Here is the Sacramento City College Concert Band setting up at the Erik Kleven tribute concert. Brady McKay asked me to say a few words between sets, and here they are:

Unlike everyone else in the audience here, I didn't go to school with Erik, I was never his student, and we were never married. We never even dated — though he was a very good-looking man.
Many years ago I was playing with Erik and I interrupted his bass solo with a solo of my own. Later I apologized and said, "You were playing so few notes that I wasn't sure it was a solo!"
He said, "No, I was making use of the device of space."
To some he was teacher, bandmate, husband, boyfriend, father — to me, he was the coffeehouse Buddha. I spent many hours talking with him at [the coffeehouse] Espresso Metro. He could talk about the mundane as well as the infinite. He always got the joke. He hated the powers that be, but had a smile and a kind word for anybody and everybody.
In fact, he wore the slightly amused look of a visitor from another planet trying hard to understand our poor species. Perhaps he's giving his report now.
Mitch Albom wrote that death ends a life but not a relationship. I'm going to continue my relationship with Erik by following a few more of my crazy impulses, to be kinder and more generous, to say yes a little more often.
If I do that, then I'll still be talking — and playing — with Erik.
And he's not gone — he's just making use of the device of space.