Bang on a Can

Martin Luther King Jr. embodied the rare occurrence of a modern-day prophet. Like the biblical prophets, Dr. King was a leader of people who was able to see the future beyond the horizon, and to lead his people there. Like the ancient prophets, he was wholly consumed with his mission, to which he gave his life. Even after listening to his recorded speeches countless times, the power in them never fails to move me and capture my imagination. The absolute authenticity of the voice is carried through the recordings, as is the complete unity of the messenger with his message that seems to come from a higher realm. At least in part, the magical power of Dr. King’s delivery is in it’s musicality, and while listening to the speeches I felt an urge to distil some of that musicality and contribute my own small musical comment to it. I structured the piece around segments taken from several recordings of Dr. King’s speeches, which are heard during performance. In essence, the work is a collection of miniature contrapuntal ‘inventions,’ or little fugues. Each short phrase was melodically ‘realized’ and then treated as a theme around which a polyphonic texture was woven. I have experimented with this technique in several pieces prior to Dr. King. A solo vibraphone piece structured around a recorded vocal phrase of my own composition; a solo cello piece based on a line from a Frank Sinatra song; and a work on a speech of Winston Churchill. I think of this method as a re-casting of the old compositional technique of theme and variations, enhanced by modern sampling technology. This synthesis allows for the development of ‘themes’ that are captured from real-life.