Menace (Sousa Medley)

from regina by Nick Brooke

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Medley is an underrated genre; it’s heard as a nostalgic mash-up, the leftovers at a buffet. When medleys work, they constantly verge on breaking into a new unheard-of tune or a reprise. Sousa’s marches are medley machines, in which sometimes a dozen melodies are daisy-chained. Sousa himself, though, disliked phonographs, the ancestors of the modern mash-up. In his essay “The Menace of Mechanical Music” (1906) he wrote how recordings would soon destroy the “national throat”, because with the new phonograph, people would forget how to sing. My Menace turns the tune-churning mechanism of a medley into a visceral, gestural collage. What’s quoted is Ives, Carl Stalling, and the post-minimalism of the Bang on a Can founders, whose bits and samples circle like a march.

Bang on a Can All-Stars: Ashley Bathgate, cello; Robert Black, bass; Vicky Chow, piano; Ian Ding, percussion; Mark Stewart, electric guitar; Evan Ziporyn, clarinet

Menace was commissioned by the People's Commissioning Fund at Bang on a Can. Live premiere on Ecstatic Music Festival at Merkin Hall, New York City, February 2011.

credits

from regina, released August 21, 2022
Bang on a Can All-Stars: Ashley Bathgate, cello; Robert Black, bass; Vicky Chow, piano; Ian Ding, percussion; Mark Stewart, electric guitar; Evan Ziporyn, clarinet

Recorded by Edward Haber, George Wellington, Bill Moss, and Todd Whitelock for WNYC Radio’s New Sounds with John Schaefer.
Remixed by Nick Brooke and Jeff Cook.

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Nick Brooke Bennington, Vermont

Nick Brooke mixes musical sampling, lipsynching, and theater into a genre all its own. In his works, vocalists and actors are trained to mimic sampled collages of sound effects, pop songs, and musical ephemera, blurring the line between recording and live performance. His works have been performed at the Lincoln Center Festival, HERE, and Mass MoCA. ... more

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