The first time I met my dear friend David Lance Goines was at his Berkeley Craftsman home around 2012. It was a potluck organized by his partner at the time. She was my hip hop teacher at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA, and she had welcomed me into this small group of regulars because I had volunteered to design a t-shirt for the group’s fundraising “dance-a-thon” event.

That evening, I discovered that David was a fabulous cook and had a deep love for Bartok and Bach. It was at that gathering, and many more to follow, that he invited me to sightread Bartok on his piano. It thrilled him, and I remember him speaking eloquently of his love for Wanda Landowska’s playing of Bach on the harpsichord. I never imagined that years later I would be playing Bach for him on the harpsichord at my house.

I invited David to my performances with CBS, and he was soon given a complimentary, never-ending subscription to our concerts, once it was discovered that this was the David Lance Goines who had designed the beloved CBS poster way back in the ‘70s! He never missed a CBS concert that I was in, and he was delighted to hear my progression from chorister to soloist.

David always had the loveliest things to say about the choir and donated regularly in support of CBS. I know we’ll all miss seeing him at our concerts. It was a great loss to the world when this famous poster artist passed in February of this year. As for me, I will miss his friendship and the opportunity to make music for him, but I’ll take comfort in dedicating future performances to his memory and imagining him out there in the third row, sitting up straight in his signature black attire, his bowler hat in his lap, and his handlebar mustache curving upward in a gentle smile of quiet delight.

Caroline Jou Armitage
May, 2023