http://www.expressnews.com/entertainment/article/Music-mixes-with-memories-at-jazz-violinist-s-10878357.php
Music mixes with memories at jazz violinist’s funeral
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By Hector Saldana, San Antonio Express-News
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January 23, 2017 Updated: January 23, 2017 9:25pm
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Photo: Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News
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Joe Gonzales (from left) sings “The Ballad of Pancho Claus” with Hank Harrison, Chuck Moses and Moses Olivo as friends and family members of local jazz violinist and music teacher Sebastian Campesi remember … more
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Seated just a few feet away from some of San Antonio’s most cherished jazz musicians as they paid musical homage to her late husband, jazz violinist Sebastian Campesi, Ida Campesi beamed, leaving no doubt her husband would’ve loved it.
“He would be very happy,” Campesi said Monday afternoon inside the fellowship hall at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, the cavernous room that once housed the basement swimming pool at the old downtown YMCA. “I think he would have wished he were in (the band).”
Indeed, the musical memorial featured guitarists Joe Gonzales, Polly Harrison and Richard Díaz de León, Jim Cullum Jr. on cornet, drummer Moses Olivo, Hank Harrison on mandolin and bassist Chuck Moses, who cut loose on swinging Campesi favorites such as “I Want to Be Happy,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Imagination” and “I’m Confessin’.”
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Sebastian Campesi, a Jamestown, New York-born musician who counted pioneering jazz legend Joe Venuti as a friend and mentor, died Jan. 13. He was 95.
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Sebastian 'Campi' Campesi gets a musical sendoff
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Friends and family heard about Campesi’s storied musical history at the memorial. For instance: Venuti, the father of the jazz violin, gave him an early gig at New York’s famed Oak Room Supper Club at the Algonquin Hotel.
They also learned he was a member of the Greatest Generation, a Bronze Star recipient for meritorious service in World War II.
On Monday, he was remembered simply as “Campi.”
Some stories were nearly lost to history. Few knew that the jazz violinist, a longtime member of the San Antonio Symphony and once a fixture at The Landing and Boardwalk Bistro, once had played with Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra and even the prog-rock act Jethro Tull.
All but forgotten, too, was that the frail musician of later years, who succumbed to complications of emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, once possessed the brooding good looks of a movie star.
Remembrances began at a funeral Mass at Porter Loring Mortuary presided over by the Rev. Isak Keyman-Ige. So did the tears.
For Ernie Durawa, drummer for the Texas Tornados, it happened when he knelt at the small altar where a wooden box containing Campesi’s ashes was on display, flanked by roses and photos.
“I hadn’t cried until today,” Durawa said afterward.
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He’d studied music under Campesi in the late 1950s, when the jazz violinist was musical director at Edgewood High School. For years, his former teacher would call him on his birthday.
“But when I got on my knees in front of his ashes, it hit me hard,” he said, tapping his chest with his right hand.
Tommy Dukes befriended Campesi some two decades ago and visited him almost daily for the last few years. Inevitably, Dukes said, the conversations — apart from the corny jokes and glasses of Italian red wine — centered on music and Campesi’s lifelong quest for the purest of violin tones “to break your heart.”
“He personified music,” he said.
Campesi’s stepson James Aulds, voice trembling and barely holding back tears, thanked his stepfather’s caregivers and hospice care personnel. Campesi, who died at his near-North Side home, often struggled to speak because of his breathing difficulty. Until the very end, the musician was comforted by music.
Gonzales recounted how on his last visit to Campesi’s home in the week before he died, he had brought along a guitar to sing the novelty song “The Ballad of Pancho Claus.” (He sang it on Monday afternoon, too, a special request from Ida Campesi).
That last time, Campesi, hooked up to an oxygen machine, sat up in his bed and listened intently. Ida was so surprised, Gonzalez recalled, that she just stared at her husband.
“The little gift of music perked him up,” he said.
For those missing Campesi, that magic worked again on Monday.
hsaldana@express-news.net