A lasting gift.

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

When Jon Sutton died on Aug. 19, 2004, he left behind his wife, Ella, their two children, David and Fleur, and a legacy of art and music that he had lovingly created for them and for all mankind.

Part of that legacy will be heard Saturday night in the Hult Center's Soreng Theatre, when Sutton's friend Diane Retallack conducts a memorial concert of Sutton's choral music and poems.

The program's first half will be devoted to Sutton's cantata "The Family of Man," a 30-minute chamber work inspired by Edward Steichen's celebrated photo exhibit and the popular book that followed.

In a March 2004 interview with The Register-Guard's arts reporter Fred Crafts, Sutton said he was moved by the Steichen exhibit's visual and verbal message about "the coming together of all mankind." He wrote the cantata, he said, because he felt that humanity was "going in the opposite direction, separating more and more."

Sutton said "The Family of Man" was his way of "getting up on a pedestal and telling humanity to get its act together before it's too late.

"As a species of animal, we are glaringly irresponsible to our own real existence," he said. "Our perspective is so selfish and narrow that we will disappear."

Retallack considers Sutton's musical setting of quotations from "The Family of Man" exhibit and book "his gift to the community, his gift to the world."

She will conduct her Eugene Vocal Arts Ensemble chamber choir and the Oregon Mozart Players in the world premiere performance of this work, with Hung-Yun Chu as piano accompanist and Arielle Aryah as child soloist.

Retallack describes "The Family of Man" as modern music - "difficult and challenging" but also "lyrical and beautiful" - that uses tonal tension and resolution as it moves from one key to another.

"Some parts remind me of Stravinsky," she says, "but it has elegant melodies and more ethereal, other-worldly sounds. It also has dynamic, rhythmic parts with a great deal of energy and vitality, and a finale that is fast and expresses boundless joy."

She adds that the piece also requires "an enormous array" of percussion instruments including a bull roarer, rain stick, thunder sheet, temple blocks, bamboo and metal wind chimes, xylophone and marimba.

Arranged in five sections, the texts include quotations from the Bible, Native Americans, Carl Sandburg, Kahlil Gibran, Alexander Scriabin, Saint-John Perse, William Shakespeare, Kabir and William Blake.

In the second half, Retallack will conduct the Eugene Concert Choir in a performance of four shorter pieces: "Silent Space" and "Winterspring" for choir and orchestra; Adagio for Strings; and "Your Blue Eyes," a solo song with piano and flute.

Sutton wrote "Your Blue Eyes" for his wife, Ella Evers-Meinardi, and Retallack herself will sing it:

"The sky and quiet hills sing with light deep in my soul/ and your blue eyes."

Sutton, a California native who moved to Wolf Creek in 1968 and to Eugene in 1975, was a visual artist whose creative output included watercolors, fabric prints, interior design, lithography, assemblages, stage sets, tapestries, furniture, chess sets and even a backyard castle for his young daughter to play in.

Art came more easily to him, but he also studied for a time at the New England Conservatory of Music. He preferred composing to art because it was more challenging and more rewarding.

"I feel that with music, on an emotional level and on an inspirational level, you can reach more people more quickly than with an individual work of art," he said in a 1981 interview with The Register-Guard.

He said his method of composition included hunting and pecking on the piano and "thinking deeply about the text, communicating with the text."

His musical works include "Pinocchio," a dance mime in three scenes that the Eugene Ballet performed in 1981; "Symphony of All Mankind," which he wrote after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; "A Child's Garden of Songs," settings of verses by Robert Louis Stevenson; and "Vela de Muerto," a symphonic poem.

His musical melodrama "East of the Rockies" was staged by the Very Little Theatre.

Sutton first sang with the Eugene Concert Choir during the 1988-89 season and continued until he was no longer able to, because of pulmonary fibrosis.

Retallack says that when she called Sutton early last year to tell him the Eugene Vocal Arts Ensemble was going to sing "The Family of Man," he cried.

"He was so thrilled," she said, adding that she hoped to work with Sutton in preparing for the performance, "but he declined too rapidly."

Among those at Saturday night's concert will be Sutton's widow, Ella, who met him at a turning point in her life. Her husband had been killed by a hit-and-run driver when she was nine months pregnant with her daughter, Fleur, now 31. Her son, David, now 35, was only 4 at the time.

Meeting Sutton at a friends' home and knowing he was an artist, she asked if he could help her find a good photograph of Mount Tamalpais, a Marin County landmark that meant much to her.

He said he would try, then showed up later with his own watercolor of the mountain.

"I became my practical Dutch self and said maybe we should talk about price first," she recalls. "He said no, that anyone who loves Mount Tam so much should have this as a gift."

Sutton's sweet, gentle nature, creativity and generosity of spirit impressed those who came in contact with him.

Retallack saw Sutton as "a most gentle person who wanted to leave no imprint on the Earth except that of beauty" and would turn any project he took on into something bigger and more beautiful than expected. When he volunteered to design a backdrop for the concert choir's English madrigal dinners, he added a papier-mache boar's head on a platter, with apple in mouth.

Register-Guard reporter Fred Crafts remembers Sutton as "angelic, one of those spirits who float through our lives, making our world better and more beautiful. He was inspirational."

Riley Grannan of Eugene Ballet summed it up succinctly:

"He was a sweet man."

One of the lines that Sutton set to music in "The Family of Man" is this one from the French writer Saint-John Perse:

"Sing sweetness unto the last breath of evening."

CONCERT PREVIEW

Eugene Concert Choir, Eugene Vocal Arts Ensemble, Oregon Mozart Players

Program: "The Family of Man" and four other compositions by the late Jon Sutton of Eugene

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Soreng Theatre, Hult Center, Seventh and Willamette streets

Tickets: $14 to $25 at the Hult Center (682-5000)

CAPTION(S):

John Sutton once said "The Family of Man" was his way of "getting up on a pedestal and telling humanity to get its act together before it's too late."