Diana and Frederick Fennell probably first met in the early-to-mid 1930s after the Pezzi Family moved from Detroit to Rochester. Fennell was working on his master’s degree in percussion at the Eastman School of Music. In his youth he attended the National Music camp at Interlochen (where the Pezzi family spent the summer of 1938) where he met John Phillip Sousa and conducted a new work by the “March King.”
By the time Diana was a freshman at Eastman he had already earned his doctorate and was on the faculty where he began to organize the Eastman Wind Ensemble, a symphonic band as well as a marching band.
Over the next few years Diana saw Fennell less and less frequently and probably last saw him, in person, in the early- to mid-1950s.
Meanwhile, in California, my parents enjoyed listening to the local classical music station, KFAC, where my mom called to my attention recordings she enjoyed conducted by Frederick Fennell. She said, in particular, that she enjoyed the “almost nasal” tone he obtained from the woodwinds and brass and found, even in standard symphonic repertoire, it gave the music greater edge.
My first summer at Interlochen was 1967 and the first few weeks were my first encounter with home-sickness. By the third week, i finally snapped out of the loneliness and, in the weekly “challenges” ritual, went from eighth chair to first in two days. The conductor for the concert at the end of that first week as principal harpist was Frederick Fennell. (If memory serves, the program included the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique as well as the Sibelius Swan of Tuonela.)
Several years later i encountered Fennell again when he told me he had added a bass part to the Ravel Introduction and Allegro for performances with full string section, flute and clarinet. The idea was one that i found so appealing, from that time until my retirement in the late 1980s, i would always use my extra bass.
Shortly after Diana and i first met, when i showed her the photograph of Fennell conducting with me in the background at Interlochen, she couldn’t get over how much he had aged since she last saw him.
The next (and also final) time we saw a photograph of him was in an Interlochen publication taken in the late spring or early summer of 2004, a few months before his death at age 90. The word “Granny” across his shirt was printed in by Diana before scanning and e-mailing it to Tav. The NY Times obit said that Fennell’s ashes were scattered at Interlochen.
April 2017