I am overcome with sorrow to share the news of the passing of a beloved elder and mentor, world flute musician Gary Stroutsos. I am sure there will be official eulogies and obituaries to come, written by people more qualified than I. So today I just want to share a bit about the Gary I knew and loved.
If you had the luck to meet Gary, you knew he was unlike anyone else. Spirited, playful, uniquely irreverent, attuned to the soulful, deep, and real currents of life. He was an intuitively gifted performer and song carrier who recorded over 40 albums and worked tirelessly (and joyfully) to keep old songs and instruments alive. As he liked to say, “Songs get lonesome if not played.”
Many of you may remember that Gary contributed flute and percussion to two of my albums. Our relationship in fact began in 2015 when my parents, longtime acquaintances of his, suggested I ask Gary to play on my album, Stitch an Ocean. He immediately agreed—thrilling both me and producer Devin Mooers to no end. Gary was a world famous musician, and he was taking the time to collaborate with little young ME!? That’s the kind of generous spirit Gary had.
After recording Stitch an Ocean (you can hear his beautiful flute and percussive work on the song “Amongst the Pine”), Gary became one of the first clients of my fledgling communications business. Over the years that followed, we spent countless hours at his kitchen table building websites, designing album covers, and channeling his constant torrent of passionate ideas. We also maintained an online correspondence, exchanging over a thousand emails in the course of our friendship and working relationship. Many emails were links to Youtube videos of Donovan, Jethro Tull, and other greats that he wanted me to watch. He introduced me to some of my favorite artists, like Julie Fowlis, and his own music has been a companion through many phases of my life.
Though I may have been there to help him with his business, Gary was always sneakily helping me in return. Once, I showed him a few music videos by some young artist contemporaries, many performative and high energy, designed to capture a public with a limited attention span. I told Gary I was concerned that I couldn’t be like them, didn’t even want to, but they were finding success and a fanbase with that approach. When I showed up the next week, he was already pulling up the grainy live performance of some folk artist from the 60s to show me. “This is the real stuff, Laura,” he told me as we squeezed in front of his computer screen, both immediately captured by the playing. The musicians he played for me were always simple and quiet in style, stunning an audience with the force of their presence and musical soul rather than stage tricks. Gary was quick to see what was really for me and what wasn’t, a subtle and astute guide with a hidden lesson at every turn.
One of my other favorite memories is sitting in his backyard garden, recording iPhone demos of him playing flute on my song “Come Back River.” His first attempt was so lovely, my producer said we didn’t need to bring him into the studio. The iPhone track would do. So that’s what you can hear on the finished track now, including the bird song picked up in the background.
Many Seattleites were lucky to meet Gary over the years as he liked to sit in public gardens to practice one of his many flutes. I was lucky enough to find him once this way by following the familiar sounds drifting across a garden at the Center for Urban Horticulture. For him, music was another sense, not meant to be solely relegated to the stage or studio but rather woven into the rhythm of the everyday. “We’re in service to the music,” he said once. “It’s not a form of entertainment. It’s a life way.”
At a time when I was struggling a lot with my path and how to be an artist in the world amidst all the noise of commerce and the “fame game,” Gary was a calming presence reminding me to stay true to what really matters: the stories and the songs. I am truly overcome by grief at his passing. He was a legend, a repository of so much music and so many tales… it’s an enormous loss that he has left us before his time. And for me, it’s a personal one, the too-soon departure of an elder who welcomed me in like family and believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.
Gary, you will be so missed.