By Sebastian Spreng, Visual Artist and Classical Music Writer Kathy Gaubatz

The sudden death of Kathy Gaubatz casts a pall over the start of the 2014-2015 music season and calls for a well-deserved tribute to this genuine pioneer of the local early music scene. We mourn the loss of someone who was as genuine as she was lovable and the absence of a pillar of the community who leaves a vacuum difficult to fill. At the same time, concern about the future of an entity she had come to personify, impelled by the irrepressible passion for early music she developed upon moving to Miami in 1975.

The soul and driving force of the Miami Bach Society and founder of the Tropical Baroque Festival, with which she forged ahead against all odds, Kathy embodied the absence of pretense and an elegant anonymity. She was often the most deeply moved audience member at the concerts she organized, and to see her reduced to tears after a recital confirmed that she undertook every project out of deep conviction and for her most intimate pleasure, just as it should be. Petite, enthusiastic and tireless, she always reminded me of the intrepid “traveling ant” in Vigil’s children’s story, the one who got lost seeking food for her colony and made her way home guided only by her sense of smell. Despite her many – though not that many – years, Kathy possessed an enviable youthfulness. At times, she resembled a child amazed at her musical discoveries, and at times a passionate teenager demanding support and dissemination of the early music she so loved, music that she said, “was composed centuries ago to cheer or comfort the soul, and today continues to be as inspiring as it is healing.”

She survived tragedies and losses, such as the death of her 22-year-old son and, later, that of her husband. In spite of all this, Kathy remained fresh, radiant, optimistic and cheerfully indignant when any critic failed to pay well-deserved attention to her tireless efforts.

When Coral Gables became a sister city to Aix-en-Provence, she was invited to the Festival d’Art Lyrique, and there sprang her baroque festival as well as her close relationship with the musical veterans of Provence, as a result of which the French government named her a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Thanks to her nose for the arts, South Florida audiences discovered music and musicians that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. The festival, which celebrates its 15^th season this year, is a feat that brings together musicians from Europe and North and South America who are exploring diverse approaches, and it constitutes her greatest legacy.

Not only her much admired maestro Jordi Savall, who so many times – alone or in great company – graced the festival, but also distinguished local and international groups, such as Bergonzi String Quartet, Fuoco e Cenere and those she smilingly called “the Argentine mafia” (in which she did me the honor of including with a conspiratorial wink), composed of, among others, the beloved musicians who returned regularly to the festival for the sheer pleasure of pleasing and spending time with this exemplary fighter. These included soprano Maria Cristina Kiehr, violinist Manfredo Kraemer, lutist Eduardo Eguez, the ensemble Capilla del Sol and, especially, Pedro Memelsdorff, regent of the illustrious Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with whom she shared an as-yet-unrealized dream of setting up a tropical branch of the music academy and research institution on our shores as an ideal and exquisite pendant of Art Basel that would balance contemporary art with ancient music.

Hers was a dream we should try to fulfill, for our own good and in order to imagine her smiling with the satisfaction of a job well done. It would be our best tribute to that tireless “traveling ant” who finally made it home, guided by her infallible nose for good music.

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Kathryn Ball Gaubatz

Dec. 14, 1941, Utica, New York – Oct. 10, 2014, Coral Gables, Florida