PORT ANGELES — Tyrone Tidwell lay in the hospital in Limerick, Ireland, following an accident that was to halt his musical career.
Then 23, Tidwell had won a scholarship to the master’s degree program at the University of Limerick’s Irish World Music Centre. He was studying with the formidable violist Bruno Giuranna.
Giuranna came to the hospital to visit and, did something that shocked his student.
“I had always thought of him as stoic,” Tidwell remembered.
But that day, “he actually shed a tear.”
It was 2003, and Tidwell had been in a bicycle accident in Limerick. A head injury paralyzed his right side, erased his memory and took away his speech. He understood what people said to him but could form no sentences of his own.
The accident redirected him onto a new path, a circuitous route to a different kind of life as a musician, and eventually to a new home town in the far corner of the United States.
Tidwell spent a month and a half in that Irish hospital. Then came the long recovery process, during which he decided to take a break from his master’s program.
Meantime, Michelle Tidwell had advice for her son.
Finish the program, she told him. If you don’t, you’ll regret it.
He managed to do so. But then Tidwell returned to the States, to Jacksonville, Fla., in 2004. He found a job at the Bank of America there and began working his way up.
He also heard about another possibility.
The Violin Shop of Jacksonville was looking for a music teacher. Tidwell walked in, outlined his credentials and soon began giving lessons to a growing number of students. Before too long he had a full complement in his studio and had to quit the bank.
Tidwell’s musical career flowered: He also became a music teacher at A Child’s Place Montessori school in Jacksonville, and in 2006, he enjoyed a stint with The Young Eight, an African American string octet playing concerts in North Carolina and traveling to Seattle for a weeklong residency.
But the accident’s effects would resurface. He suffered a manic episode due to his brain injury and had to stop teaching.
Tidwell was fortunate, he emphasized, to return to his job at the Bank of America.
During his time in Florida, Tidwell also met his partner, Christopher Beatty. Beatty, it turned out, had lived in Seattle and vacationed on the North Olympic Peninsula.
So when the couple began to think about moving — Jacksonville was not a gay-friendly city, Tidwell felt — they looked at Port Angeles.
And by last fall, Tidwell got himself transferred to Port Angeles’ B of A branch; he and Beatty also found an ideal house to move into.
When the couple arrived in December, Tidwell thought he’d get in touch with the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra, just to find out something about the 81-year-old organization.
“We have a concert this weekend,” flutist Sharon Snel told him.
Tidwell went, of course, and by January, he had joined the symphony’s viola section. He’s been playing with the symphony and chamber orchestras ever since, and will join his compatriots this weekend for the 2013-2014 season opening concert at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center.
Tidwell has been playing viola since he was a fourth-grader, albeit a less-than-diligent student. He first took an interest in the flute but was steered toward the string instrument.
But he skipped music class so often that he brought home an “incomplete” mark on his report card.
His mother, formerly a nutrition specialist in the U.S. military, required that he turn that around. She made sure he stayed with viola for two years: fifth and sixth grade.
“By the end of sixth, I was hooked,” he recalled.
Today, Tidwell believes that without his musical skill, his rehabilitation after the accident would not have progressed as well as it has. The brain on music, he believes, is more resilient, more agile.
And while making music is imprinted on Tidwell’s brain — not to mention his heart — self-pity appears to be missing.
“My partner says I’m habitually positive,” he said. “I always can find the silver lining . . . and I’m probably more positive now than I was before the accident.
“The injury affects your planning [ability], so now I’m very present,” he added.
And when Tidwell gets into an argument with someone, he tends not to cling to any grudge.
Even as he works at Bank of America and performs with the symphony and chamber orchestras, Tidwell has also returned to another passion: teaching.
His three students are a 16-year-old violist from Port Angeles, a 14-year-old violinist from Joyce and a 69-year-old violist who drives in from Forks.
The best moments come, Tidwell said, when his student arrives for a lesson and says, “I’ve learned this piece, and I feel really good about it.”
Playing the piece perfectly is not the thing, for Tidwell.
Taking joy in it is.
When it comes to listening to music outside the classical milieu, Tidwell’s tastes lean toward the nonconformists of recent history: David Bowie, Bjork, Tori Amos, even Tim McGraw. Back in Jacksonville, he played electric violin in a rock band called Something to Yield.
“I can fiddle,” he added with a smile.
Tidwell is also an admirer of Adam Stern, the Port Angeles Symphony’s music director since 2005. The maestro, also conductor of the Seattle Philharmonic, will guide his Port Angeles Symphony and Chamber Orchestra through 11 concerts this season.
In rehearsals, Stern is exacting — yet “hilarious,” Tidwell said. “He makes it fun.”
“Don’t be afraid to be, what is the word, gnarlier . . . let it growl,” Stern told his string players during one of the rehearsals last month for the pops concerts held in Sequim and Port Angeles.
The rehearsal schedule has intensified for next weekend’s performances, Tidwell said. The program — Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, Mozart’s “Magic Flute” overture and Martinu’s Rhapsody-Concerto for Viola and Orchestra — is a challenging one. And the guest soloist joining the orchestra for the two Saturday performances will be another violist: Seattle’s Melia Watras.
Tidwell, for his part, has been marveling at the Port Angeles Symphony since he got here.
“It’s a volunteer orchestra,” said Tidwell, “and it sounds phenomenal.”
Stern recalled their first meeting: Tidwell arrived for an audition, his smile as sweet as could be.
Then he began to play. With a vengeance.
“Pure, visceral enjoyment of the music,” Stern said, “was emanating from him.”
Earlier this month in the Port Angeles Chamber Orchestra concerts, violist Lili Green couldn’t make it, so Tidwell stepped up, with his typical “infectious charisma,” Stern added.
“The only thing I have to say against him,” said the conductor, “is his bow tie collection rivals mine.”
There have been times when Tidwell showed up in a tie that was flashier than Stern’s.
As Tidwell nears his first anniversary of living in Port Angeles, he is characteristically upbeat. With his dreadlocks and bow ties, he stands out. But Tidwell has plenty of experience with that. He was born in Aurora, Colo., and after his parents divorced, he lived with his mother, who is white.
As a young boy he moved to Vicenza, Italy, when she was stationed at the Army base there. Tidwell and his mother later moved to Charlotte, N.C.; he also spent time with his father, who is black, in the little town of Great Falls, S.C.
Tidwell happily credits Beatty for bringing him out to the West Coast. They moved to Washington state in December, just as same-sex marriage became legal. This past August, Tidwell and Beatty celebrated their third anniversary as a couple, and yes, Tidwell said, he would like to be married one day.
Meantime, Tidwell is enjoying his new life here: full-time at Bank of America, teaching music and performing with the symphony.
The sound of the orchestra — scores of people, making music together — is what energizes him.
Balancing everything is not easy, but “I still love it,” he said, walking out to his front porch and lifting his viola to play.
