A Gentle Poet

[ CUONG VU ]

With all the knowledge, all the smarts (IQ test netted a 170 or 172 score at age 6, if I remember right…), and all of the experience under his belt, Lyle was a bright eyed, curious kid at heart when he and I hung out, joked around, and laughed (a lot).  And he really enjoyed my dark, smart-assed jokes.  He always treated me with such respect, and never ever talked down and always sincerely and seriously entertained my opinions when we disagreed.  I only noticed this because I was acutely aware of how incredibly smart and heady he was.

With all of the brilliance (I imagine a genius mathematician with facts, formulas, equations, hypothesis, etc. constantly swirling around in his head) and the rigorous attention to detail, his output (whether compositionally, orchestrally, or in his improvisations) was ALWAYS so soulful, musical, and poetic.

His contributions to music in general, we all know that he was an equally crucial part of that special, otherworldly chemistry with Pat which produced so many transcendent moments in concert and on record that pierced the heart of so many music fans. This obvious fact had such a deep impact that I don’t think it can be overstated.  To the PMG, the ingredients to their magic potion was (at least to my ears) in the approach to their pieces in terms of form as it relates to composition and musical narrative.   Along with that, was his major and weighted contribution to the orchestration/arrangements that was intrinsic to the band sound, which he then expanded via his in depth experimentation/research into synthesizers and orchestrating with the vast palette of colors that he generated.  And all of the sounds that he came up with and how he used/contextualized them into the band's sound all had a very humanistic quality to them.

One of my favorite Lyle tracks is “First Circle” - pretty much everything that I touched on in the previous statement is on full display on this track.  Not to mention Lyle’s unbelievably burning, yet gentle and super poetic/artistic piano solo.