![]() O ne of the things I most enjoy about your compositions is that so many aren’t just multi-disciplinary, they’re multi-sensory. Eventually I hit upon the idea of baseball coaching signals, which are soundless, but turning them into body percussion. Clapping games and hamboning occurred to me quickly and then I was casting around for another style, something unexpected and a little outside the box. I do remember planning to create a body-percussion piece and wanting to combine several forms as inspiration. Well, I created that piece quite a long time ago! I’m not sure I remember exactly how I got the idea. How did you conceive of combining clapping games, hamboning, and baseball signals in “Sight of Hand”? ![]() Both pieces are visually and aurally impressive and just plain fun. I’m enormously fond of the pieces you’ve created for CRASH, your percussion ensemble, “Click” and “Sight of Hand” in particular. He told me “you can do this!” and the rest is history. I didn’t start composing until I was about 22 years old, in my last year of my music degree, and I was very lucky to find a composition teacher who was tremendously supportive and encouraging. I was curious about it, but didn’t think it was available to me. I grew up learning music in the classical music tradition, which seemed to carry with it the idea that composers were born geniuses and composing was a mysterious endeavor. I think my remark was not just about composing as a career choice, but that I didn’t consider composing something I could do at all. At what point did you change your mind, and what prompted you to do so? You’ve been quoted as saying that you didn’t consider composition as a career path when you were young, although you were a multi-instrument musician, a dancer, and a choreographer. I’m immensely honored that Childs agreed to be interviewed for No Dead Guys and am thrilled to feature her and her music on this site. From the mesmerizing beauty of Kilter, a work for two pianos, to the stunning creativity and intricacy of the works she created for CRASH, her percussion ensemble, I found myself in a sound world that opened my ears and my mind to the sheer, bubbling energy of real life, captured in sound and movement. The playful exuberance of “Now”, Childs’ solo piano contribution to the collection, led me to investigate her other compositions. I first encountered Childs’ music through Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim From the Piano, a collection of 37 piano compositions commissioned by pianist Anthony de Mare. She finds simplicity in complexity and complexity in simplicity, all the while never losing touch with joy, humor, and curiosity. Perhaps this is because under all the multi-layered sophistication and complexity of her works she’s found a bedrock of common ground shared by people everywhere. In compositions that are both multi-disciplinary and multi-sensory, Childs challenges her listeners to experience music with the vitality and curiosity of a child. Mary Ellen Childs is one who doesn’t seem to think that the box exists at all. There are many composers who think outside the box.
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