A final coda for Dennis Tini, a musician who touched the world

Oct 18, 2024 | Life at the Orphanage

Here’s a Dennis Tini story. Early in his illustrious career, a friend named Lou Harp visited his house.

“Come in, Lou!” Dennis said excitedly. “I want to show you something!”

They marched through Dennis’ impressive music room, filled with instruments, awards, honors, plaques. Lew figured it was one of those he wanted to show off.

Instead, Dennis walked past all that stuff and led his friend down to the basement, where he stopped and proudly pointed to an old furnace that he had meticulously painted.

“What do you think?” he said.

Here’s another Dennis Tini story. Thousands of students came under his tutelage at Wayne State University, where he was an instructor and ultimately chair of the music department. One of those students was a young man with limited talent. One day, Dennis pulled him aside and gently asked, “Do you have any other interests besides music?”

Yes, the young man said. Why?

“Because I think you should pursue them.”

Don’t feel bad. The man became a doctor.

Here’s one more Dennis Tini story. In July of 2021, we were together at our orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In the middle of the night, the Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated. The whole city went on lockdown. The fear was that gangs, looters or other violent types might take advantage and begin random attacks.

Dennis stayed up that night, and the next three nights, patrolling the grounds with a flashlight. He took my wife and me aside and lifted every fork, spoon and pencil we had. “You see this?” he said. “This is a weapon!” He pointed to my throat. “You hit them here!” My eyes. “And here!” My knees. “And here!”

He also said, “You’re well known down here. So if we’re attacked, you are no longer Mitch Albom, you got that? You don’t say your name! If anyone asks, I’m Mitch Albom!”

In other words, if there was a bullet or a kidnapping meant for me, he was taking it.

It was the only time I’d come close to filling his shoes.

Memorable melody

Dennis Tini passed away last week at age 76. He suffered internal bleeding and his organs shut down. I stood in the hospital room, holding his hand as he fought for his life. I said a prayer over his body after his soul had departed.

But I still can’t accept it.

If you know musicians, you know they often have a unique gentility, an ability to make friends anywhere, alongside a smoldering artistic intensity that drives them to explore.

Dennis Tini embodied all that, in a kinetic, tightly muscled frame that, even into his 70s, could have passed for a retired welterweight. He brought passion to his music, his students, even his physical fitness. He was known for finger-wagging intensity when teaching (legend has it he once got so worked up during a choral rehearsal, he jabbed the baton through his own hand.)

But he was equally known for his curiosity and congeniality. He’d ask questions of anyone he encountered. He’d sprinkle in a foreign phrase if you were from overseas. If he knew someone you knew, he’d share a funny story about them. Once you met Dennis, you remembered Dennis. He was a melody you kept humming.

Detroit and Michigan are full of well-known people who studied under him or played with him. Dennis and acclaimed pianist Matt Michaels started Wayne State’s Jazz Studies program together. Chris Collins, who runs it now, was a Dennis protégé.

His obituary covered the biological info: Born in Endicott, New York, came to Detroit when he was 3, one of four kids, went to Cooley High, played accordion with his musician father as a teenager. Fell in love with piano, jazz, teaching, composing, traveling the world, especially in Europe and South Africa, where he toured and ultimately established a relief fund to support musicians.

But bios only tell you so much. Dennis’s first act was as an accomplished player. His second was as an esteemed professor, husband, father and ambassador.

His third act, to me, was his masterpiece.

Triumph over tragedy

Dennis retired from Wayne State in his late 60s. He envisioned golden years of composing, playing, traveling with bands. But as they say, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.

One day, Dennis was inflating a bicycle tire when it exploded near his head. The noise destroyed his hearing — at least the kind of hearing he needed to remain an elite musician. He couldn’t play the same way. He couldn’t meet the standards he had always demanded of his students.

It’s safe to say it depressed him. A musician robbed of his music? What would he do with the rest of his life? My wife and I called him one night, hoping to boost his spirits. When he said he had too much free time, we wondered if perhaps he’d consider visiting Haiti and the 60 kids at our orphanage. Honestly, we were just trying to cheer him up.

He came down once.

And he never stopped.

For the last seven years, Professor Emeritus Dennis J. Tini, revered by countless students, esteemed by countless musicians, spent part of nearly every month wearing shorts and polo shirts, and teaching Haitian orphans the violin, cello, piano, bass, drums, guitar or vocals.

He brought the same brilliance to a small, lime-green music room that he brought to lecture halls and concert stages. You’d see him in the early morning, leaning over children, teaching them how to hold the violin. You’d hear him late in the evenings, shouting over a drummer’s beat — “One-two—THREE, one-two—THREE!…”

You’d witness him waving his conductor’s hands in front of a half-dozen 5-year-olds. Once, during a Christmas visit, we heard a knock on our door, and opened it to see Dennis with an accordion behind a group of preschoolers, who launched into a squeaky but joyous “Jingle Bells.”

The Have Faith Haiti song, a tune written by Dennis’ wife April

Saying goodbye

No man stands taller than when he stoops to help a child, and no musician makes better harmony than when he lends his talent to orphaned kids. Dennis never took a penny for his service. He gathered instruments from generous donors all over Michigan and brought them down, sometimes one piece at a time. A cymbal this trip, a foot pedal that trip. Eventually, he built a music program so large we needed a new room for it.

That room is being built right now. The last conversation I had with Dennis was just a few weeks ago, when I FaceTimed him from Haiti inside that new room’s construction and showed him the many windows and closets he would soon have.

“Beautiful!” he exclaimed. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me!”

The only reason he wasn’t in Haiti was because he was recovering from a spill that broke some ribs. Not long after that, he told his lovely wife, April, that he wasn’t feeling well. It went on for a few days. When he had a hard time standing up, he was rushed to the hospital and put in intensive care.

He fought off death for the better part of a week. But unlike every other challenge he took on — jazz festivals, martial arts, becoming a volunteer firefighter — this one he could not master.

During his last day on Earth, I brought some of his former Haitian students, now in college in Michigan, to visit him at the hospital.

And even though he was unconscious, needing a tube to breathe, those kids maintained their reverence for him. They held his hand, and one by one, spoke to him aloud, all of them saying, in some way, “Mr. Dennis, I’m sorry that I haven’t been practicing as much as I should. Please come back to us, so you can yell at me.”

If only.

I often find myself singing when I write. Words on my keyboard mix with lyrics in my head. As I finish this column, I find myself humming two songs, “How Do You Keep the Music Playing,” and the timeless Carole King composition, “You’ve Got a Friend.”

Dennis lived those lines, “You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am, I’ll come running.” He was a friend behind your back.

And he made the best music, the kind you share, the kind that leaves you smiling, the kind you really do want to keep playing, forever. Rest in peace, venerable professor. Your melodies will not be forgotten.

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This article was originally published in The Detroit Free Press on Sunday, October 13, 2024. In lieu of flowers, the Tini family kindly asks you make donations to Have Faith Haiti or WSU Department of Music (memo line: Dennis Tini Endowed Scholarship in Music)