Hovda had indeed passed away, exactly two months prior, after eight years of declining health and a three-month stay in a hospice in northern Arkansas.  Hovda, 69, shared a home in Fayetteville with her companion of 20 years, the conductor Jeannine Wagar.

A native of Minnesota, Hovda spent much of her career in New York and was a respected and beloved member of the contemporary music community.  Her many friends and colleagues across the country are still learning of her passing.

A FaceBook page, “Eleanor-Hovda-Remembering” has about 100 members and Brooks hosted a memorial salon at his home on February 6. But at the time of this writing The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette remains the only newspaper to run an obituary of the composer whose works were commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, the Boston Musica Viva and Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, among many other institutions and ensembles.

In an extensive interview this past weekend, Wagar explained that she and Hovda kept her grave condition quiet. After Hovda died, “I was just too fragile to let the word out on my own” says Wagar. In the preceding 18 months, Wagar’s orchestra, the North Arkansas Symphony, fell apart financially and ceased operations and Wagar’s mother died in the same hospice room where Hovda spent her own final months.

Wagar, who has remained in Arkansas, returns to New York this week to begin sorting through Hovda’s many scores and recordings in the couple’s apartment in the Greenwich Village artist complex known as Westbeth.

The following chronology of Hovda’s final years, based on Wagar’s account, shows that the composer’s independent and creative spirit remained until the end, as did a determination to learn and explore, even into the realms beyond death.

Academic immersion and southern retreat

In the late 1990s Hovda held a succession of short-term faculty positions at Yale and Princeton Universities and Bard College.  According to Wagar, she thrived in the academic environment but became increasingly constrained by the time demands coupled with the desire to continue writing and performing her own works.  Hovda already held a B.A. from American University in Washington, D.C. and an M.F.A. in dance from Sarah Lawrence College, but during that same period she also enrolled in N.Y.U. in the Ph.D. program for performance art studies.

“She was taking all these weird wonderful classes but got burned out,” says Wagar. “Meanwhile I got this job out of the sky in Fayetteville. We decided to keep the apartment in New York but she’d come down and serve as composer in residence with the orchestra and be able to recover. She loved to teach but was doing too much, just a ton of stuff.”

In her position with the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Hovda visited 10 elementary schools in the region and with the students wrote a series of simple pieces, which were then incorporated into a work for full orchestra.  She also wrote a tongue-in-cheek fanfare, though Wagar says that it remains incomplete.

The couple quickly become ensconced in the local scene, which Wagar describes as progressive and “pretty far out.” They even collaborated with the presiding mayor of Fayetteville, Dan Coody, on an impromptu performance inside an empty water cistern in late 2001.

Wagar recalls that Coody, acting in his official capacity, had visited the 40-million gallon tank after it had been emptied for the kind of cleaning that happens only every few decades. When he sang into it and found a 60-second decay, he knew Wagar and Hovda would enjoy making a visit as well. With a battery of wind, string and percussion instruments, the trio held two improvisation sessions under Hovda’s direction.  The second, which was recorded, included a fourth participant — a crow that twice slipped in through the small passageway to sing a few notes.  Hovda named the piece “Only One Crow.”

Working through health problems

Back in New York in 2002, Hovda sought treatment for a problem tooth, which revealed a tumor in her palate. A series of surgeries in New York disfigured her face and impaired her ability to speak.  While five years of reconstructive procedures in Arkansas were successful, Wagar now views the dental troubles to be the beginning of a long and slow decline.

For the next seven years Hovda remained in seclusion, primarily in Fayetteville. She continued to write music, primarily new annual works for the Nancy Meehan and Laura Pawel Dance Companies.

She also delved into new theories of sound and physics.

According to Wagar, Hovda had a strong background in research science, dating to the early 1960s when she and her first husband worked for the federal government in Washington.  “She knew a lot about physics and sound but it was top secret at the time,” says Wagar. “They would shoot waves up into the ionosphere that would come back as images. The theory was that if there were nuclear activity, it would show up.”

“That triggered the research she did when she was ill,” continues Wagar. “A new theory of harmonics came to her in a flash and like a good scientist she tried to disprove herself.  She spent 10 to 12 hours a day on that for five or six years and was ready to get it out there to the public.”  The work resulted in boxes of writings, graphs and charts as well as a new direction in Hovda’s composing style.

But the couple faced a series of crises in 2008.  In March the finances of the Northern Arkansas Symphony fell apart and it ceased operations.  Hovda was in New York that March, performing one of her scores for a season of Laura Pawel’s company.  Still there a few weeks later, she consulted a doctor about her flagging energy and was diagnosed with breast cancer.

After a year of treatment, Hovda received a clean bill of health in May 2009.  That same month she gave a performance, again in New York, with the Nancy Meehan Dance Company. It would be her last public appearance.

The following summer in Arkansas, Wagar and Hovda shared the tasks of finalizing the estate of Wagar’s mother, who had died, during the same tumultuous March, 2008. In August, Hovda had further health complaints and was given the terminal diagnosis of bone cancer.

Extended life

Several episodes of intense pain soon made it clear that Hovda should not remain in the couple’s home.  She took up residence in the Circle of Life Hospice, located in the Fayetteville suburb of Springdale.  Only a few close friends were contacted and invited to visit. Among them was David Gilbert, the conductor to whom Hovda was married from 1964 to 1973, a period when he was an assistant at the New York Philharmonic under Bernstein and Boulez.

“It was a wonderful thing,” recalls Gilbert of the August visit.  “She was quite lucid, had no pain and actually felt good.  I came with a New York contingent, mostly her dancer friends.  She just perked right up. We took her walking and had lunch on a patio and she was actually dancing in the halls at one point.”

To the surprise of her doctors and the hospice staff, Hovda did not allow death to rush in. According to Wagar, over the succeeding three months — an unusually long stay in hospice — her death was called six times, but she kept returning, awake and full of insights and stories.

“When she first got there she said, ‘Okay since I’m here, if you guys are studying death, I’ll explore for you,’” recalls Wagar. “And the doctors said, ‘Fine’. But then she took it seriously.”

Wagar wrote notes of the statements Hovda made each time she reawakened and is keeping them private with plans to make them into a book.  But she did pass along one particularly musical episode — of Eleanor hearing angels sing in duets, trios, quartets and full chorus.

“Eleanor wasn’t the type of person to get into all that,” says Wagar. “She had a strong spirituality but hated to talk about it and she hated religion or any kind of belief system that would put you into a certain way of thinking. She would say that you have a direct connection to your higher power from within.”

“I expected her to pass away within days of my visit but it took all the way to November,” says Gilbert.  “Apparently, she made medical history by doing that. It was unbelievable but being Eleanor that doesn’t surprise me. She almost taught us all how to approach death when it comes.”

“She was turning her life over every day and when she died it was beautiful,” says Wagar. “She went out completely lucid, with love coming from the other side.”

“There are definite analogies to be drawn to the gay experience and any other experience in which someone feels like an outsider, shamed by others,” concedes Lastovicka, 36. “It is a story of a solitary person dealing with powerful feelings.”

And what gay person can’t identify with that?

Though “Crossing the Horizon” has not yet received a fully staged production, it was given a high-profile workshop performance by New York City Opera as part of the 2007 “Vox” series, showcasing promising new and germinating operas.  The 50 minute-long piece was also a finalist in the 2009 Opera Vista competition in Houston.

Working from Lauricella’s pre-existing poetry, Lastovicka created an unusual score, at least by traditional operatic standards. All of the texts are spoken by the central character, that’s “for clarity and intimacy” explains the composer, while three female vocalists sing wordlessly. A hypnotic, rather minimalist backdrop comes from the chamber ensemble of seven instruments.  The entire piece can be heard at www.UFOopera.com.

Lastovicka is not particularly prolific as a composer — only four pieces are available for purchase through her self-run publishing house Ahari Press. But that’s a deliberate choice.

“I think about the pieces I’m working on for a long time,” she says. “Sometimes months or even years go by before I start solidifying them on paper/computer. If something does not retain its meaning or structural importance after several months, it’s gone. The great thing about this is that I can listen to music I wrote 20 years ago and it still feels great.”

In addition to composing, Lastovicka works part time from home designing web sites and also teaching piano.  A native of rural South Carolina and graduate of the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, she arrived in the Hudson Valley about 13 years ago in order to be with her new love interest, Robin Andrews.

The two first met through their moms who were lunch buddies, but living 16 hours apart was difficult for a budding romance. God bless technology. “We fell in love over email,” recalls Chris. “At least she did. I fell in love the minute I saw her but then had to work my ass off to win her over.”

This past fall Robin was elected town supervisor of Claverack. “That’s similar to being mayor, which was a major feat,” explains Chris. “She became the first Democrat in 30 years to be elected to the board (in 2007) and also the first female supervisor.  And it probably goes without saying the first gay person. I am very proud of her.”

As for Chris, aided again by technology, she’s just begun crafting her second radio play. “I write the story, narrate all the parts, write the music and record everything myself,” she says. “It’s the dramatically-inclined, introverted, control freak’s dream genre!” She’s also putting the finishing touches on a new trio, “Terra Nullius” for violin, horn and piano, which is slated for a premiere later this year by the Quelque-Chose Trio of Toledo.

More of her chamber works can be heard on the CD “Fortune Has Turned.” Though released in 2005, the CD features five works written and recorded during Lastovicka’s college days in the early 90s.  But the pieces don’t feel like student works, since there’s a clear musical profile.  All of the pieces share certain traits including churning, slow moving harmonies, ruminative emotions and arched dramatic forms.

In her notes to the CD, Lastovicka paints a vivid picture of her life and environment as a music student — dingy old practice rooms, clunker pianos and a lively late night camaraderie with fellow students.  And she recently explained the disc’s title, as well:

“In my home town… I did make a concerted effort to hide my orientation. (But in college) my life completely changed. I came out of the closet, made friends who were either gay or gay friendly, and found my compositional voice. My fortunes had really turned, not because of a monetary windfall or any outward success, but because I’d begun the process of pushing off the big burden of deception I’d been carrying around for years. ‘Abraxas,’ the first piece, describes shoving off that burden. You have to destroy a world (a deceptive past) to be born into a new world.”

But only 13 comments?? Come on folks, let’s get some conversation going!

I invite you to consider this posting an open forum for ideas and suggestions on how to build on the site, help promote out musicians, and encourage new talents — or whatever else you think MyBigGayEars could accomplish.  On a day to day basis I guess my main goal is to provide something good to read and enjoyable to look at.  Help me keep track of the bigger picture.  After extensive searches I’ve concluded there is no other site covering GLTB artists in classical music.  Tell me – is it it’s worth doing?

If you think everybody’s out and it’s just no big deal, I’d like to hear that too. But please read my essay Why Gay Ears? about the struggles of trying to get certain gay and lesbian musicians to be out in print.  Also check out Theresa Bogard’s comments on being out in Wyoming. Speaking of the hinterlands, I’m always looking to feature out performers and composers who don’t live New York or San Francisco, so feel free to introduce yourself.

Again, thanks for your support and let me hear from you!

jody dalton

I had a memorable time attending a retreat at Rose Mountain, New Mexico, summer 1995. It was an emotionally turbulent but transformative period in my life and I was glad that I made the trek, committed the funds and showed up with an open mind (and ears). By the time I went home, I’d experienced music from a relaxed, intimate and free perspective (a dramatic change from my hectic life as a record producer), also made some new friends and earned a nifty certificate to boot.

The 2010 retreat schedule has just been announced:

July 6- 11, 2010 Nau Côclea Art Center, Camallera, Alt Empordà, Girona, Spain

August 2-6 2010 IONS Retreat Center, Petaluma, Sonoma County, California, USA

Once again the faculty also includes Pauline’s partner Ione, who’s a priestess and author and dream-weaving expert, and the Tai Chi instructor Heloise Gold.  More information available at www.DeepListening.org.

My past profiles of Pauline and further attempts to explain Deep Listening are available here:

“Making Conscious Connections”

“A Musical Adventurer Begins by Listening”

Our 1995 retreat coincided with the Summer Solstice, which inspired a grand ritual on the mountain top and lots of cross-dressing.  Yes, I had brought along a wig, just in case:

With Pauline Oliveros on a Deep Listening retreat, New Mexico, 1995.

“It is now ‘okay’ to come out as gay or lesbian,” writes Coulombe, in a statement about how the project was conceived. “But what about bisexuals, intersexed or transgendered folks, queers or members of the BDSM community?  (This) is a moment to assess what coming out means almost 40 years after Stonewall, to give some historic perspective to those far younger…  We have a perspective not shared by many, and bringing together artistic work around that perspective — done with an eye toward who we have become — seems highly beneficial.”

A review of the DVD will be forthcoming in this space.