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 *************************************** What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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