This is indeed sad news. But—happily, Theodore Bikel had a good, long run.

One of my favorite records is one that Bikel did with another excellent multilingual singer, Cynthia Gooding: "Young Man and a Maid."

During the Seattle World's Fair in 1961, I had a chance to meet and chat with a number of singers who had come to perform concerts in one of the brand new concert halls at the Seattle Center, and/or to sing with several of us local singers at the United Nations Pavilion, including Joan Baez and Richard Dyer-Bennet.

Unfortunately, Theodore Bikel was unable to make it to the U. N. Pavilion, but I saw his concert at the new Seattle Opera House, and had a chance to meet him the following day.

For some time now, I've been working on a "memoir cum history" of the folk music scene in and around Seattle as I inhabited it, and the following is an excerpt from that memoir:

The next performer was singer, actor, and Renaissance man Theodore Bikel, fresh from a long run as Captain von Trapp in the original cast of the Broadway production of "The Sound of Music." He sang to a capacity crowd in the Opera House. Like his records, particular his live concert record, "Bravo Bikel," he sang songs in many languages, often humorously introduced, and with brief sub-titles when needed. He mentioned that it was nice to be out doing concerts again, having recently escaped from nightly performances "with twenty nuns and seven children."

He described how he decided to take up the guitar. He had a roommate who played the guitar. When the roommate went away, he left no forwarding address—but he did leave his guitar. "That's worse than leaving a woman behind," Bikel said. "A woman can follow. But a guitar can't. So I kept it!"

Once again, there was an opportunity to meet and talk with him, but this was the day after his concert. A record autographing session had been arranged at Campus Music and Gallery in the University District. Nancy Quensé and I both arrived before 2:00 p.m., the appointed time, along with a couple of other people, and there was Bikel, sitting in front of the counter by a big stack of his records waiting to be autographed.

But it seems that someone goofed and the word hadn't got out. Jim Bates, the store owner, apologized profusely about the mix-up. But actually, Bikel seemed relieved to be able to just relax and sit and chat with us. So for about two hours, a half dozen of us sat around in front of the counter with Bikel. A few people wandered into the shop to browse, and looked curiously at this clump of people sitting and gabbing in front of the counter.

Asked about his prodigious skill with languages, Bikel said that he was born in Vienna into a Jewish family, and that by the age of three he was used to switching easily between three languages, Hebrew, Yiddish, and German. With this early start, he seemed to be able to pick up languages easily, and soon learned English and French. He could speak several other languages fluently and could get along in a number of others.

He commented that the new theaters, such as the Opera House and the Playhouse were going to be a real boon to Seattle. Because of its previous lack of really desirable venues, Seattle had a reputation for not been all that attractive to many performers, but the word had already got around about the new performance halls, so performers would be far more eager to come here.

Theodore Bikel was very friendly and outgoing. A thoroughly remarkable man.

Don Firth