Music in your smile

JAN DEGRASS/ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

At last weekend's Pender Harbour Jazz Festival, musician Karen Graves dedicated a song to her friend, the late jazz pianist Les Fowler. It was a tune she had written with pianist Miles Black. "Music in your smile," she sang.

Fowler passed away just a week before the jazz festival to which he had contributed so much of his time and talent. A long-time smoker, Fowler was diagnosed with lung cancer. He will be missed, both in Pender Harbour and in Gibsons where he lived on his boat, Nordic Pride.    

Fowler was the original leader of the Harbour Lights swing band that performed for 28 years on the Coast and later transformed into the Roberts Creek Big Band.

In 1973 he and his wife Joyce formed the earliest incarnation of the Pender Harbour Community Choir. Forty years later it is still going strong under other musical directors, and in recent years, Fowler returned to it to sing bass in the choir. According to choir member Sue Milne, Fowler was delighted to participate in the Choir's 40th Anniversary celebrations last May. They meant a lot to him.

He gave music a boost, especially in Pender Harbour.

Read more: http://www.coastreporter.net/article/20130927/SECHELT0501/309279996/-1/SECHELT/music-in-your-smile