“Bill Bennett performing Strauss’s Oboe Concerto is, I must imagine, classical music’s equivalent of Shane Dorian’s epic wave at Jaws.” Bill Bennett. Photo: (L) SF Symphony (R) Pacodos
On the evening of Saturday, February 23, 2013, San Francisco Symphony principal oboist Bill Bennett stood front and center on the stage of the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. For the third and final night, Bennett was to perform Richard Strauss’ Oboe Concerto, one of the most dynamic and difficult pieces of music ever written for the instrument. He had performed the piece before: first to rave reviews back in 1991, five years after becoming the symphony’s principal oboist, and the first two nights of his 2013 performances reasserted Bennett’s mastery of his art. This performance was to punctuate a thirty-five year career in San Francisco: since joining the symphony in 1979, he had toured the world over, performing solos of Mozart, Vivaldi, Jean Françaix, and Frank Martin. He had even given the world premiere of John Harbison’s Oboe Concerto, commissioned for him by the symphony in 1992. Beyond his astonishingly accomplished musical career, Bennett had achieved an even more exceptional feat: beating cancer. Diagnosed with tonsil cancer in 2004, Bennett made a full return to the orchestra after a triumphant nine-month round of treatments.
However, midway through his final performance of the Strauss concerto, Bennett collapsed on stage. Suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage, he passed away five days later, survived by his wife, sons, sisters, and mother, all of whom were present at his last performances. He was 56 years old.
As Bill’s family, friends, and colleagues continue to cope with his passing several weeks later, I can’t help but reflect on the last moments of a remarkable individual of unfailing humor, generosity, and kindness. Testament to Bill’s character outside of music, several area surfers cite Bill as a friend. While these guys roam the coast in search of the meanest surf that they can find between Big Sur and Eureka, most admittedly don’t even know what an oboe looks like. Bill Bennett’s expertise and international renown in orchestral music—not exactly an artistic companion to plebeian surf culture—never took precedence over a genuine interest and respect for everybody he interacted with. Fresh off a world tour of performances for the cultural (and economic) elite of every major capital city imaginable, Bill would listen intently to banter about a recent session, never regarding the mundane details of tide, wind, and board choice as secondary to his own much, much more significant professional and artistic achievements.
From groms to old-man big wave hounds, I doubt any of his surfer friends truly comprehend the technical difficulty of performing Strauss’s Oboe Concerto. I sure don’t. I would wager that like myself, most of us have never even been to the symphony. But when we were shocked to learn of Bill’s passing—my father, who has known the Bennett family since 1975, wept that “Bill should have outlived all of us [from his generation] by forty years”—we couldn’t help but draw parallels to the surfing world.
In terms of skill and reclaim, we’re talking about a guy whose musical legacy is analog to surfing’s biggest and best achievements. Performing Strauss’s Oboe Concerto is, I must imagine, classical music’s equivalent of Shane Dorian’s epic wave at Jaws, Albee Layer’s mind-blowing double alley-oop, or a perfectly surfed wave from Boneyards to the Point at J-Bay: incredibly rare, incredibly difficult, and worthy of awe, praise, and respect on countless levels.
As a sport characterized by calculated risk, every surfer who steps into big water is reminded of mortality. Those who achieve high wave counts while logging impossible drops and deep barrels while pushing the limits higher and the conditions bigger every winter acknowledge their mortality and overcome its ominous presence in order to perform the impressive feats that we immortalize on film each year. Yet death—shelf it as we may to experience those glorious drops, waves, and sessions—is always somewhere in the background, embedded in the fear that we refuse to acknowledge. That is, until we lose one of our own, front and center, for the whole world to see.
Bill Bennett’s last moments were celebrated in the spotlight. In surfing too, we’ve seen our share of internationally renowned performers go down on the world stage. Eddie Aikau. Mark Foo. Jay Moriarity. Malik Joyeaux. Sion Milosky. Makki Block. Dylan Smith. There are others, and I beg pardon for my oversights. Men of incomparable, even inconceivable talent and understanding of waveriding and the rhythms of the ocean. Men whose lives were lost engaged in their life’s work, performing on the world stage of surfing. While I knew few of these men personally as I did Bill Bennett, I can only accept the untimely tragedy of their passing by acknowledging that their final moments were spent engrossed in the activities held most dear to them, surrounded by individuals equally passionate about the rhythms of sound and water, respectively. The public nature of their passing has undoubtedly proven incredibly difficult for their families. Yet dying on the world stage yields incomparably powerful narratives of great lives and necessitates reflection on our own lives, actions, and values in relation to those activities that we hold most dear.
We’re forecast to lose more surfers on the fore of the big wave movement. I’ve overheard no shortage of surfers utter the words, “I’d rather die in the water,” few with real reflection on the significance of the claim. From now on, let’s reflect on those words by revisiting the world-stage narratives that remind us of our shared humanity. And beyond the triviality of our irresolvable debates about competition, style, media, and equipment, let us remember those who have sounded their final notes on the world stage in our own daily communions with the ocean and with others.
