Transcript of Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar Show 418, Guest 180, Barry Drogin, broadcast June 7, 2003 (Interview starts 00:22:21 into the broadcast.) Kalvos: Our guest today on Kalvos & Damian is here! He's Barry Drogin, he's on microphone number three! Drogin: And ready to hang himself by his own petard. Have you turned up my mike yet? Kalvos: Yes, it's up, there it is. Drogin: I have absolutely no microphone technique whatsoever, so if you have to keep your hand on the... Kalvos: We don't talk about technique here! (laughs) Obviously not, yes. So, welcome to Kalvos & Damian! You are going to tell us all sorts of strange and interesting things today. Drogin: If you ask me strange and interesting questions then I will tell you strange and interesting things... Kalvos: Well, tell us about you. Drogin: ...If you ask me normal questions then I will decide whether to tell you strange and interesting things. Kalvos: That was the first question. Drogin: And I have already answered it, yes. You want me to just start telling you strange and interesting things? Kalvos: You rolled over my first question. Drogin: Yeah, I'm sorry... Kalvos: Which is, tell us about you. Drogin: Tell us about me? About me? Well, actually, I've brought with me also... Kalvos: (simultaneously) No, not what you've brought with you... Drogin: (simultaneously) Baruch Skeer... Kalvos: (simultaneously) Because we don't, no disease... Drogin: (simultaneously) But I will mainly do the talking. I've brought the disease, he is the disease who comes along, and [as Baruch Skeer] it's Shabbas, you know, and I didn't do any electronic things, [as Barry Drogin] so, he has to watch it. But you might be playing some pieces of his rather than of mine. Kalvos: Barry, Barry Drogin, who are you? You're a composer. When did you start composing? Let's start with the easy things... Drogin: I started composing... Kalvos: Who did you study with? Drop some names. Drogin: Drop some names. Drop some names. I did study more than Schoenberg did, but not much more. I studied, I started with Emerson College, with Steve Wilson and Mark Kroll and Scott Wheeler. Damian: Composition or technique or what? Drogin: Mainly sight singing and also we went through, you know, different composition styles, you know, made me do a [Beethoven] string quartet, made me do a Chopin piece, we did a lot of analysis and that kind of thing. Then, I was only at Emerson for a year and a half, and I moved to New York City but I continued private study with three more people (actually, one wasn't private). Private study with Elie Siegmeister, which was supposed to be private study in Counterpoint, but when you sign on with Elie Seigmeister, he sells "Melody" books ["A Workbook for Harmony and Melody" Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1965, Elie Siegmeister], so you end up having to... Kalvos: Did you buy a book? Drogin: I had to buy his "Melody" book, he forced me to. Kalvos: Did you enjoy it? Drogin: What I actually learned from Elie Seigmeister was Calligraphy, because I would give him assignments done very sloppily and he would complain, so I would get my penmanship up. This is not, perhaps... Kalvos: Did you do them in turquoise pen? Drogin: It wasn't the color that was the problem, it was the neatness of it. At that time we didn't have computer printouts of scores, we're talking back in the 1980's, early. Kalvos: Oh, yes, way back then. Drogin: Way back then, so we had to ink our scores on onion skins and go to Associated Music Copy Service and have the [sic] Diazalon machines... Kalvos: Oh, yes... Drogin: I don't know how to pronounce it, [sic] Diazapom, what is that word? [Note: Deshon papers used with a Diazalid process.] Kalvos: Transparencies, we called them. Drogin: Transparencies, well, that's the onion skin, but the process... Kalvos: And you did it on the back of the paper, because the lines were on the front. Drogin: Exactly right! Exactly right, I have many of those scores. I've just sent out, this week, my order for Finale 2003, it will be the first time I actually own [Music Notation Software], because nowadays, if you ink a score, no one will look at it. Kalvos: Well, it's interesting, you're an electrical engineer and you are just getting your scoring software for the first time. Drogin: That's exactly right. Kalvos: That's interesting. Drogin: I did study with Laurie Spiegel, Electronic Music, that was not privately, I audited the class, but I was probably the only real composition student in the class and, as you mentioned, I was doing this while I was an electrical engineering student at The Cooper Union, and I probably know a lot more about the internal workings of electronic music, analysis of sound, et cetera and so forth, than quite a number of... Kalvos: Is that why you don't like it? Drogin: Yeah, I made a kind of decision. I mean, I didn't react against Laurie like you react against a teacher or something, I actually love Laurie's music and there's a lot of things that she taught me that have stayed with me. But, I think what happened, I think it dated back to high school, when I took a one-year composition course in high school, which is really unusual, it was in my junior year, and they, and I was also into some [Clap!] computers at that time. I was a, that little clap was for killing a fly. Kalvos: Mosquito. Drogin: Mosquito. Thank you for saving me from mosquitos, there's another one right there, and he's probably going to get me. [Clap! Clap!] Clapping in the background [Clap!] is what we'll do, [Clap! Clap!] let's just clap! [Lots of claps.] Yes, that's a good idea! But anyway, at that time we had paper tape and we were all punching into keyboards and I found myself trying to write a program to harmonize Bachian SATB choral harmonies. And I started to write this program and I got about fifteen or twenty lines down into the program and recoiled in horror from the fact that I was doing so. Kalvos: Why? Drogin: I don't know why. I don't know why, it's just that I decided that what music was to me was not THAT. And I've been running away from electronic music ever since, running so far as to actually create a manifesto in 1999 where I vowed that I never wanted my music to be played on the radio and all kinds of grandiose statements which I now have to recoil from... Kalvos: Yes. Drogin: Because I have to give up! Kalvos: And you also split yourself into two people, you're also known as Baruch... Drogin: Baruch Skeer. Kalvos: Baruch Skeer, and, oh, and speaking of which... Drogin: That came a bit later. Kalvos: Well, speaking of which, we must do some business here on Kalvos & Damian right now, and so we might as well introduce the two of you. What do you think? Drogin: Oh, well, let's do it! (prerecorded, mixed with Poulenc's Gloria, sung:) This is Barry Drogin,. Skeer: And this is Baruch Skeer, Together: And you are listening to Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar. How bizarre! Drogin: Oh, congratulations on that one, I said Stravinsky! Kalvos: Here on WGDR, Plainfield. Damian: Flagship of... Kalvos: The Non-Pop International Network. Hah! Well, we surprised you with that. Drogin: You did and I am, and I am, that's wonderful! I have, I, many, many years ago I said that if you were going to write music that had any form of tonality at all, the idea, the very idea, that any sequence of notes could not be proven to be found somewhere else would be impossible, and you have, I found it somewhere else. I suggested to you that those opening notes were from the Stravinsky Piano Duets, which is what occurred to me, and I said, "But they're also from somewhere else," and apparently you have found it! Kalvos: I knew what it was from, and I went around humming, "I am Barry Drogin" for about a week! Drogin: (laughs, loudly into microphone) But I showed you an alternative version which I could have used to, I'm sorry if I'm too loud, I don't have any microphone [technique]. I showed you an alternative version which I didn't like as well, just to avoid that quote, but it just would have been a quote of something else anyway. Kalvos: Ah! (laughs) Drogin: So, thank you for my Station idea, ID mixed with something which, apparently, it could have unconsciously been stolen. But it's such a, I mean, it's just four notes in a row in a tonal medium, it's going to sound, probably someone else out there can find ten other... Kalvos: And if anybody out there knows it, just give us a call, you can talk to Barry at 802-454-7762 and name that tune! Drogin: Name that tune! (Hums 6 notes) Kalvos: So we're back, we were talking to you about your splitting of personalities and running away from electronic music. Now, and you have gone in such a different direction and I think we would like to play something of yours as soon as we can to give people an idea. Drogin: Do I, do I get a choice? Kalvos: Yeah, sure, please, choose away! Drogin: Do I get a choice? The one I would like you to do most of all is the one that first started me running away from electronic music, I think, which is "Love Poems from the Sanskrit," which you have two versions of, and I would really adore it if you would play the full version which is... Oh, you want to use it from me? Okay. It is track, oh, my, I can't read it, track nine of this. Damian: Any introduction to this piece? Drogin: I would like to talk about it afterwards, because that's how I think music should be talked about. Kalvos: How about just, at least, introducing the performers. Drogin: The name of the piece is "Love Poems from the Sanskrit," it is being sung by Gregory Purnhagen, and it is in several parts. Kalvos: And this is yours? Damian: Yes, it is. Kalvos: That was a question, but we'll leave it. Drogin: This is Barry Drogin, this is not Baruch Skeer. Kalvos: Thank you. [00:32:00 "Love Poems from the Sanskrit" by Barry Drogin] Kalvos: Music by Barry Drogin, "Love Poems from the Sanskrit." Damian: Boy, you sure can do a lot with MIDI these days. Kalvos: Sung there by Gregory Purnhagen. Damian: Oh, my mistake. Drogin: (laughs) Oh, no, you cannot! Kalvos: Three questions. three questions. Drogin: Three questions, you can ask me three questions first. Kalvos: The first one's the easy one, where was it recorded that was so loud and noisy in the background? Drogin: It was recorded at my wedding to my wonderful wife of almost nine years... Kalvos: Ah, there you go! Drogin: To whom the piece is dedicated. It was written prior to the wedding, of course, because how can you sing it at the wedding if you don't write it prior to the wedding? So, I wrote it, it is, go ahead... Kalvos: Okay, question, question number two, this is the second easiest question. Drogin: Go ahead. Kalvos: How come a guy who's so full of energy and loud and stuff and talks without ceasing writes such a very, very subtle melodic text, I mean, melodic form? Drogin: Because just as in my electrical engineering career which has absolutely nothing to do with my music, similarly, my music has nothing to do with my personality. Kalvos: What!? Drogin: I am, in person, quite a boring person, and in my music I get to become a non-boring person and become, maybe, the true self inside. I don't know which is the true self, the music part, or the non-music part. Kalvos: Well, which one did she marry? Drogin: She married the one who wrote that. Kalvos: Aha, that's question two-a, then. Drogin: She definitely married the one who wrote that. She had her mother, who, my mother-in-law, sing the Richard Rodgers "Something Wonderful" which has the line, "He may not always say/What you would have him say/But [now and then he'll] say/Something Wonderful." And in this case, perhaps he will compose something wonderful. So, there is the Barry on one side and there is the Baruch Skeer on the other side and then there is the composer of what you just heard. Now, we, there are other pieces that I would like to... Kalvos: Ah, we'll get to that, we'll get to that. Question Number Three then is, how could you take the risk of writing a piece of entirely and completely unadorned melody? And I ask it as, in the form of a risk because, first of all, it is very naked, secondly, culturally, we are not, we do not associate the music we hear these days with anything that is unaccompanied. Drogin: Yes, yes, well, culturally, for me, actually, there's no problem whatsoever. I am an Orthodox Jew. I go to services and I hear a cantor who sings unaccompanied melody for long stretches of time. Eventually, this is the very first piece that I wrote that, um, (I'm sorry for the ums), the very first piece that I wrote that was unaccompanied solo voice. I had also come from a background where I did a lot of choral singing, the Poulenc was definitely very familiar for me, in fact, the alternative, I told you, alternative melody I came up with is the other part of the Poulenc, so it must have been hidden back there. But I was in choral groups and I was in a madrigal group as well, and I had, previous to this piece, written something called, "Love and Idols/A Jewish Opera," and the Jewish opera had three a cappella moments in it. The third a cappella moment something which I call "the most terrifying moment in opera," because what happens is, the four singers, it's only a very small-scale one-act piece, and the four singers sing an extensive amount of music to end the piece, it's an Epilogue after the applause, because (well, I don't have to go into that, but anyway), an extended piece, and then at the very end, the piano has to enter, and they have to enter, and they have to be on pitch. And that's why I call it the most terrifying moment in all of opera, because, "Will the people be on pitch?" And, in this case, we hired four singers, there're different pieces that were performed at the wedding, and we contracted perfect pitch singers so they wouldn't be terrified by it. Kalvos: Uh-huh. Drogin: I am not a perfect pitch singer, I am a very good, not a very good singer, but I'm a very good relative pitch singer, and I have performed a piece that's exceedingly difficult and pan-tonal, without wandering off pitch, but I tend to, so that the singers won't be scared, ask for, when I contract, for perfect pitch singers. That, did I answer the third question, I lost track? Kalvos: No, not yet, not yet. Drogin: What was the third question again? Remind me. Kalvos: Why, why melody? Why unadorned melody, aside from, you answered the question about the cultural aspects of it, but, going beyond that. Drogin: Okay, well, I understand. I understand. What happened was, I, first of all, I told you I studied with Laurie Spiegel, and I wrote, we had a Buchla. Kalvos: That's a synthesizer. Drogin: A synthesizer at Cooper, and I wrote a really atrocious piece for my final project, so I really wasn't a very good electronic music composer. And I was also very, very heavily into American Musical Theater as well, and I found that, when I wrote for piano, I wrote what looked like piano-vocal score writing for piano, I didn't write pianistically for piano. And the decision came slowly. I abandoned the piano first, and I wrote a piece for cello and voice, which was performed, and then I wrote a piece for two voices, which was performed, and then, I came across, I wanted to write these "Love Poems from the Sanskrit," and there was no reason to put anything with it. And I was just really interested in some of the melodic things I was exploring, and this piece is, each piece now that I'm writing, explores things in a different way. "Alamo!', which came later, is much more based in Hebrew chant. This piece has more of the conventional, you can hear a certain motif that's repeated, to begin all of the eight pieces, and, I'd like to point just a couple of interesting things that I find out about it. Number one is Number Seven is upside down from Number One and then Eight is repeated from Number One, and I like that a lot. Number two has the quarter tones in it. The text is, "Blow, wind, to where my loved one is" and we had an air conditioner in the apartment that wasn't properly installed (we now have an air conditioner that is properly installed, my landlord, don't worry about it!) but at that time it wasn't quite properly installed and every time the wind blew really hard it would make this sound that oscillated between, I think it's, the sixth and the seventh harmonic, and the seventh being the "blues" harmonic that falls in-between, and, so this was my first quarter tone attempt, and I wanted to point that out about Number Two. And the other one I personally really like is the one that decimates, which is Number Five, "The moon tries every month in vain," where the melody gets, the words get less while the notes attached to the notes attached to the words get more. But this is, it was, I wanted to set, I found these poems, I found, they were in a collection, a big book collection of love poems ["Love/A Celebration in Art and Literature" Stewart, Tabori & Chang Books, 1982, Jane Lahr/Lena Tabori, ISBN 0-941434-20-6] and then I found the original, which is a book called "[Love] Poems from the Sankskrit" [Penguin Books, 1968, John Brough, ISBN 0-14-044198-0], and this is a selection, they were translations, of course, into English. Kalvos: It's been said that when Western Music started to develop harmony that the subtlety of melody, particularly microtonal aspects of it and the individual relationship between the notes and where they're going, began to be lost, to the point that when we get to the era of Mozart we have essentially stripped melody of it's subtle role and given it only a role as a kind of musical star and nothing more than that. Drogin: Well... Kalvos: Are you going back to the resources that were available, both through your cultural background and through studying that, or the use of microtones and other alternative systems like that have just grown in the melody from your experience? Drogin: I haven't actually used microtones that much, I used it in Number Two of this particular piece. What I find exceedingly interesting is how a single note can be an entire universe. There's a passage, the very last notes of "Alamo!" is a simple scale, and yet, harmonically, it tricks the ear. Each note is very slow and you don't realize, it doesn't sound like the scale it actually is. So I got interested in the optical illusion side of a single note, the pan-tonal side of a single note. In this particular, in the piece we just played, I was doing perhaps a lot more of broken chordal things where I would arpeggiate chords so as to establish a harmonic, and I got a, sometimes I do that, sometimes I get away from that. I'm getting much more interested in other ways of playing with melody, but I, I started out, I'm going to be honest with you, I started out as a Sondheim/Bernstein freak. Kalvos: Mm-mmm. Not a bad freak to be. Drogin: Well, it was, it got me through college. Kalvos: (laughs) Drogin: And then after college I reacted against it, and, but I always held on to the fact... Kalvos: What is it that you reacted against, though? Because... Drogin: Well, I felt, well, the thing I reacted, I wrote "Love and Idols," which was full of Sondheim vamps, full of accompaniment in the piano that repeats and, whereas, the melody is on top of it, and I just wore that out. And, in terms of Bernstein's music, the initial, and I still love every, I know every single piece he wrote. But I felt that he and Gershwin and Rodgers and McCartney and people I admire who were trying to work with melody were having trouble breaking through to how to go beyond, using melody structurally. And Bernstein fell into canon, he would come up with a really nice long melody, and then the only way he could come up with to vary it would be to canon it, and Gershwin... Kalvos: And you mean by that...? Drogin: By what a canon is? A canon is where you offset it, you have one person start, you have the other person start a little later, maybe you have a third person start it even later, or at a slower tempo, and, but you still have the same long melody that goes thirty notes. And I think there's one more important thing that I'm remembering now and that had to do with, I went to Emerson College and I was a theatre directing major and I was made to take acting classes. As a theatre directing major you have to take classes in everything, not just directing, because you had to know everything. And we were taught, in the few acting classes that I took, about gesture. And I guess the idea of a musical gesture occurred to me. Which, other people may treat it as theme or as this, but for me it then connected into, later, the idea of Hebraic chant. And the big breakthrough for me was when I realized that the reading of the Torah that I had heard and, of course, done myself at my Bar Mitzvah, that that was a musical setting of the text. That the notation you see in the cantillation text used to be hand gestures, it started as hand gestures, and then it got written down into it as these little diacritical marks, and I also started looking into Jewish music, and I found the premiere musicological text, which I don't know the name of, I'm sorry, I didn't bring that with me, ["Jewish Music: Its Historical Development" Henry Holt and Company, 1929, Abraham Z. Idelsohn, ISBN 0-486-27147-1] but the musicological guy had shown on a page in the beginning [Table V], because not very much is known about very early Hebraic chant except for what this guy tracked down and notated back in the, I don't know, 17, 1800's, and what he did was, he showed that he had gone around to fifty different countries [13 communities] and that the diacritical marks, each had different melodic gestures that were associated with them so that a particular passage in the Torah would be sung differently if you were in Lebanon, if you were in China, if you were in, I don't know how many, where the Jews are dispersed to, if you were in Eastern Europe, of course. And now we believe that there's only one way to do it and we've kind of standardized, but this was, except maybe, we're starting to lean more towards the Sephardic and there's still some, I think, Moroccan Jewry, they've held on to their own melodies. Kalvos: You told me, before we came on the show, that you didn't specialize in Sephardic, you specialized in... Drogin: In Ashkenazic, that's right, that when I pronounce, but that's more about pronunciation, not about the melodic gestures. So I don't use the actual notes of one of the Hebraic traditions, what I do is I aspire to it. Kalvos: Hmm. Drogin: Because I think the idea, the very, I just think, theologically, that the very idea that you can come up with, however many there are, twenty or twenty-five musical gestures and that creates a, let's say, orthogonal set, if I may put on my engineering hat. Kalvos: Huh! Drogin: That that creates a sufficient orthogonal set to contain and describe and express the word of G-d is an amazing idea. It's a oneness also, and I've never been able to achieve that. I have taken, I've written pieces where I have written certain melodic gestures, but I cannot, I've never been able to create a full orthogonal set for a piece. I've tried it, I think, once or twice, and it's exceedingly difficult to do. Given a certain text, given a certain number of words, a certain number of syllables. And it doesn't, doesn't for me, when I tried to do it, it just wasn't working, I have to give myself a little more improvisatory freedom to let the melody do what it is. But I came up with quite a big set in "Alamo!" and I wonder if you could play... Kalvos: Well, I was going to ask you if we could... Drogin: The bad version of it rather than the good full version of it... Kalvos: All right, well, we could play that... Drogin: Because I love the bad version of it, which doesn't go to the end. Kalvos: And also I, since you mentioned "Love and Idols," can we contrast the two in a row? Drogin: Sure! Kalvos: Can we play the "Amidah" from "Love and Idols" and then we'll wrap... Drogin: The "Amidah" is the piece, well, you'll hear it without the piano coming in at the end. Kalvos: Okay. Drogin: Now, the piano coming in at the end is a pure steal, of course, from "Chichester Psalms." Kalvos: Right. Drogin: Where there's a... Kalvos: For folks who don't know it, "Chichester Psalms" has a long unaccompanied portion for chorus, which is nightmaric, which is nightmarish, to go through the tonal dissonances that Bernstein has put in there, arriving at a point where the piano or the harp, whichever version you are listening to, comes back in, and comes back in in tune. Drogin: Yeah, I think... Kalvos: Which is really... Drogin: I think mine might be longer! (laughs) Kalvos: Ah! Drogin: But in this case you'll hear it done just unaccompanied by four soloists, not in the choral version, which is also available, without piano, and not in the version that is done in the opera, but just as a pure SATB version without the piano coming in at the end. So you'll just have to imagine the piano coming in at the end. Kalvos: Imagine it. All right, we're going to listen to two pieces in a row here by our guest today on Kalvos & Damian, that's Barry Drogin. We have the "Amidah" from "Love and Idols," this is a piece from 1986, and then we're going to hear what he calls "the short version" of "Alamo!" from 1991 and this will be you, yourself, singing. Drogin: The "Alamo!" is me, myself, singing, yes. Kalvos: Wow! Here they come. [00:58:25 "Amidah" from "Love and Idols" by Baruch Skeer] [01:02:45 "Alamo! (the short version)" by Barry Drogin] Kalvos: Okay, we're back this time, okay. From Barry Drogin, sung by Barry Drogin. Whose text was that? Drogin: That is the, this is the actual words of the Reverend Tony Alamo, while he was in hiding from the FBI. He still had his pamphlets printed and distributed by his followers, and I live in the West Village of Greenwich Village, a heavily homosexual neighborhood, and apparently some people thought that we needed "saving" there and these pamphlets were appearing and they still appear on our streets, even now, being put into car windows and appearing on the street. And these, he was captured. He was, the piece, you've only had the beginning of it. It becomes a detective story, because then you find out why he's in hiding and what he's been charged of, and it's a longer piece, this is "the short version" that you're hearing. Damian: And what audience was this performed in front of? Drogin: This was performed, believe it or not, in front of an Emerson College alumni audience, Emerson College, of course, being a place where people are in love with the American Musical Theater. They don't listen to opera, they don't listen to new music, they don't listen to anything like this whatsoever, and they are enjoying it enormously. I have performed it many, many times in front of different audiences, this was the, one of the best audiences. When I did the European premiere in Paris, not a great place to sing this anti-Catholic piece, the... Damian: I don't suppose you translated it, you sang it in English? Drogin: I sang it in English, and the younger people up in the balcony had a really fun time with it, they thought it was great, and the older people down in the audience, maybe, perhaps, didn't appreciate it as much. But that was a performance of the full version. It was premiered in Washington Square Park [New York City]. If you go to my website, www.notnicemusic.com, you can see pictures of both the Paris premiere and of the Washington Square Park premiere. It is, the full name of the piece is "Alamo! a scena for a cappella voice and Bible (King James version)." Damian: And, of course, it also alludes to the car rental company. Drogin: Of course! Of course, and I pronounce it "AL-a-mo," even though I do believe his name is pronounced "A-LA-mo." And it is not written for my voice, I was actually inspired to write this piece by an "Urban Diva" concert I saw by Dora Ohrenstein of the Western Wind, and I have tried desperately to get her to perform it and have never succeeded. So I performed it just to prove that it could be performed, because it's a very long a cappella piece, and I don't have perfect pitch, and every time I perform it I get to the end on key and on pitch. And it's a real, I worked on it for, I think, seven years. The very first time I performed it was "the short version" in Toronto at my very first NewOp meeting. It was not... Kalvos: NewOp? Damian: NewOp? Drogin: It was not called "NewOp" at the time. Kalvos: Which means what? Drogin: I don't know what "NewOp" means, to tell you the truth, it was a marketing thing that, when we had the meeting in Cambridge, they decided to call it "NewOp." It was originally called "The International Meeting of Small-Scale Music-Theatre and Opera." When I went to it, that's what it was called. Damian: I think that's a sexier name than "NewOp." Drogin: Yeah, I do, too! I hate "NewOp," in fact, in fact, I've written a piece... Kalvos: Spy... Drogin: ...about the use of the word "NewOp"... Kalvos: Sounds like "Spy vs. Spy" material. Are you the NewOp...? Drogin: And I would love, you promised that I would perform... Kalvos: Yes! Drogin: ...in the piece, and this has become sort of the NewOp Theme Song. Kalvos: Aha. Damian: As opposed to "Non-Pop"? Kalvos: Oh, yes. Drogin: As opposed to "Non-Pop." Well, I'm more interested in "Non-Op," and we could discuss the difference between "Non-Op" and "Non-Pop," they're coming from different directions, kind of like our city/rural difference that we share as well. Kalvos: I'm so bewildered at this point, maybe we should just do some tune here. Drogin: I'm going to do it, I just want you to translate something. Kalvos: Oh-oh, I'm in trouble. Drogin: And that is the words, "Let Op." Kalvos: Oh, "Let op!" in Dutch! Drogin: That's right! Kalvos: Sort of "Look out!" or "Watch your step!" or "Let op!" Drogin: Exactly right, this was written after I went to the NewOp meeting in Amsterdam, and we rented our bicycles, and we drove all over the place, and I was amazed - we were there for a few days, because we wanted to get over our jet lag - I was amazed at the advertising campaign that the NewOp people had done throughout the city of Amsterdam for the NewOp meeting! I kept running into signs all over the place that said "Let Op! Let Op!" And I was, like, "Wow! This is amazing!" And then I found out, of course, that it had a different meaning, it was "warning," like you said. Kalvos: Yeah, there's the big signs that say, "Let Op Zachenrollers!"... Drogin: ...That's exactly right... Kalvos: ..."Look out for pickpockets!". Drogin: ...and I thought this was some sort of variant. Kalvos: (laughs) Drogin: And I performed it at the following NewOp, and then I performed it again at the next one, and then I was going to say, "Well, that's enough," and Eric Salzman, to drop a name, said, "Oh, please, perform it again, Barry." So now I've done it at the last three, so it's kind of become the NewOp Theme Song, and, if you like, I handed out pages, there's a chorus that kind of repeats... Kalvos: Oh, can we be in the chorus? Drogin: You can try. Kalvos: Oh! Drogin: But most of the people didn't try... Kalvos: Oh! Drogin: ...because it's very difficult. Let me get my pitch here. Kalvos: Oh, well, you get your pitch, but, but, is there something that we should be looking at? Damian: No, no. We don't, we don't get that. Drogin: No, you don't get that. Kalvos: We don't get that. Drogin: Oh, and Eric Salzman, it's good I mentioned him, because there's a little asterisk here, the "Heads Op" pun which begins the piece is thanks to him, he came up with that, and then I took it from there. So, I got my pitch. (Hums.) [01:15:40 NewOp Doo Wop by Barry Drogin] Damian: Did we miss the chorus? Kalvos: I guess we missed the chorus. Drogin: It kept coming and repeating, that was the beginnning, where it kept going back to the "NewOp Doo Wop/ Let Op be Op." Kalvos: Oh. Damian: Oh. Kalvos: Oh, well, we weren't "queued Op." Damian: No. Kalvos: (laughs) Drogin: No, you weren't "queued Op." Kalvos: So did you... Drogin: That happened, that happened in Amsterdam [sic, Belgium], too, I handed it out to them and I encouraged them to do it and nobody sings, even if they have the scores in their hands, they're too busy listening. It works perfectly fine without the... Kalvos: Did you celebrate when Texaco stopped sponsoring the Met opera broadcasts? Drogin: Oh, definitely. Kalvos: Oh! Did you go out and have a nice glass of Texaco? Drogin: (silence, laughs) A glass of Texaco? I don't know what that is, I'm sorry to say, so I'll laugh instead, because I have no idea what you're talking about. What is a glass of Texaco? Kalvos: I don't know, I just thought you might have gone down to the gas pump and just celebrated with a little... Drogin: Oh, yeah, drink some, very funny. Damian: They did Beaumarchais [?] once. No, no, sorry, that was, that was City Opera. Kalvos: City Opera, sorry. Drogin: Yeah, I'm a, I'm a member of OPERA America but I don't belong to the composers sub-class of it. Kalvos: The composers sub-class? The composers are in a sub-class! Drogin: I could tell you stories about OPERA America. Kalvos: I think in the opera world, composers are about as sub-sub-sub-class as you get. Drogin: Yeah. If you know the history of OPERA America, it was an alternative to the Metropolitan Opera's dominance of the entire American opera scene, and there was something called "Central Opera Service." Does anyone remember COS? Kalvos: Central Opera Service! Isn't that, like,.something from Monty Python or something from "Brazil"? Drogin: COS. There was something called "Central Opera Service" [Kalvos makes a trumpet fanfare sound every time Barry uses the phrase "Central Opera Service"] which, the Metropolitan Opera had an office in their building, and they published this wonderful publication that people would receive, whereas OPERA America was restricted to opera companies themselves. The biggest, excuse me, the biggest companies had the biggest say in OPERA America, and the smaller companies had the less say. And then Central Opera Service was decided to be dropped by the Metropolitan, by the Met, and suddenly there were all these people who were used to receiving the Central Opera Service publications (everytime I say that, that's great) and also some staff. And the staff moved over to OPERA America, some of the staff moved over, they had to move down to Washington, because that's where Central Opera Service [sic], that's where... Kalvos: No wonder why I've never heard of it! Nothing musical happens in Washington! Drogin: That's right! That's where OPERA America is based. And, (laughs) oh, please, you're going to get me in trouble. Kalvos: (laughs) Drogin: Diana Hossack is going to kill me, but that's all right, she probably hates my guts anyway. And what they did then is they opened up the membership of OPERA America, but a curious thing happened, that the singer members now, and the composer members now, and the music educator members now, they were members, but they had no vote. They couldn't actually be on the board, they couldn't vote for who was on the board, they had no representation... Kalvos: That sounds like our listenership! Drogin: They... Damian: And us, too! Kalvos: And us, too! Drogin: ...So the hierarchy... Kalvos: We have no vote in this show, at least, especially today. Drogin: The hierarchy of OPERA America, sorry for stepping over you there. Kalvos: (laughs) Drogin: The hierarchy of OPERA America is still greatly in place, in that, there are, there are some smaller companies on the board, but their singer membership, their composer... I run the c-opera listserv, which is free, and I wrote to them something where I said, "You know, OPERA America could be much more responsive to its membership," meaning all the people who actually as individuals belong to OPERA America, and I sent them a bunch of suggestions, and they stole some of them and created their own competing listserv, which I'm told is dead, I don't know whether the person who told me it's dead is lying to me and it actually is alive, but the c-opera listserv is very, very much alive, and we have three OPERA America staff members on the c-opera listserv... Kalvos: I'm bewildered again. Are you bewildered? Drogin: What a listserv is? Damian: I was, I was hours ago. Drogin: I'm sorry, I'm going on and on and on... Kalvos: I'm just confused as to who these people are and why they have a telephone operator like that. Drogin: A telephone operator, yes. Kalvos: Let's hear some more music instead! Damian: Sure. Drogin: Good, whatta you wanna hear next? Kalvos: Whatta you got? Damian: How about something... Drogin: How about something you actually can participate in? Damian: No, how about something orchestral? Kalvos: Or something six minutes long? Drogin: I have nothing orchestral for you. Kalvos: What about these, what about these selections here from "Typhoid Mary"? Drogin: Oh, yes, "Typhoid Mary," that's not orchestral, that's orchestrated for piano, which is orchestral in that way, I orchestrated for grand piano, I said, "Don't play it on an upright." Kalvos: Three selections from "Typhoid Mary" by our guest today on Kalvos & Damian... Drogin: Homage a Kurt Weill. Kalvos: Homage. Just like "NewOp [Doo Wop]" was a homage to the opening of "West Side Story," but we won't mention that. Damian: This is a homage? Kalvos: Yeah, one of them. Drogin: You'll hear in the second one. [01:23:28 Overture from Typhoid Mary by Barry Drogin] [01:24:37 Danse Macabre from Typhoid Mary by Barry Drogin] [01:29:39 Epilogue from Typhoid Mary by Barry Drogin] Kalvos: Selections from "Typhoid Mary" by Barry Drogin, our guest today here on Kalvos & Damian. Drogin: I wanted to say, I wanted to give some credits. "Typhoid Mary" was a dance-theatre piece I did with the wonderful Peg Hill of the Bicycle Shop Dancers. And we vowed that we would not lose money on this production, and fundraised, and I think we put Bicycle Shop Dancers out of business, either way. Kalvos: Oh! Drogin: She's now in Hawaii, but having a wonderful time. The first piece you heard was the "Overture," and during the "Overture" and slightly thereafter we came out and we fed the front rows of the audience food cooked by Eve Jochnowitz, the Chocolate Lady, but this was not chocolate, we fed them some cold pasta and salad. Damian: There went your profit margin. Drogin: Yes, that went to profit margin. And the second piece comes a bit later, and we call it the "Danse Macabre," I'm sorry it went on so long. Kalvos: That's the, the sort of tribute to, certainly the... Drogin: That's definitely the Kurt Weill song, the Lotte Lenya voice coming in. That's Kathy Barr singing, Blake Rowe is playing the piano. And it's relatively long and it's this "Danse Macabre" where all of the cooks and servants in the household are dancing in unison and one at a time, slowly, each of them falls to the floor, while this music repeats and repeats and repeats and it was wonderfully done by Peg, and that's why it went on a bit long, I'm sorry for that. And then the third piece, if you know anything about Typhoid Mary, you know that she was quarantined for thirty years. And the third piece, she was captured, she was quarantined, then she was released, and then she was re-captured and put back into quarantine. Perhaps the secret I've never told anyone is that particular piece is played by me, not by Blake Rowe. All the rest of the pieces on "Typhoid Mary" are played by Blake Rowe. and, it has a... Kalvos: And speaking of quarantining, we're going to quarantine these guys. [01:35:30 Station ID by Barry Drogin and Baruch Skeer] Kalvos: Here on WGDR Plainfield. Damian: Ship-flag of... Kalvos: The Pop-Non National-Inter Work-Net! Drogin (laughs) As guest number 180 you have reversed yourself. Kalvos: 180 degrees of separation... Drogin: ...how bizarre, how bizarre. Kalvos: 180 degrees of separation. Damian: There it is. Drogin: What's bizarre about... Kalvos: There's a mosquito! Drogin: There's a mosquito! Don't! Don't! Damian: [clap] Ah!! Drogin: Don't mess up the sound levels! Damian: We got it. Kalvos: Oh, yes, so, there you are. Drogin: What's bizarre about that piece is that I wrote it a few months before my father's death and it sounds to me, and I associate it with, having written it after my father's death. And we were criticized for that last piece. We kept up a pretty good cynicism throughout the entire piece and then she's quarantined for thirty years, and we did that, and Ballet [Dance] News said that we got too sentimental at the end. Kalvos: Ooh! Speaking of sentimental... Drogin: And they're probably right. Kalvos: Here's, here's the question then, speaking of sentimental, you and a number of other composers we've spoken to are kind of a neo-neo-neo-Romantic school of composition in some respects, tonality, simplicity, folks like Michael Sahl, Boudewijn Buckinx, Beth Anderson, and even the direction that Eric Salzman has been going of late, all bring you into this sort of different area entirely, probably having something to do with why you ran away from the electronic music. What is all this about? Drogin: Well, it's very... Kalvos: One of the words you tossed around was something about, you were a "neo-melodist" or something like that, I couldn't quite make that out, what is, tell us all about this sphere you're talking about. Drogin: Well, "neo-melodist" just is that I am interested in melody and I think I'm a very good melody writer, and I think there are a lot of people out there who are not melody writers, and there was a reaction on my part against a lot of contemporary opera that I was being exposed to in the seventies and the eighties where I felt it really sounded like a film score with a vocal line tacked on. What we're talking about is putting the important musical material into the voice, not into the orchestra. And this is kind of what led me to this extreme of saying, "Look, you can put interesting musical material into the voice." Now, some of my pieces sound more tonal, some of my pieces sound pan-tonal. There was one teacher I didn't get to mention because we kind of rushed through it, he was technically teaching me Orchestration, but we, he taught me a lot about music, and that is Gil Robbins, who was the conductor of The Occasional Singers and, to drop names, the father of Tim Robbins and et cetera, et cetera and so forth. But, and he was also a member of [The Highwaymen and The Cumberland Three], he had his own history, which, he's a wonderful composer as well. But Gil conducted a chorus, and he told me something, he said, "The singers don't have buttons they can push." And I've... Kalvos: So don't push theirs, in other words. Drogin: So don't push their buttons. There's something, when you write for voice, when you become a writer for voice, if you've ever rehearsed, and the Occasional Singers was a really unusual thing, to give them a little more plug, back in the, I guess it was the eighties. That he took amateur singers and had them perform nothing but new music, to prove that it could be done, and they were wonderful. He would take the best singers from choruses all around New York, and they would audition and get in, and I just didn't get in because I was a baritone and they had too many baritones and they didn't need me. My first wife actually did get in and she sang with them for a while. And, whenever you sing a new choral piece, you find that each composer has a language that they uniquely use, a way of thinking tonally, a way, Beth Anderson's music, tonally, is very different from Michael Sahl's music, tonally, is very different from Eric Salzman's music, tonally, is very different from my music, tonally. And there are a whole slew of choral composers out there who, they have a, they have a way of writing and a way of notating and a way of this and that and the other, and a chorus learning a new piece has to spend the first week or two just understanding the composer, just understanding where his head is at as opposed to other pieces that they have sung. So even though everything just may sound, well, it sounds kind of tonal, it's not really true if you try to sing it. To sing something yourself is not easy. It involves different things and different kinds of techniques, and your brain is hooked up into it, and your brain must understand the harmonies, understand the notes. So even though I am amazed that a piece such as "Lulu" can exist and be sung, and I adore portions of it. I, and I have written, I mean, "Alamo!" has quite a number of places in it where the lines are completely atonal. You, it has to make sense in some way to a singer, it has to have a logic behind it, and different pieces of mine have different logics, and some of them get too tonal, and some of them get too atonal, or whatever it is, but they each have, you discover a harmonic world. The harmonic world you heard in "Typhoid Mary" is completely stolen from Kurt Weill's harmonic world, which was a little post-Sondheim/Bernstein obsession of mine then was to get into Kurt Weill's music and adore it, and also the low voice, which I also adore, the low alto voice. I saw Martha Schlamme perform Kurt Weill's music before she died. Lotte Lenya, by the time I came to New York City, Lotte Lenya was still alive but she had stopped performing. Martha Schlamme performed until her death, she actually died on stage performing, and I saw her in some smoky cabaret, and this became my definition of a real cabaret singer. She used to sing in German and in English, and she sang "Pirate Jenny Song," which is where the name of my company, Not Nice Music, comes from, shall I do the German? "Das ist doch nicht nett, du idiot! Das ist [doch] Kunst, und nicht nett!" ["Die Dreigroschenoper," Bertolt Brecht] "That is not nice, you idiot! That is art, or Kunst..." Kalvos: Art. Art. Drogin: "And not nice." Damian: Let's go back just, you, you dropped a lulu, but you didn't finish your, your thought, I think. Drogin: I dropped a "Lulu" there, yes, by Alban Berg.... Damian: ...Yes, but what was the ref[erence], yes, but you mentioned all, I don't understand the reference to "Lulu," whether you liked it, you said... Drogin: I love portions of "Lulu," I love the saxophone in "Lulu," I love some portions of it, I love that part that comes back again. There's some exceedingly, I, I, I'd have to admit... Kalvos: It's a twelve-tone piece, a lot comes back again. Drogin: (laughs) Meaning that, there's only twelve of them, that's right, that's right. I don't like "Wozzeck" as much, and I know there are people who they adore "Wozzeck" and they don't like "Lulu," and I like "Lulu" and I don't like "Wozzeck." Kalvos: Okay. Drogin: That's just my opinion. Kalvos: In terms of, you know, sort of, how the singers get to understand a piece, I think, one of, a good example of that, is Stravinsky's "Anthem: A Dove Descending." Have you ever sung that piece? Drogin: I have sung quite a bit of Stravinsky, and Stravinsky is devious. I unfortunately sang Stravinsky at an early age and it was a very bad influence on [me]. Scott Wheeler dared to have us sing his "Mass." And, Stravinsky wrote lines, because he was a polytonalist, he wrote lines where, if you sing them by themselves, they make total sense. You learn them all by themselves... Kalvos: And you bring your own harmonic thinking to it without knowing the rest of it, yeah. Drogin: You bring your own harmonic thinking to it, and then, the other person, the other voice, the alto, the tenor, the bass, they learn their lines, and then they have to be put together, and that's where it gets exceedingly difficult. And Scott was criticized for how lousy the performance of Stravinsky's "Mass" was by this college chorus. He had professional musicians playing the [instrumental parts], and then when you add the additional instruments to it, it becomes even harder. It's a very difficult piece to perform. Kalvos: The reason I, the reason I specifically asked about the "Anthem" was because that's one of Stravinsky's rare twelve-tone pieces. Drogin: "Mass"? Kalvos: And it's a cappella. Drogin: The "Mass"? Kalvos: No, the "Anthem: The Dove Descending." Drogin: The "Anthem: The Dove Descending" is, yes. Kalvos: It's twelve-tone, and it's totally a cappella. It's an amazingly difficult piece... Drogin: Yes. Kalvos: ...if you approach it without, without any understanding of it at all. And you, the reason I have a particular affection for it is because we did it with a little choir here locally, and... Drogin: Did you do it successfully? Kalvos: Successfully, yes, indeed. Drogin: Well, congratulations to you. Kalvos: It's a, it was quite wonderful, because everyone hated it when we, not everyone, but most everybody in it hated it when they started it, and one of the lead singers, I remember, being infuriated time after time after time, and then finally coming in one day and said, she'd sung it all day in her garden, and then finally understood the piece. Drogin: There you go. Kalvos: So. Drogin: There you go, so I'm not saying that twelve-tone can't be understood, but there is so much rehearsal time available, of course, also, and there's, amateur choruses are a wonderful thing. There're certainly a lot more amateur choruses than there are professional choruses out there, and some of them can be quite daring and some of them are willing to rehearse, and rehearse and rehearse and rehearse, and that is a wonderful thing for all of music. The only thing I don't like about amateur choruses is the fact that they charge admission. Kalvos: (laughs) Drogin: I think that amateur choruses should not make believe that they are professional choruses, I think they should go, there should be community choruses and they should go perform in nursing homes and perform in bandshells and perform for free... Kalvos: That's what we want, in [unintelligible], aha! Drogin: Because they're amateurs, they're amateurs, and they don't sing very well, and they don't come in on queue, you know... Kalvos: The number here is 802-454-7762. There's still time to call Barry and berate him. Drogin: I, I don't, it's not that I don't believe that the music director, that the choral director shouldn't be paid, but I don't like them renting halls and printing up programs and charging fifteen dollars, or whatever it is, for admission and getting all their friends to show up and et cetera and so forth. I'd rather they be community things and just perform. Of course, amateur choirs in churches, they don't charge admission for you to get into the church, and in synagogues... Kalvos: They charge you to get out. Drogin: "They charge you to get out." You're, you may be as anti-religious as you like, but that doesn't make me anti-religious. Kalvos: The exterminating angel will come and get you. Let's just... Drogin: Before we totally run out of time, I would like to premiere a piece... Kalvos: Yes! Drogin: ...which I think is in keeping with the mood of that horrible ending that I associate the last piece with, the death of my father. And, the thing that has kind of thrown me for a loop was September 11. Kalvos: You were right there. Drogin: And I was right there, I was in the south of the World Trade Center. If you know the island of Manhattan, 98 percent of it is north of the World Trade Center and most people did not see the plane physically come into the building and I unfortunately was standing in the exactly right place to see that and it totally traumatized me and I've had a lot of difficulty writing anything since, and, only due to, I want to thank, David Rodwin of Raw Impressions Musical [sic, Music] Theatre, who forced me to write a [ten-minute-] long piece called "Hoover," that I don't know if I'll have time to play anything from. And since that time, the only piece I've been working on is this piece called "September 11 Songs." And I want to perform the very first piece of it a cappella. Damian: And you want to dedicate this to 50 Cent? Drogin: To, I'm sorry? Damian: 50 Cent. Drogin: 50 Cent? Damian: Never mind, it doesn't, doesn't flow here, he's a rap singer. A rap artist. Drogin: It doesn't sound like that way, if I'd dedicate it to anyone I would dedicate it to Martha Schlamme, I mentioned before. Damian: Can you explain who she is? Drogin: Who Martha Schlamme is? Damian: Yeah. Drogin: She's a, she was a singer who lived in Berlin at the time of the rise of the Nazis, and escaped, as did Lotte Lenya and as did Kurt Weill. And she was associated with (oh, I'm going to forget his name)... [Alvin Epstein] There was a "Kurt Weill Cabaret" that was performed an awful lot as an Off-Broadway show. (Oh, I'm sorry I can't remember his name, Eric Salzman's going to kill me, because we just, I couldn't remember her name. I said, "It's Martha S, what is it, what's her name?" and he told me, "It's Schlamme," and I said, "Of course, that's it.") And the problem is, is that, apparently, Lotte Lenya and Martha Schlamme hated each other, and the Kurt Weill Foundation refuses to acknowledge that she exists, so, even though she did some very important recordings, and et cetera and so forth, they never mention her name, so when I was trying to search for her name I couldn't find it on the Kurt Weill Foundation site, which also has a large Lotte Lenya portion of it, too. But she, she was a slice of Berlin, and she also did some Yiddish singing, she's, the one recording of her that's available, you have to know how to type her name to find her on the web: S-C-H-L-A-M-M-E. Martha Schlamme, she died, I think, around 1985, so most of the singers that I come into contact with have never heard her, have never heard her perform. They have, maybe, the Lotte Lenya recordings, which are very famous, and I, you know, love and adore those. But I never got to see Lotte Lenya perform live, I only got to see Martha perform live. And, if I was to dedicate "September 11 Songs" to anyone, it would be, it would be to her, because now, I intend this for a cabaret. But I'm going to sing it a cappella. And this is the first piece, there are four pieces in "September 11 Songs," it's a song cycle, and I've completed two-and-a-half of it. The most difficult part, which actually describes the experience of seeing the airplane come in, is, I haven't done yet, and I'm trying to work my way towards that, but allow me to sing at least this first piece, which is called, "After." Let me get my pitch, it's also a B. [clears throat] [01:50:55 After from September 11 Songs by Barry Drogin] Kalvos: Barry Drogin. One of the "September 11 Songs," isn't that true? Drogin: Yeah, I've written an accompaniment to it. I don't know that it's necessarily the best accompaniment. It, obviously this harks way back to my, G-d, my Harry Chapin days almost, this particular one. The second one starts out with some Paul Simon and some Beatles, and the fourth one is from "Hoover," which has Italian opera. So, they're all over the place, and the third one, of course, I haven't written yet. The second one is only half done. And, I don't know, it kind of sounds like a Willie Nelson song, but it's hard to imagine Willie Nelson working downtown Manhattan on September 11, 2001. There, Harry Chapin, of course, is dead, and he also rhymes with "Drogin," so maybe only people whose name rhyme with "Drogin" perform it. Bruce Springsteen doesn't quite make it rhyming, you know, et cetera and so forth. Damian: But LeAnn Rimes, that would work. Drogin: LeAnn who? Damian: LeAnn Rimes. Drogin: LeAnn rhymes with rhymes, but it doesn't rhyme with Drogin. Damian: But it rhymes with rhymes. Drogin: There you go, but I'm not familiar with LeAnn Rimes' music, and David is obviously in a different world than I am, he keeps bringing in references that I never get, which is perfectly fine by me. Damian: Oh, yeah, sure, yeah, sure. Kalvos: One of the most, one of the most played singers here on Kalvos & Damian, that's for sure. Drogin: Oh, well, I'll have to look up his, type his name into the search engine. Kalvos: She'd be happy to hear that. Damian: Right. Kalvos: Just a little joke there, Mr. Drogin, okay, yeah. Drogin: I thank you very much for allowing me to perform that, that's actually, I guess, since this is a work in progress,,, Kalvos: When do we get to, when do we get to hear them all, yeah, when do you think the whole set will be done? Drogin: Oh, G-d, you know, September 11 is now... Damian: It's coming right up! Drogin: Almost two years away. Kalvos: Yeah. Drogin: And this has been the only piece I've been working on since September 11, it's taking me a long time. I want to, I want to finish this piece and it's, I've... There's, if you go to my web site, there's a lot of things, I've been kind of the "poster boy" of new music... Kalvos: Your web site, again, is [www.]notnicemusic.com. Why is it not nice? Drogin: Why is it, I've already told you, the "Das ist doch nicht," there's actually three reasons, three reasons. Kalvos: Yeah, the other reasons, there were a few other hidden reasons there that... Drogin: There are two other hidden reasons, one, of course, is being a nice Jewish boy, and, you know, the kind of not nice Jewish boy in some of the things that I do. The third one came later, and that is a wonderful quote from Beverly Sills. Because at that time I was still thinking of myself as an opera composer, and passion, et cetera and so forth, and Beverly Sills said, and it's printed in The New York Times, "After you've been screaming your lungs out for three hours, the last thing you want to hear is that is was 'nice.'" I actually performed "After" privately, only for my wife and for a friend, and the friend came over, two friends, and the other friend came over and I performed the whole thing for him, and at the end, he said, "Oh, that's nice." And I was, like, "NO, THAT'S NOT NICE! I mean, Martha Schlamme is not nice, how could you use such a word?!" It's a very horrible, I mean, this is a horrible experience for me. I was the, as I said I was the poster boy, I organized, along with, drop a name, Kyle Gann, we used his guestbook so that everybody could check up on people, who was alive, who was not alive. Eve Beglarian is more of the poster girl for September 11. Kalvos: Eve has an incredible commentary site on her own web site. Drogin: Yes, and so do I. So we both are a little bit obsessed. I'm actually entered, I'm registered for the Memorial. I've got until the end of the month to, I have to modify my design for that, I'm a, it's pretty, it's occupied me a bit, and it's occupying my music a bit, and I can't give you any date as to when I will finish "September 11 Songs," but the first one, which you just heard, is certainly available now. But, as a cycle, the fourth one, which is completed, doesn't make any sense without the other three, and the second one, which is called "Breakfast," is half done and stops right at the point where someone in my business place comes running through the halls, shouting, "The top of the World Trade Center has been blown off!" And then in number three I actually go outside, and that's where, there's a famous, on my website you can find it, there's a famous CNN tape which didn't get aired until around midnight on September 11, and the person who filmed that was standing about twenty paces behind me. [For years I believed this, but in 2007, in response to an inquiry, investigated and proved otherwise - see the website.] The plane came over my left shoulder and entered the building and I went into shock. And I've since that time had pneumonia and chronic bronchitis and various other maladies as well as completely stopped composing. I did write an essay for NewOp called something like "Hope" ["Happy Endings in Narrative Forms: Hope and the Golden Age of the American Musical Theatre"], I gotta cut this off, you can go to the web site and you can see how obsessed I am with September 11. Kalvos: Barry Drogin, thanks so much for joining us on Kalvos & Damian, I wish we had more time today, but, we're just about out of it here. Damian: We are. Drogin: Thank you very much for having me.... Kalvos: Thanks again, Barry Drogin.