Damn. I am really sorry that I did not know anything about his terminal illness before reading his obit today. We had been in sporadic touch over many years and through several life changes on both of our sides but I had not noticed that the gap since I last heard from him had imperceptibly widened past the usual.
I was a student at the Manhattan School of Music prep-division in 1967/68 when I met Carlberg who was assigned to be my horn teacher. You have to understand that I say it with the deepest affection when I describe him as odd. As it happened, I most readily responded, in those days and now, to personalities that veered off from or openly rebelled against the norm, so we were a good fit. He was living on Fourth Avenue, which is a stretch in Greenwich Village of what is called Madison Ave. uptown and was still at that point the nexus of the used-book trade in NYC. This exotic locale only added to my adolescent excitement on the days when I would take the L.I.R.R. into town on Saturdays for lessons with him. I probably only had a couple of dozen lessons with him at that time, but I remember well his intensity when he explained or showed me some aspect of horn technique. My previous teachers, Art Goldstein and Arthur Berv had obviously made their reputation as players and their status as teachers was high, but this was probably my first prolonged exposure to someone not all that much older that myself who was actively involved in the freelance world. I think that I learned as much from him as a person (role-model) as I did as a teacher, though I suppose that by saying that I am taking a misguidedly narrow view of what I am calling teacher. When I entered the college level Bachelor's degree course at MSM the next year, I happened to end up becoming a fellow student of Clare Van Norman with Carlberg which ensured that our paths crossed often in the cramped confines on East 105th Street (and later Claremont Ave.). I shared his excitement when he told me that he would be Van Norman's assistant on the production of Valkyrie at the Met and envied him for getting to play in the "big kids" orchestra while I toiled in lowly brass ensembles and orchestral repertoire classes. I don't recall exactly when he left NYC and I don't think I ever knew why (It was rumored that he was offered a position at the Met, that was withdrawn after he started negotiating his terms with management, but I have no idea of the truth of this), but I next heard from him when he was out in Colorado (Ft. Collins, I believe, but maybe Boulder - I was in fairly frequent communication with Burt Hardin, too, and I could easily have their locations mentally fused). I think it was through this list that I discovered, a number of years later, that he had settled down in Mexico and we continued our sporadic exchanges, frequently spurred by list chatter. Occasionally I would hear from him when he was in need of something that was not easily available in Aguascalientes, sometimes it was just a personal response to some inanity that I has posted to the list, but I was always glad to be reminded of his spindly off-kilter presence, had been so impressed on me back when. He shared some wonderful photos with me of his home, bare-boned that it was, that I hope I can dig up in remembrance of him. My world feels diminished with his loss, but I want to share my memories and affection for him with my friends on this list as a way of saying that this loss is more than balanced by what I absorbed from him as a friend and teacher over the 4 decades since we met. Peter Hirsch _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
