Sippy Birds and Squeezboxes

January 24, 2012

Entry 2 of my Bulletproof Composition Chronicles:

One afternoon a couple of years ago I arrived at the Garrett, one of Murray’s many domiciles.  It’s a cool little loft located behind Amber’s sister’s house (and the place where many of the photos on the CD were taken, incidentally).  I climbed the steep stairs to the second floor, found Murray entertaining his niece and nephew.  We all talked a bit, then the kids left to go play elsewhere.  I took my clarinet out of its case, Murray his violin, we began to do some free improvisation.  6-year old niece returned, saw us playing, ran back down the stairs, returning in what seemed mere seconds with toy accordion in hand.  She promptly let ‘er rip, fervently matching us sound for sound.  We were “jamming”—she knew what to do!  Then, just as suddenly, she was gone, the still-smoking accordion resting on the wooden floor.  Murray and I exchanged conspiratorial looks—got to somehow capture the sound of THAT!  Thus, Wheezy Breezy was born.

Cory and I on tenor & alto, Murray and Lisa on violin & bass:  we alternate chords in the beginning section, saxes on the “inhale,” strings on the “exhale.”  I wanted to imitate the random tempos, the temporary mania and exploratory, slo-mo swells of someone playing an accordion for the first time.  In rehearsal, we worked it out so that I would signify tempo by swinging the sax up and down, pendulum fashion (Muray said it reminded him of the Sippy Bird) and Murray would cue when the chords would change.

For the second section, the saxes are up an octave, seesawing between a tonic/dominant, reminding me of a jack-in-the-box or one of those cymbal-crashing monkeys.  (It still cracks us up half the time we try and play it.)  Lisa comes in with a quasi-majestic folk line, joined by the violin the second time.  We then play the opening alternating chords as solid stacks, chorale style, to end the piece.  It just may qualify as my most bizarre piece to date…

This one is another fun one to perform, but really challenging to get right:  the trick for me is to keep the tempo fluctuations unpredictable and different each time, all the while giving clear cues; the trick for the band as a whole is to keep the strict alternation between saxes and strings of the opening accordion sound.  Guess I just need to get out the old squeezebox and practice my reps!