Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife ( Jun 02/00) - Music as a source of inspiration: this is not a new thought.

But when the music comes from a renown jazz saxophonist, in pain from the cancer that has invaded his body, inspiration becomes more than a word. It becomes a call to action.

This is the experience Yellowknifer Erica Tesar had when she visited a friend in Deal, England recently.

"This friend writes to me and her neighbour is Dick Morrissey. She would write, 'Dick is playing saxophone today. Today is one of his good days,'" explains Tesar.

"I didn't realize for a long time that Dick Morrissey was, in fact, a famous musician."

Morrissey, whose career spans 40 years, became famous for his band Morrissey-Mullen. He has also played with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Paul McCartney, J.J. Johnson and John Dankworth.

"So I was in England and he was holding a jazz concert to raise money for cancer. He has cancer of the spine and he's confined to a chair. During this concert, he actually had a morphine injection, because of the pain. But the calibre of playing was out of this world.

Seven hundred pounds ($1,568 Can) were raised for cancer that evening in Deal.

Tesar says this experience stayed with her.

Upon returning to Yellowknife, she contacted Meryl Falconer.

"She does a lot of work for cancer. I explained that I wanted to raise some money because of what Dick had done in Deal. But I don't want it to go straight to cancer because I know it goes straight down south. I said I want it to be something for Yellowknife. And I want it to have a musical part, as well. She said, 'We need a chair.'"

The chair is a specially-designed, and very comfortable, recliner used in chemotherapy treatments. She was told a chair suggests that one is getting well, whereas a bed, what Stanton currently uses, communicates illness.

Tesar hopes to raise the $2,500 needed to buy the chemotherapy chair.

"And we also decided that there would be an audio aspect, a CD player, so that people could put headphones on and listen to music."

To raise funds, Tesar has teamed up with the Gallery, managed by her daughter Lisa. During Raven Mad Daze, for a donation, one will have the privilege of performing karaoke, an instrument, or even a dance. One can also buy that privilege for a friend, daring them to get on stage. So check it out in front of the Gallery on June 16.