FEATURE ARTICLE
Music under the Big Top
by Seth Rogovoy(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., June 27, 1997) -- Eighteen years ago, Rik Albani and Linda Hudes were denizens of downtown, playing original music with their band, the Linda Hudes Power Trio, in cutting-edge, New York nightclubs like CBGB's, the Mudd Club, Danceteria and Max's Kansas City. Both conservatory-trained, they each had their own gigs, too: Hudes composing new-music works for modern dance, trumpeter Albani performing with the likes of Talking Heads, Wilson Pickett and LaMonte Young. When they looked out from the stage, the closest thing they saw to clowns were spiky-haired punk-rockers with safety pins in their cheeks.
Then one day Albani got a call to sub for a friend who had a regular gig playing in the house band for a circus. One thing led to another, and within a year, Albani was the musical director at the Big Apple Circus.
At the time, the band's repertoire consisted of classic circus music: John Phillip Sousa marches, bombastic horn tunes and an occasonal waltz for a change of pace. Hudes, Albani's wife, picks up the story from here.
"I saw the circus and was enchanted by it, and suggested to the director that they make the music as original and creative as the show," she said. Hudes got the job as the circus's resident composer, and to this day, Albani and Hudes are the creative backbone of the musical portion of the 20-year-old Big Apple Circus.
The Big Apple Circus will be the first event held at the Barrington Fairgrounds since the property was devasted by the Memorial Day tornado in 1995, when it comes to Great Barrington for six days and 11 performances starting next Tuesday, July 1 (see below for details).
"It's the most unusual gig," said Albani, in a dual phone interview with Hudes, speaking last week from a hotel room in Cleveland, where the circus was in town. "It's nothing we ever dreamed about, but it really turned out to be a great gig. When we made the choice to do this, a lot of people thought we were crazy. But it turned out to be a path to success for us. It's extremely creatively fulfilling and challenging. We got to do our music with our musicians and our friends, and for eighteen years it's been a total pleasure."
Along the way, Hudes and Albani have almost singlehandedly transformed the notion of circus music from the traditional marches and waltzes that were the convention since the turn of the century until they took over the musical reins at Big Apple to what it is today: a genre of no less creative import than that of scoring for dance or film.
"The goal is to compose great music and have a great band playing it, to enhance the show, to make the show even better, more exciting, to excite people's ears as well as their eyes," said Hudes.
Big Apple is already known for its many innovations, such as thematic programming, community outreach, its unique community-based, not-for- profit structure and organization, and its intimacy -- no seat is more than fifty feet from the ring in its proprietary big top.
It is no surprise, therefore, to learn that the one-ring circus is also on the cutting-edge in musical terms. "All these years they've given me the creative bottom line to decide what the music should be," said Hudes.
As a result, over the years circusgoers have been treated to sounds ranging from New Orleans jazz to Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Charles Mingus, Little Richard, Rossini and, of course, a hefty dose of Hudes, who in addition to composing plays keyboards in the circus's eight-piece band.
Each year, Hudes and Albani are part of the creative team, which also includes set, costume and lighting designers, which meets with the artistic director to plan the next year's circus.
The program at Big Apple changes every year, when a core group of performers is joined by a revolving cast of international guest artists. Once the specific theme of the show is established and the acts are sketched out, Hudes goes to work, using the theme as a point of departure for the music.
"We don't pretend to be a historical music assocation," said Hudes. "We are interested in staying contemporary and finding how the music that reflects the period of the theme can live in the present." Or as Albani put it, "We want to refer to the past but filter it through the present- day."
For example, this year's theme is "The Medicine Show" -- the popular 19th- and early-20th-century, traveling entertainments that were themselves part circus, part sales pitch, part hokum and quintessentially American.
Said Hudes, "We went back to some very obscure rags and cakewalks from the turn of the century. Scott Joplin is the most obvious but there are many more unknown composers. And we found some great musicians who had started in medicine shows, like Eubie Blake, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and Little Richard. And we also looked where the medicine shows were travelling, and decided that that was one way we could broaden the musical scope, by bringing in some country and bluegrass and Texas blues and barrelhouse piano and some New Orleans music, in order to keep it varied through a two-hour show."
After the research is done, Hudes spends about three months in her studio digesting the influences and composing new music based on the original source material. Using videos of some of the acts and charts for others, Hudes composes music coordinated to the action, in a process that nearly mirrors that of composing for dance, where the choreography corresponds to the music.
This is where Albani comes in. As the bandleader, he has one eye on the band and one eye on the performers, because while the illusion is that the show is choreographed to the music, in reality the music follows the act.
"It's all done on cues," explains Albani. "None of the songs can be played from beginning to end. I have to be cueing throughout. If the acrobat misses the somersault, he goes back and does it again. So that means the band goes back and plays that part again."
Hudes writes her music in eight-bar phrases that can be easily repeated in this way. "You need the music to be elastic, so that it can be stretched and contracted to fit the action," said Albani. "Of course, it all has to be done in a seamless way. It can't be stiff or contrived or unmusical. It has to sound like we are playing a composed piece, and it does for the most part."
Or, as Hudes aptly put it, "It's like when the Titanic sinks, the band plays on. We never stop."
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The Big Apple Circus, hosted by the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce, is at the Barrington Fairgrounds in Great Barrington for 11 performances between July 1 and 6. Performances are daily at 3:30 and 7:30, except Sunday, when shows are at noon and 4. There is no evening show on July 4. Ticket prices range from $7.50 to $26. A special Family Day performance with discounted tickets will be on Wednesday, July 2, at 3:30. Tickets are available from the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce Visitor's Booth at 362 Main St., Great Barrington, or by calling 413-528-4200. Tickets are also available by calling Ticketmaster.
[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on June 27, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
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