Composer's Notebook: Interpreting
- Interpreting
The text is a 10-minute rant delivered by narrator William Hellermann, composer/performer and co-director/founder of the DownTown Ensemble, which seems to be about him (Hellermann), although approximately every other biographical fact seems questionable and is in fact false. That still leaves much that is true. So while Bill seems in some sense to be "Bill," as things go on, the rant turns sour, then melancholy, totally political and outrageous. Finally, one should, based on observation, begin to suspect that the text is by the composer, who is sitting in the ensemble playing clarinet. The performance begins when a faux-emcee Bill, under appropriately harsh emcee lighting, comes onstage from the wings to (pretend to) introduce the Ensemble. He takes the mike while the ensemble is still tuning up (as specified in the score). The ensemble plays on while the text referentially points out what is happening: the Ensemble is "at this moment" strategizing political action to itself while playing. Further observation leads to another conclusion: The Ensemble and the Speaker seem to have nothing to do with each other—that is, until one focuses on the drummer ( Jim Pugliese) who, entrained by the spoken voice, is responding to and improvising off the vocal rhythms of Hellermann with a softish and insistent wash of brushes and kick-drum. So although seated with the Ensemble, he is really part of Bill's "ensemble."
The text is part of the score of Interpreting, composed for the DownTown Ensemble: clarinet (Daniel Goode), trombone (Peter Zummo), cello (Matt Goeke), piano ( Joseph Kubera), percussion ( Jim Pugliese) and soprano voice (Mary Jane Leach). The piece premiered at the Sounds Like Now festival at La Mama ETC, 16 October 2004.
Interpreting: Text for a Musical Work Composed for the Down Town Ensemble, 2004
Hello, I'm Bill Hellermann. I'd like to welcome you to tonight's performance of the DownTown Ensemble. Daniel has asked me to say a few words. Here they are:
I've been composing since the age of two. Sometime in my early forties I came across the work of the DownTown Ensemble. It wasn't their good looks that drew me to them, though that wasn't nothing. It was more of what Bob Ashley called their not being sad. They weren't sad. They were not sad!
I was, though. I'd lost my loft, my income and many other things. I was sad. So I asked them (the DownTown Ensemble) as solace to do my Symphony. Amazingly they did it. Five people played the parts of a hundred-and-one-plus. [confidentially] You know, I'd like to tell you some history you may not be aware of: We now know there is no single style. And no right number of works. Alan Hovhaness wrote sixty symphonies, plus. He couldn't stop. He actually as much as said that. But the DownTown ensemble's performance of my First Symphony was the first and last of my only Symphony, my one and only Number One. I, as they say, laid down my pen (not "lay down"—though I did that too, a lot!). I quit. I stopped.
Of course that's impossible. I never stopped. I just "post/poned." And that brings me to what I'm really doing up here. Which is: Daniel asked me to say a few words. Normally this would be my chance for a little boosterism and backhanded fundraising. But I'm not going to stoop to that. At least not now. . . . What we've got now in America is a nascent theocracy under the name "Democracy." Theocracy for us, democracy for those poor others down there in Iraq, and other places. Let them work their way up to us. That's the attitude out there. Outside this room.
Now, more history you may not be aware of: some may know, but I bet most of you don't know that my father was a socialist, from a socialist city in Wisconsin. I would not be a likely candidate for admission to a faith-based State. I might not even survive one. My sense of humor, among other...
