Among the many iconic composers the United States has produced, Charles Ives and John Cage are certainly the best known. Their music (particularly that by Ives) is today performed more than just occasionally, even in Utah, and they’ve developed a certain renown that has begun to spread out over the general concertgoing public.
But while Ives and Cage are remembered and respected for their contributions that helped expand the basic parameters and very nature of what music is, there have been several others who have been equally as bold and innovative in their works but who have unfortunately fallen into neglect.
Belonging to the latter is the decidedly interesting and forward thinking Conlon Nancarrow. A contemporary of Cage (they were both born in 1912), Nancarrow wrote virtuosic and rhythmically challenging music. Realizing that his music was nearly impossible to play, he started focusing on writing for the player piano. Taking out the human element in performance allowed him to write complex pieces that combined different tempos and rhythms. At the time of his death in 1997, Nancarrow had left behind a huge volume of works on player piano rolls which he had painstakingly punched out himself.
And while much of his music has been recorded (on the German label Wergo), Nancarrow has nevertheless languished in obscurity.
Until now, that is.
Thanks to James Greeson, Nancarrow’s life and work has been immortalized in film. Greeson, a professor of composition and theory at the University of Arkansas, recently completed the documentary Conlon Nancarrow: Virtuoso of the Player Piano, which will be screened at the Park City Film Music Festival May 28-29.
Before starting this project, Greeson had already been aware of Nancarrow’s music. In an email exchange with Reichel Recommends Greeson explained how he first came into contact with Nancarrow’s music: “I first encountered [it] around 1970 while playing in a rock band. One of my friends had a sample floppy record that Columbia would sometimes enclose in another record, and this one…had Nancarrow’s Canon X on it and I vividly recall what an overwhelming experience it was to hear that powerful, high energy music just careening all over the keyboard. So when I landed a music composition teaching gig at the University of Arkansas in 1980 a colleague mentioned…that Nancarrow was born in Arkansas and I recalled that earlier experience.”
Nancarrow was an expatriate living in Mexico, where he had moved in the 1940s for political reasons. (Having fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco’s fascist forces, Nancarrow found himself in trouble with American authorities when he returned home. He was assumed to be a Communist and was denied a passport when he applied for one. It was then that he decided to move south of the border, where he lived until his death.)
A few years after he began teaching at the University of Arkansas, Greeson and his wife Janet made arrangements to travel to Nancarrow’s home in Mexico City to interview him. This was around the time Nancarrow was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” “Many of the still photos…Janet took, as well as some of the audio recordings I made of Conlon that day appear in this documentary,” Greeson wrote in his email.
Greeson also traveled to California and Connecticut. “I wanted to interview some important musicians in Nancarrow’s life.” He also went to Europe last summer. “Most useful for the film…I traveled to Europe and filmed performances of some of his player piano pieces at the home of Jürgen Hocker, a longtime fan, and also at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, where Nancarrow’s musical scores, pianos and piano rolls now reside….”
As a composer Greeson has done a lot of sores for documentary films, and it was during the time he scored The Buffalo Flows for PBS (for which he won an Emmy in 2009) that he began learning how to make a documentary. “I learned a bit about making and editing a documentary and then about January 2011 I set out to realize my goal of bringing Conlon’s music more attention than it had received, particularly in Arkansas. I had some very expert advice on shooting and scripting it from Dale Carpenter. I also had great support from the Arkansas Humanities Council. Somehow I learned enough about filming interviews to make this work.”
Greeson added that doing this documentary has been a wonderful experience. “[It] has been the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever undertaken.” He’s also excited that it was selected for the Park City festival, in part because he has a bit of history with Utah. Greeson, a native of St. Louis, came to Salt Lake City in the early 1970s to attend the University of Utah, where he received his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees. “I studied composition with Ramiro Cortes. [That] was a great experience for me.”
Conlon Nancarrow: Virtuoso of the Player Piano will be shown twice: at 10:30 a.m. May 28 at the Prospector Theater 3, and at 10 a.m. May 29 at the Egyptian Theater.
- FESTIVAL INFO:
- What: Park City Film Music Festival
- Venue: Egyptian Theatre, Prospector Theater
- Time and Date: Various times, May 25-June 3
- Tickets: Prices vary
- Phone: 435-649-5309
- Web: parkcityfilmmusicfestival.com
