MAUI NEI

Since 1918 when architect Charles W. Dickey designed and supervised its construction, Makawao Union Church has been the site of hundreds, if not thousands, of memorial services. The stone church with an impressive view of the Hamakuapoko coastline has a permanence that is comforting when remembering the impermanent life of a loved one.

Last Saturday Makawao Union Church was the destination of a daughter's sentimental journey back to the island where she was born and formed, and where her father touched lives in ways great and small, but all of them musical.

Friends, colleagues, former students and fans of his music walked up the stone steps in the shadow of a bell tower into a lobby glowing with polished wood to celebrate the life of Philip "Pat" Green. There he was, sitting at a piano and wearing a kukui nut lei and a barely discernible smile. The photograph on the cover of the program could have been taken in any one of a dozen places on Maui where played.

Each person who entered was encouraged to take one of the CDs encased in translucent green plastic. As if they could have been any other color. When played later, Pat came alive, performing a series of jazz standards. The CD begins with the last arrangement he created being sung by his daughter as part of the vocal jazz quartet Clockwork.

Groups of two and three stood just outside the sanctuary and talked - old friends brought together by the death of an old friend - before filing into the semicircle auditorium where polished wood pews reflected sunlight streaming through stained glass windows and the soft glow of a a huge, Tiffany-like chandelier.

A glance at the program confirmed a suspicion. This was a memorial only a musician would arrange for a musician - an opening and closing prayer, two church hymns, one formal eulogy, a time for individuals to share memories and the rest a series of musical selections revealing more about the man of music.

Even to those familiar with Pat Green's work, it was surprising to see the program listing four original compositions, two with words from the Psalms, one an original hymn and one ballad "with the first verse written for one woman and the second for another," according to a laughing Juliet Green, the daughter who arranged it all.

In a bow to Seabury Hall where Juliet graduated and Pat Green taught, the school's chorus sang "Domine Deus" with a hauntingly sweet innocence. An arrangement of the traditional Japanese song "Kojo No Tsuki" summoned up images of rice paper paintings and bamboo in the wind.

And then there was the two-woman "I Love Loving You," a modern ballad sung by Juliet after telling the story behind the lyrics and adding, "He was quite the ladies' man." Time and distance had transformed grief into the joy of remembering how her father encouraged her. "He'd send us arrangements," Juliet said, "and I'd say, 'We can't do that, it's too hard.' He'd say, 'Sure you can.' '' She said it was hard picking just a few of the many arrangements her father did.

"While We're Young" was a particularly satisfying choice, plumbing the depths of regret with harmonies that touched the heart when sung by Clockwork, a soprano, alto, tenor and bass with a just-right blend of voices.

To the delight of his contemporaries, Clockwork did Pat's arrangement of the Toots Thielman classic, "Bluesette." The song is based on the blues but is joyous, just like the tribute Juliet Green and many friends created for her father, Philip "Pat" Green, in a church high on a hill.

* Ron Youngblood can be reached at youngblood@mauinews.com.