Christmas 1966: Choral memories

It's no more than several quick paragraphs in my book:

On Dec. 13 [1966], Guaraldi and Charles Gompertz were in the audience for a rather unusual performance of the music for the Grace Cathedral Mass ... at Tamalpais High School.

"This was a kid, Brian Mann, who was a music major," Gompertz recalled. "He had memorized the Mass, and was a really good piano player. He could 'play Vince' the same way Vince played!

"The music department phoned and asked if I could get Vince's permission for Brian to do the concert, and then have Vince and me come up afterwards and say a few words, and answer questions. So we did, and Brian did a great job. Vince was blown away, and really taken with this kid; he saw himself at age 20.

"Vince gave him some tips after the performance, and then they sat down at the piano together and played stuff. It was a wonderful evening."

The entrance to Tamalpais High School, early 1967, as seen in an archival photo
extracted from a KPIX-TV Channel 5 news story.

Just a few paragraphs, because I hadn't been able to find Brian Mann or anybody else associated with that performance. 

With what I know now, that short anecdote could — should — have blossomed into several pages. If not more.

But let's look on the bright side. That's what this blog is for, right?

During one of my bookstore signings in 2012, a vivacious woman handed me a book and asked me to personalize it for "Brian." In response to my observation that she didn't look much like a Brian, she laughed, said her name was Linda, and explained that she knew Brian Mann from "back in the day," when they were members of the Tamalpais High School Advanced Choir. She was buying the book as a gift for him.

My heart didn't quite stop, but it certainly paused.

"Brian Mann?" I asked. "The Tam High School performance of the Guaraldi Mass?"

She nodded.

"Please," I said, as persuasively as possible, "ask him to get in touch. I'd love to chat with him about that performance, and everything that led up to it."

Linda did that, and more. She put me in touch with both Brian and John Terwilliger, who played drums in that Tam High School trio. Better still, she gave me a copy of the program handed out to audience members that evening in 1966, and dubbed a copy of the performance itself ... which, wonder of wonders, had been recorded and pressed as a small-run LP that was given to all the choir members.

Having now listened to that recording at least a dozen times, I can confirm that Chuck Gompertz wasn't exaggerating: Brian did sound just like Vince. More to the point, the audio quality of this recording — given its age — is nothing short of stunning; for my money, it sounds better than Fantasy's recording of the 1965 Grace Cathedral performance.

But I'm getting ahead of things. Let's hear the story unfold as it actually happened.