The Jonani Duo

The Jonani Duo 

            “I love playing with Jonathan so much,” Mom told us in the early years, “that I think the Jonani Duo has extended my life about ten years!”

\           That was back when she wanted her life extended.

            My son Jonathan and my mother, whom Jonathan called Nani, established the Jonani Duo in 1993, when he was fifteen.  He’d learned the basics of the clarinet at Hoover Middle School and had begun taking clarinet lessons from Don Carroll, a clarinetist for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.  My mother had taken lessons for four years when she was a little girl, but she’d been the accompanist for the Girls Glee Club in her middle school and accompanied all of us when we had a song to practice at home as well as for the sing-alongs at parties and for Christmas Carols at Christmas.

            The Jonani Duo gave us ten-minute concerts twice a year—in March, when we celebrated Jonathan’s birthday, and in October, when we celebrated my mother’s birthday.  Between concerts they’d get together about every six weeks to select music and practice.  He’d go to the house she shared with Kathy, and they’d all three have dinner and talk, and then while Kathy was cleaning up, Mom and Jonathan would play scrabble and practice their duets.  He’d spend the night and they might practice a little bit more in the morning.

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            Throughout the years, they played “Chanson,” by Reinhold Gliere, Promenade,” by Marc Delmas, “Nocturne” from the Concerto in G Minor by Theodor Verhey, and the “Chalumeau Rag,”  by Paul Harvey.

            I took pictures and, after they performed and bowed, I’d present them with flowers. 

            Maybe that was a sign of Mom’s early dementia—when she let me know the flowers were just too much.

            I’d found the most beautiful arrangements at the Glen Park BART station, where a florist with the business Teleflora would listen as I described the occasion and help me choose just the right assortment for the occasion and for the duo.

            “I’d rather have a single rose,” Mom finally told me.

            Hmm.  Not like the Dorothy Parker verse we both loved.

            “Why is it no one ever gave me yet

            One perfect limousine, do you suppose?

            Oh, no.  It’s always just my luck to get

            One perfect rose.

            That was after the year they played the piano duet arrangements of "Song of India" by Rimsky-Korsakov and "Traumerei" by Schumann, then three clarinet and piano pieces by Paul Harvey:   “Teasing Tango,”  “Back Garden Blues,” and once again “Chalumeau Rag.”  That concert night we had dinner at Il Pavone in Walnut Creek, and Mom talked about history had affected  her family, something I had planned to do in more depth on the Fridays I stayed with her to fill out The Story of a Lifetime volume Dana had gotten me.

            In 2004 I had enough pictures to make an 11 x 17 collage of the Jonani Duo.  I would later update it with their final concert.

               These wonderful concerts went on for fifteen years, and then in October 2007 Mom said, “It’s my

 birthday, and I don’t think I should have to play if I don’t want to.”

               She didn’t want to.

               She didn’t have to.

               She didn’t play.

               The next month on my birthday, Jonathan proposed another kind of a duo.  He suggested that he and

 I start a two-person dialogue on books.