Vocalist.org archive


From:  Karen Mercedes <dalila@R...>
Date:  Fri Jan 11, 2002  3:42 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Some Stuff I've Never Heard of: Menotti, Kapilow, Margoshes

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Trevor Allen wrote:

> Robert Kapilow's setting of Dr. Suess texts

Here's a quote from a review of a performance of Kapilow's GREEN EGGS AND
HAM (Minneapolis, 1996):

Scored for a seven-piece wind band, piano, string bass, and a large
battery of percussion (including xylophone, various sizes of
gong, and toy crash cymbals), Kapilow's musical setting exploits the
mantra-like repetitiveness of the text with clockwork rhythms tossed
back and forth among the various instrument groups, and
tweaked with the occasional dropped beat or meter shift. And just as
Seuss's characters are more or less identifiable as people without
resembling any whom we know, Kapilow's music, though it has
recognizable elements, can't be pigeonholed. Sure, Kapilow quotes "I've
Been Working on the Railroad" during the "would you, could you
on a train?" part, and he sometimes responds to Seuss's whimsy with
goofy chromaticisms reminiscent of circus music. But more than just
pastiche, these conceits mirror the fantastic machines and bizarre
social behaviors Seuss used satirically in his writing to needle the
real world.

There's a good article on Kapilow at:
http://www.krannertcenter.com/perform/detail.php/id/0735081607280735

And a photo here. He's kind of cute in a Clark Kentish sort of way:
http://www.npr.org/programs/pt/about/kapilow.html


Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
***************************************
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are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson




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