Islanders pay tribute to Doug Riley’s peerless talent and his humble, caring nature
The Guardian (Charlottetown)By Nancy Willis
LITTLE POND – People across Prince Edward Island were stunned Wednesday morning when they awoke to the news that music great Doug Riley was dead.
Not only musicians, but everyone who knew this kind, gentle genius mourned the loss of the world-famous man who adopted Prince Edward Island as his own.
Since moving to Little Pond several years ago, both he and his wife Jan have endeared themselves to Islanders and added a whole new layer to the musical fabric of this inherently musical province.
Riley suffered a massive heart attack Monday while aboard a plane in Calgary just before takeoff. He was en route back to the Island after headlining a jazz and blues festival.
Although Riley is best known as a keyboard player with blues and jazz groups, he also has a superb reputation as an internationally renowned composer, arranger and conductor, and a musical director for recording and television.
“But his family, colleagues and friends in Little Pond and across Canada will remember him as the soft-spoken collaborator with the greats of the musical world for more than 40 years, who still had time to sit down for a game of dominoes in the Little Pond Community Hall on a Friday night,” said his friend Jack MacAndrew.
Riley loved Prince Edward Island. So much so, that when commissioned to write a major work combining jazz and classical by the Toronto Sinfonietta, he composed a magnificent concerto entitled the Prince Edward Island Suite.
“I could think of no better source from which to draw my inspiration,” he said.
In his own words, Riley talks about his adopted Island: “I fell in love with Prince Edward Island. It has inspired and awed me in so many ways – the colour of the earth, the ocean views, the rolling hills, the sheer incomparable beauty of the sunrises and sunsets, the raging storm, the Celtic jam sessions, and of course, the Islanders themselves, who are the warmest and friendliest people I have ever met.”
Fortune-based musician Mark Haines said in just the short time Riley was on Prince Edward Island, he raised the musical bar and gave everyone something to which they could aspire.
“He was one of those rare musicians who had long ago become unencumbered by the logistics of his instrument,” said Haines. “Everything he played was an extension of his soul.”
Gordon Belsher, musician and recording studio owner, did three separate albums with Riley.
During the recording of a solo album called Piano Hymns, Belsher said: “I called my daughter Savannah and said ‘All I can think of is how incredible it is that I’m getting paid to listen to Doug Riley play piano’.”
Belsher said Riley was in a class by himself as a musician and as a gem of a person.
“He was so down to earth, and he made the jazz and blues idiom a part of the Island fabric.”
Terry Hattie, formerly with the Guess Who and currently starring in British Invasion at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, said as a musician Riley is peerless.
He said he was a master of so many different forms.
“And on top of all this I couldn’t imagine a more generous musician. Sometimes you have to coax giants like that to play. But, if you asked Doug, he would play a song at the drop of a hat.”
Hattie described Riley as a humble, sincere guy, a mentor to many and an inspiration to thousands of musicians around the world.
Pleased with so many tributes to her husband’s musical greatness, Jan Riley said: “It is so important also that people understand what a gentle, loving human being he was, and how much he loved me and the boys and the dogs.”
The boys are Ben, 31, and Jesse, 28; the dogs, Bailey and Tessa.
Riley did not want a formal funeral. Instead, a musical commemoration will be held in Toronto sometime in October, and here on P.E.I. at a later date.
souris@theguardian.pe.ca
© 2007 The Guardian (Charlottetown). All rights reserved.
