Danlee Mitchell would have earned acclaim if he only excelled as a first-rate orchestral percussionist, or as a consummate music educator, or as the leader of a pioneering ensemble that blazed new paths in 20th-century music. That ensemble inspired everyone from Paul Simon and “Saturday Night Live” sketch-music producer Hal Willner to such notable composers as Lou Harrison and György Ligeti.
But Mitchell, who died July 31 at age 87 of natural causes in his home in Lakeside, excelled in all three positions. He stood out equally in his performances with the San Diego Symphony, San Diego Opera and La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, as a longtime music professor and key mentor at San Diego State University, and — even more pivotally — as the driving force behind the revolutionary Harry Partch Ensemble.
“In my world, Danlee Mitchell was a hero: both for his groundbreaking work with Harry Partch and for how he used his worldwide fame for local benefit,” said award-winning orchestra leader, percussionist and UC San Diego music professor Steven Schick. “When I joined the La Jolla Symphony as conductor, I was stunned to learn that Danlee would be the timpanist. One of my very favorite memories on stage was pointing to Danlee after his brief solo in the Beethoven 4th Symphony and watching a legend take a bow.”
“No one else in my life had such a broad array of musical connections as Danlee, who was also an invaluable tour guide for life” said Jon Szanto, a close friend who worked alongside Mitchell in the Harry Partch Ensemble and the San Diego Symphony.
Mitchell’s career stretched over six decades and saw him become, in 1964, the SDSU music department’s first professor of percussion and the founder of the school’s percussion program. He was instrumental in championing the work of iconoclastic composer and instrument maker Partch, whom Mitchell met in 1956 after enrolling at the University of Illinois, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music.
Frustrated by the limitations of the conventional 12-tone musical scale and what he described as “the tyranny of the piano,” Oakland native Partch had devised an extended 43-tone musical scale. He then designed and built unique percussion instruments — with such exotic names as the Surrogate Kithara, the Chromolodeon and the Quadrangularus Reversum — on which his music could be performed.
Mitchell helped Partch build some of those instruments and played a key role in their upkeep, transportation and storage throughout the rest of Partch’s life — and beyond it. Their creative partnership and camaraderie inspired Partch to move to San Diego in 1969, specifically to continue his collaborations with Mitchell.
It was Mitchell who selected music students at SDSU to join the Partch ensemble and then devoted hundreds of hours to teaching them how to play the instruments with the proper combination of technical skill, emotional intensity and theatrical flair.
“Partch is sort of the patron, the godfather, of alternative instrument-making in the Western world, and also of a (unique) tuning system and of integrating musical performers in a total theater philosophy,” Mitchell told the Union-Tribune in 2004, a year before he retired from teaching at SDSU.
Partch died in 1974 at age 73. Mitchell continued leading the SDSU-based Partch ensemble — including at concerts in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Berlin, Germany — until 1989, when Partch’s one-of-a-kind instruments were sent on extended loan to a university in New Jersey.
Now as then, Partch’s name and legacy are synonymous with that of Mitchell, who founded and led the Harry Partch Foundation & Archives, a San Diego nonprofit. But Mitchell, a self-effacing man, was happy to not be the center of attention.
“Danlee was very soft-spoken and wasn’t interested in the limelight or promoting himself, professionally or personally, but his influence was very wide ranging,” said retired SDSU music professor Lewis Peterman.
Similar sentiments are shared by retired San Diego Symphony percussionist Jim Plank and music theater composer Francis Thumm, who is a former Partch ensemble member.
“Danlee never raised his voice, but he was an incredible taskmaster and one of the most extraordinary artists I’ve ever met” said Thumm, who studied conducting with Leonard Bernstein and has collaborated extensively with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Tom Waits.
“Danlee opened up a whole new world to me and to others with Partch’s music, and it was magic,” Thumm continued. “And no one else at any other university in the nation could have championed Partch’s music and furthered his legacy the way Danlee did.”
“He was the vital link to the outside world for Harry Partch’s music,” agreed Plank, “but Danlee did so much more than that. As a percussionist, he could play even the most challenging parts effortlessly. And his genuine commitment to teaching and helping young musicians find their way and develop was remarkable.”
That commitment to music began at an early age for Washington native Danlee George Mitchell.
Born Oct. 5, 1936, in Tacoma, Washington, he started taking piano lessons when he was 5 and soon took up the marimba, a large percussion instrument with wooden bars that are struck with mallets.
“Danlee was a child prodigy on marimba,” Plank said. “He was a wonderful percussionist on a number of instruments but, for me, his mallet playing was the most wonderful aspect of his playing.”
Constantly curious about the world of music, literally and geographically, Mitchell traveled several times to Java and Bali to study Indonesian gamelan music. He traveled to Istanbul to learn more about Turkish cymbal making and was, for decades, a major force at San Diego’s Center for World Music.
“Danlee’s love for — and interest in — the world of music was unending,” said Plank, “and that’s one of the gifts he brought to San Diego and to all who knew him.”
Like his wife of 46 years, Anita, Mitchell was a canine devotee who served as the president of the San Diego Schutzhund Club. The names of some of the Mitchells’ most recent dogs include Kimba, Racker, Thea, Richter, Rama and Raika.
In addition to his wife, Mitchell is survived by his daughters, Erin Ringer of El Cajon and Johanna Mayer-Oakman of Daisy, OK, stepdaughter Seanna Austin of San Diego, and by multiple grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
No memorial service is planned at this time. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to The Center for World Music in memory of Danlee Mitchell. Donations can made online at: centerforworldmusic.org; or can be mailed to: Center for World Music, 8885 Rio San Diego Dr., No. 237, San Diego, 92108.
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