I first heard Pat play live in 1973 at Wolf Trap, in Vienna Virginia, the only National Park dedicated to the Performing Arts.
Four years later he was on the cover of Guitar Player Magazine talking about “displacing octaves” within the lines of his musical phrases.
I was writing music for John Cage at the time, displacing octaves, but in a random generated atonal way…but both of us were writing for guitar.
I wrote Pat a letter and we became fast friends.
He lived in the Village in New York. I live one neighborhood away, in Chelsea.
We used to get to together and smoke a whole lot of strong “cigarettes”.
Pat was one of the most intelligent, combined with the most sensitive, musicians I have have ever met.
This is Pat, as I knew him in 1978.
I wrote Pat music and he wrote for me.
Here is a piece he wrote for me called “Two Forms”.
There are two musical ideas, one representing him, one him.
The composition is there interplay.
This was the Pat that I saw the last time before he died… I saw him at a famous jazz club in the Fillmore district in San Francisco. He had had his brain surgery by then…and he didn’t remember that he had loved me, and that I loved him… utterly heartbreaking. Still… Thank you, Pat,.
