I was twelve, and I was asked by the director of the Des Moines Youth Chorus, Eugene Wilson, if I would go to Indianola to audition for a role in an opera that I mistakenly thought was called "The Taming of the Shrew." If fact, it was "The Turn of the Screw," a confusion that I would look back upon with irony for all my life. I met Dr. Larsen (I have never called him by anything else), some spring day in 1987. I remember this: I was ushered into his studio alone; he apologized that he was wearing paint-bespeckled blue jeans because he had just come from a work-call on an upcoming Simpson Opera production; and he asked me to sing "Happy Birthday" in one key while he played chords in all sorts of non-related and contradictory keys. I must have passed the musical test, but I had no way of knowing how that afternoon would change my life for ever. Over the intervening 37 years, Dr. Larsen was my piano teacher, vocal coach, stage director, "madrigal" conductor, conducting teacher, fellow lover of early music, travel companion, career coach and life mentor. It is without hyperbole that I credit him with teaching me all the most important lessons in life. He could be kind and understanding; he could be impatient and ruthless. But, he always came from a place of love -- love for music, love for students and young professionals, love for friends and colleagues, love for Iowa, the opera company, Indianola and Simpson College. The world already feels like an emptier place without knowing he is there to approve or disapprove, but the legacy he leaves is so rich and his influence in the world is so broad, I will still feel like someone is out there keeping an eye on me, telling me to get to a practice room and to keep my nose clean,