGDbdE_uo8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>With his Wabash degree and his parents\u2019 blessing he went on the road, playing clubs around Wilmington, DE, until he was drafted in 1967.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI went through half of airborne training till they found out I was half blind and couldn\u2019t jump out of an airplane.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sent to Fort Dix to do clerical work (jazz pianist=120 wpm typist!), Durham went AWOL one night to sit in with a band at a club, where an officer heard him play. The very day he was to begin serving guard duty for the infraction, he was transferred to the Army band, where he played out his time in the service.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was in the same group with Grover Washington, Jr., Billy Cobham, and a lot of fine musicians and fine people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After his discharge Durham brought his old trio back together and hit the road again, playing clubs and, most memorably, opening for the Count Basie Orchestra.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were the lead-in for Count Basie, walking into these smoky, funky rooms, drinking ripple wine, and watching this incredible group of musicians known as the Basie Band have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Radio host and\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0jazz critic John Wilson wrote, \u201cDurham has managed to expand the usual concept of jazz pianist&#8230;to draw on a wide variety of sound colors and textures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Durham earned his master\u2019s degree in music from the University of Florida in 1971, but eventually the road became a grind. In the mid-1970s he found work he believed in and could also support him while he played jazz. He earned a certification in thermal engineering and in 1978 began installing passive solar collectors and promoting energy conservation through his company, Solar Energy Systems &amp; Home Energy Service. He was a proponent and user of compact fluorescent lights, window insulation, and super insulation long before they became fashionable.<\/p>\n<p>In a 1989 note to the College, Durham described his vocation as \u201cstill keeping alive the jazz music tradition while trying to save the world with solar energy and conservation product installations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He credits Wabash\u2014and the need to finish college in three years because of a \u201cfaux- paus\u201d his freshman year\u2014with shaping the intellectual agility to simultaneously follow two such different career paths.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had to take 28-30 credit hours each semester and I found that I enjoyed occupying as many lobes of my brain as possible,\u201d says Durham, who is blessed with what he calls an eidetic memory. \u201cIt was that learning to learn that was most important, especially when I began doing the solar work. It was an attitude Wabash ingrained in me\u2014in the army if a furnace was broken, I fixed it; if someone\u2019s car broke down, I fixed it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Durham ran his company for 25 years and continues to encourage conservation and sustainability practices while volunteering with the local town council, which recently dedicated a 14,000-panel solar array. In 2012 he celebrated his 70th birthday with a concert at The Mainstay, the Rock Hall, MD club he often plays and whose past performers include Charlie Byrd. He has twice received the Maryland governor\u2019s Citation of Merit for his original musicals and has released two CDs in the past three years.<\/p>\n<p>Durham says it takes two hours of practice daily just to maintain his skills, but that time is still the heart of his day. If being a jazz pianist hasn\u2019t been lucrative, it\u2019s been lifegiving, inspiring a way of seeing that Durham sums up as \u201copen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think if you leave everything open, learn as much as you can, then still leave the doors open, something will happen for you. Don\u2019t shut anything out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs William Blake said, \u2018He who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, Paul McKinney would be smiling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Dick Durham played\u00a0Beethoven\u2019s \u201cPathetique\u201d for his senior recital in the Chapel in 1964, Professor of Chemistry Paul McKinney \u201952 turned the music pages for him. \u201cAnd if not for Paul McKinney, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-notes","category-features"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2014\/09\/durham-from-piano-front-1-copy-1024x682.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}