Gurden Thorp - Bassist

Olga "Bo" Thorp was the queen of theater in the Cape Fear River basin.  After local Representative Tony Rand procured an  art's grant, The Fayetteville Little Theater became the Cape Fear Regional Theater.  With the change of name came an alliance with Equity actors, so participants no longer all were local.  Professional Equity actors began to be hired, so the season became commercial.  It transformed  from local intimate theatrical to a commercial season.   The Equity actors had to be paid.  This is precursor to my subject which is theater orchestra.  Holden Thorp, Bo's son, better is known as the youngest Chancellor in United States history.  He escaped his post at UNC-Chapel Hill to find new opportunities in St. Louis, MO as Provost at Washington University.  With this move to the other side of the river came better opportunities.  Holden, as he told me a few months ago, found musical opportunities playing bass in pit orchestras for musicals.  This is not something that may have happened in the colloquial confines of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  He and I both matriculated at this prestigious university, and both of us were involved in the commercial music scene.  Holden had attended the Berkley College of Music summer program in Boston as a high school student, where he learned music theory and commercial arranging.  While mostly self taught and with direct experience from his mother's theater, Holden began to write and arrange music including a full fledged show mounted at the theater called "Polyester."  Politics in North Carolina music was strong, and there is a rich roster of motivated performing musicians of all kinds.  Opportunities to play and grow weren't easily accessible, especially in the jazz scene.  Competition was great, so we took what we could get.  Holden and I played in a G.B. (General Business) band in college, and enjoyed traveling around to local country clubs playing beach music and jazz.  It was a rare experience, and we are lucky to have had it.  When the Athletic scandal broke at UNC, Holden was caught in the middle.  Eventually he did the right thing and relocated to new territory leaving that hornet's nest behind.  His move to St. Louis eventually rendered playing opportunities that complimented a newly acquired academic position at a prestigious research university.  He was a respected educator but began to flex his mojo playing electric bass in local musical theater productions.  I heard Holden play recently in Thalian Hall's production of The Man of La Mancha in Wilmington, North Carolina.  The show happened in the midst of a personal crisis for me, but I made the effort to drive and support his work.  What I heard was a crystallizing of Holden's musical intents over decades of evolution.  Since I had known him, this was the first time I had experienced his musical soul since it had been shaped and developed over many years of dedication, perseverence, and experience in academia.  The musical soul is a direct line to someone's heart.  When we had mounted "Footloose" at the Cape Fear Regional Theater during a summer, and I was playing electric bass and keyboards, Holden showed up with his guitar to sit in with the pit orchestra.  His bass playing had been limited to our beach band with Kyle Whitford.  St. Louis had provided more opportunities to experiment and grow as a pit orchestra musician.  He ended up with a "stick" upright bass and no amplifier which was the correct formula to play for a Broadway musical.  Ten years of ship orchestra work for me had honed my skills in this environment, and I tend not to look back.  It always was not enjoyable playing with prerecorded tracks with a click track in one ear.  It is a skill one learns to survive.  Since I have been living at home taking care of my mother, it is something I do not relish to think about.  Seeing "The Man of La Mancha" was intimidating to me, because my head was filled with other tasks managing my mother's care.  As I began to give into the sentiment in the show and let myself be moved, I began to trust Holden's musical interpretation on bass.  It was not dissimilar to my work in the orchestra for "Footloose."  Bass at its best is the leader of the band.  It provides the pulse and the pitch for everything that occurs above it.  It can and will make or break the show.  In the years since I had seen Holden, and his many years evolving as an educator, person, and musician he had blossomed into a swan.  The years of strife as a probable ugly ducking (which he necessarily wasn't), and these new opportunities escaping North Carolina and a rather colloquial academic system, gave birth to a new and better chapter to his life.  I know because I have experienced the same thing.  It is not possible unless you move.  It was gratifying to experience this metamorphosis, and hear Holden mature emotionally and musically into a more enlightened artist.  Bass is key.