Cedric Wright

Wright was known as a "distinguished violinist", and was a violin teacher at the University of California Extension and Mills College for many years.

[2] They encountered each other again on a four-week wilderness High Trip in Yosemite National Park, organized by the Sierra Club in 1923.

Nancy Newhall wrote, "On that first High Trip, Ansel found himself drawn to one Cedric Wright, a violinist, who could fiddle by the fire deep into the night and still be among the first up, making a little fire of twigs..."[6] Their friendship, which continued until Wright's death in 1959, was described by Mary Street Alinder as an "intense comradeship".

Wright introduced Adams to the writings of the British philosopher Edward Carpenter, whose thoughts helped shape both men's world views.

Back in the Bay Area after their initial 1923 wilderness journey together had ended, Adams became a part of Wright's social circle of musicians and Sierra Club activists who gathered at his Berkeley home.

Mary Street Alinder described the image: "Mirrored ghostly upon the inky waters, a shattered black cliff descends into a partially frozen lake.

While traveling through the Chama River valley near nightfall on November 1, 1941, they encountered a "fantastic scene", a church and cemetery near Hernandez, New Mexico, and pulled to the side of the road.

[9] In 1921, Wright purchased an old dairy barn at 2515 Etna Street in Berkeley, California, and hired architect Bernard Maybeck to remodel it into a home.

[10] Nicknamed "the barn", Wright's home featured "a soaring ceiling with room for a rope swing hung from the rafters and space enough for two grand pianos.

[7] Nancy Newhall described the atmosphere: "Meanwhile in Cedric Wright's house among the redwoods in Berkeley, Ansel was finding a warm welcome ...

[12] Tom Turner wrote that "Wright was a tireless and talented photographer of the mountain scene, who entertained campers with his fiddle and loved to greet weary hikers at day's end with an unexpected cup of tea or soup."

[13] During the High Trips, Wright and his student Dorothy Minty would often entertain groups of 200 participants with performances of Bach's Double Violin Concerto.

[17] He also made various devices, including "collapsible and portable latrines" for the High Trips, and "astonishingly solid camera and violin cases of varnished plywood with leather thongs, which would tolerate the rigors of being packed for a month on muleback.

Beauty arrives in deep voice of river and wind through forest, swelling the chorus, giving sonority universal proportions.

[21] In 1976, Ansel Adams and the Sierra Club arranged for Wright's personal papers to be donated to the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

A critic writing for the Los Angeles Times praised Wright's work: "In the Chadwick exhibition, it's Wright who trumps Adams with the show's most jaw-dropping image: a 1947 shot of five boys playing basketball on the school's outdoor court, against a backdrop of rolling hills and the Los Angeles Basin far below.